Do you remember what the best anime of twenty-twenty-one was? I mean, do you still remember what was that anime that redefined genres?
Well, let me take you a little back in time. Tokyo Revengers’first season had just released, and people were absolutely crazy about its delinquent story. Yeah, it revived the delinquent genre for some time, but it’s not what I’m going to talk about. Anyway, after that, Horimiya was in everybody’s mind too. Mushoku Tensei Jobless Reincarnation too was really famous at the time. ODDTAXI redefined the way we think of mystery animes.
Even though all of these anime really stood out among the pile of great anime that came out that year, the most redefining one probably was Link Click.
The first season of Link Click literally took over the weeb community. And not just in India, people everywhere were going crazy for it. Nobody was able to get away from its fulfilling storyline and orgasmic animation. Everybody was talking about it. YouTubers all over the world—people with different tastes, different backgrounds, different backstories—all of them were just praising it.
The anime community has never been so damn united and fixed on a single opinion. There were always contrarians in the community with their bullshit hot takes, but everybody just loved Link Click.
But, the second season of the series just finished its run a few days ago. And, why isn’t anyone talking about it?
I mean, the first season ended on such a cliffhanger, man. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but this one main character was about to die, after all. But, people never returned to Link Click. And, it’s not the audience’s fault, either. Link Click II just isn’t Link Click anymore.
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#01 – Plot
First, let me explain a little blurb of the story. Link Click follows the story of two friends, Lu Guang and Cheng Xiaoshi, who have the ability to go back in time. And, they need a photo for it. Cheng could teleport the time the photo was clicked, and Lu Guang could see what happened in the twelve hours that followed the click of the photo—or it was something like that. And maybe that’s where its name comes from.
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The first season ended on a cliffhanger, and the second season starts the story from where the first season ended. And, I’m not going to spoil that part. So let’s leave it at that.
The story of the second season is good. Like, it had its defects, but it was good. The filmmaker really did a good job of creating suspenseful episodes and playing up the cliffhanger. There was always this excitement when an episode ended, and I could imagine the amount of time and thought that must have gone to create something like this.
The characters are really fleshed out. All the backstories and backgrounds of each character really do justify the way they act and think. The protagonists and antagonists really did have some pretty cool problems that they needed to face and overcome. And, I feel there’s this really good use of each character’s strengths and weaknesses. Even some side characters had some really good screen-time to make them likable and make the audience cheer for them.
The filmmaker really did a good job at stepping up their game for this series. The murder mystery that the season follows was really engaging. I, personally, was shocked to see the tragic backstories and some experimental stuff that the creators decided to do.
Yeah, personally, I really enjoyed the series. But maybe that’s because I had forgotten what the first season actually was about.
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#02 – Feels Off
Now that we’re done with formalities, let’s try to explain why no one’s talking about this show.
And, obviously, it’s because they made a mistake. A really big mistake. Personally, I never thought any show could make such a mistake, man. It’s… just so dumb. It’s just… so there. It’s the basics of any medium of storytelling, in my opinion.
They switched genres.
Yeah, they just decided to switch genres. And, I gotta take my time to explain clearly just what I want to.
First, a question—what made the first season of Link Click so legendary, in your opinion? What led to its exponential rise? What made people fall absolutely in love with this show? What made them literally cum to it? It’s definitely not the characters, not the animation, not the soundtrack.
It’s the theme.
Link Click had tried something new. The show used the rudimentary elements of time travel and gave something new to it. The power system had a twist to it that no one had imagined. And, time travel is largely attributed to mystery-thriller genre, because maybe that’s where the troupe works best. But, Link Click wasn’t a mystery-thriller.
The anime played well with the elements of time travel and really did explore some cool themes, you know. And, these themes were not just about time travel in itself—they were also about emotions so human. The first season was filled with stand-alone arcs that were filled with regrets and drama. New characters came to the protagonists to help them with the past, knowing that the present can’t be changed, but the past can definitely altered… knowing that death is just the end-point and there’s no evading it.
We followed these characters that were there for just an episode or two, maybe, and were absolutely drowned in their stories, their regrets, their failures, and most of all… their pasts.
Link Click was all about those emotions and that drama. The audience stuck with it because it had a sense of mystery, yes, but mostly it was the drama. People absolutely loved to try unraveling