Who would have thought that even in a strong season like Spring 2021 one of the very best shows would be a quirky, non-traditional crime thriller that anime fans were totally ignoring before the season started?
Oh, and Odd Taxi was pretty good too.
I rarely do series review posts these days, as the only occasion would be for shows I didn’t cover. But Link Click is certainly deserving – not least because it had a second season announcement after the (fiendish cliffhanger) ending. And you can bet your sweet bippy I’ll be covering that, so may as well get a head start. I really should have started covering this season, because I knew by a few episodes in that it was really good. But I have was having so much fun watching it and it’s so rare for me to have the experience of following an anime – or “anime-like” – without the task of writing about it that I decided not to tarnish the experience.
Shiguang Dailiren is certainly not the first donghua (Chinese animation) I’ve watched – there have been a few, with Heaven’s Official Blessing (Tiān Guān Cì Fú) probably being about my favorite among those. But Link Click blows them all out of the water for me. It’s pretty much brilliant in all aspects, including the cast (which isn’t always the case for me with donghua). The visuals aren’t spectacular by anime standards, but on-par with some of the more modestly budgeted series out there. And the direction is first rate. We could get into a semantics debate here about what’s anime and what isn’t when many anime are mostly produced in China these days, but for me a series written and performed in Mandarin Chinese is clearly different from those examples.
The fact is, Link Click is still almost totally ignored by anime fans. Those who’ve watched it certainly rank it highly (it’s ranked #21 all-time on MAL), but there aren’t a lot of them in the usual anime fan circles. It had to win me over given my lukewarm feelings about donghua, but that it did. It’s really best you watch it rather than have me explain the plot, but in brief – it’s a time-travel series about two guys in their early 20’s who have a shared ability to travel into the past through photographs. Lu Guang (Tianxiang Yang) is sober and responsible, and Cheng Xiaoshi (Su Shangqing) – who does the actual leaping – is emotionally volatile and impulsive.
This is a show that takes the mechanics of time travel pretty seriously, which as a hard sci-fi fan from early childhood I appreciate. I also appreciate the depth that goes into the character development, starting with the leads (Cheng Xiaoshi has a very troubled past), and extending to the characters who inhabit the individual arcs. Some last an episode, some two or three – but they were all superb. I was most moved by the one dealing with the Great Sichuan Earthquake but they all pack a serious emotional punch. The writing is consistently excellent, but the extent to which that’s the case doesn’t become clear until the finale. And I’ll leave it at that.
Shiguang Dailiren is an original series and honestly I have no idea who wrote it – I’ve yet to see a writing credit listed anywhere. Whoever they are, they’re damn good. You have all the elements here – strong protagonists (I especially love Cheng), great recurring and episodic plots, action, even some comedy. One of the things I love about the series is that among its most important themes are parent-child relationships (which it depicts brilliantly), and the modern economic divide between urban and rural China. It’s socially aware and quite open about it, and I wonder if it gets away with more as an animated series than it could as a live-action.
In sum – Link Click is a great show, and I have no reservations about using that word. It certainly came out of nowhere for me, much more so even than Odd Taxi (and while I’m happy that found a loving audience, this series is even better IMO) – a sleeper to be sure. It could so easily have been a show I whiffed on altogether – I just happened to give it a watch because I’d seen a few positive comments, I had some time, and Funimation was streaming it. Whenever we get the second season it will be one of my most-anticipated series – and that’s something I never would have believed a few months ago.
elianthos
July 23, 2021 at 12:02 amMight not be popular among the usual anime circles but most of my BL-loving acquaintances were raving about it – and Mars Red – in Discord chats ( they’re much more used/open to check out Chinese and Korean works of all kinds in general it seems. One silver lining of living in niche fandoms? )
I am still on general watching hiatus personally but given the evil cliffhanger I’ll just wait for s2 to start I guess XD
Guardian Enzo
July 23, 2021 at 12:20 amWhich is interesting because it’s loaded with male-female romance subplots but anything same-sex would be implied at best (and a lot of non-BL anime imply it a lot more strongly). I don’t care why people watch it why they like it as long as they do, but it’s a bit odd.
elianthos
July 23, 2021 at 7:42 amThat’s what I was referring to with ‘works of all kinds’. A good deal of BL fans are rather adventurous (the more veterans the more adventurous XDD). Maybe it comes with the territory because in some ways some BL can feature… a level of non-mainstream one could only compare with some seinen, and even so many popular fandom titles right now are from outside Japan altogether (China, Taiwan and SK, again). Basically many BL fans will look up anything that interest them even if it’s niche or different because they’re already used to.
Also shipping-wise if shippers wanna ship there’s no canon or het canon stopping them *regardless of demographic* Enzocchi is there.
elianthos
July 23, 2021 at 7:55 amin short… I don’t find it particolarly odd at all. If anything they are most likely to have a taste for the unusual and different. BL can be both a stalwart cagey tropes country and an incredibly quirky one, part of the BL fandom is either pretty open from the start to non-mainstream – and curious – or gets used to a lot of varied content and styles rather fast, with a lot of popular titles being works from outside Japan (Chinese and Korean especially) to boot. Also not every BL fans only consumes media for the sake of shipping, as visible from the outside as this part of the fandom and fanworks experience can be. And even so shippers who wanna ship were never historically held back by canon, het canon or even demographics, be it Easterners or Westerners ;D
Guardian Enzo
July 23, 2021 at 8:26 amFair enough. I hadn’t realized Mars Red was a hit with that community (or any outside Japan TBH, and even here it’s niche) but that’s nice to know.
leongsh
July 23, 2021 at 1:51 amOh.. interesting that you watch donghua too. I do as well. Link Click is one of the better series. This Summer season’s donghua to watch is The Island of Siliang. Another original series. Not based on any novels/books.
Click What Link
July 23, 2021 at 2:25 amI’m very glad you found this one on your own and ended up loving it too, because it really is a great show and at least plotwise probaly better than any Japanese anime that aired last season. Kudos to all involved in this project, I haven’t been on the edge of my seat like this for some time anf there were many great surprises and cliffhangers (and that transition to ED just plain rocked so many times!). The one thing I totally don’t get, though, is why a show whose title translates as Time(/Temporal) Agent(/Proxy) is called Link Click in English. Clap would make sense (right?), but click what??
I’ve actually been meaning to recommend this show to you for most of it’s run, because I was certain you’d like it, but to be honest, you can be incredible stubborn sometimes and you’ve said in the past that you don’t like how Chinese sounds, so I was hesitant about spending time writing a long raving comment about it, only for it to be dismissed for reasons completely irrelevant to whether the show is any good. I worried that if the first episode didn’t grab you, you might not be willing to give it a chance to build up and show its excellence in totality. All’s well tha ends well, I guess…
And since you mentioned liking Heaven Official’s Blessing, have you tried Thousand Autumns (Shan He Jian Xin) at all? It’s another welcome departure from from your standard cultivator/immortal tropes and despite no lack of action manages to center itself on a philosophical debate (that also borders on a love story) between… show should I put it… I guess virtous naivety and wicked pragmatism, exemplified by the the MC and his self-appointed benefactor/nemesis. It’s not 2D animation, but the 3D is done well enough not to be a distraction. In any case, it touched me deeper that HOB, which I also liked very much.
Riv
July 23, 2021 at 11:37 amI’ve watched several donghua series, but I missed hearing about this one, so thank you for the rec! I just watched the first episode.
Panino Manino
July 23, 2021 at 1:06 pmFunimation needs to seize the momentum and relaunch the series with better subs!
Also, if you go to the MAL forums you may find some details about the production. One detail that was shared there recently is that most of those stories where apparently inspired by real cases, so it was probably not only the third case that hit differently for the local audience.
Guardian Enzo
July 23, 2021 at 2:27 pm‘s funny, I heard so many complaints about the subs but they never bothered me.
Anchen
July 24, 2021 at 12:25 amI watched the first episode after seeing this post. Is definitely interesting so thanks for the recommendation. Didn’t see the ending coming. Will be giving this a shot.
Guardian Enzo
July 24, 2021 at 9:13 amIMHO it just gets better after that.
Anchen
July 25, 2021 at 1:07 pmFinished episode 11. That certainly expanded things at the end. I do wonder where this will go but you are right that is one fiendish cliffhanger to end the season on. Thanks again for bringing this up since I think there’s a good chance I would have completely skipped this show for not knowing it existed. It was a fun watch.
asd
July 26, 2021 at 2:22 amgood recommendation, the chinese animations im used to seeing when i was in china and was browsing through the available VODs are usually 3D (like island of siliang)
shiguang dailiren has a better story than most japanese anime these days – I’ve reduced my anime count in recent years significantly since nothing really intrigues me and keeps me watching these days.
i would say that the china accents for the villagers are quite authentic – they are speaking in mandarin (putonghua) but sound distinctly different
Guardian Enzo
July 26, 2021 at 8:55 amObviously I don’t know enough about regional dialects in Mandarin to know, but that doesn’t surprise me. I really love the series’ focus on the urban-rural wealth-poverty divide in modern China. Frankly, I’m surprised it got away with it.
The earthquake-basketball chapter was the highlight of the series for me. Absolutely heartbreaking.
Meeps
August 23, 2021 at 2:44 pmToo bad the Chinese government controls their country’s private sectors and commits cultural genocide. Makes it hard to watch anything that country produces.
Aozora
October 3, 2022 at 4:39 pmJust finished watching. Wow. Was the first donghua for me and i had some problems getting used to the language. But the story is just. WOW. I am looking foreward to the second season and your covering!
Guardian Enzo
October 3, 2022 at 6:08 pmYeah, it’s pretty great. Just wondering when the heck we’re going to get the details on that second season.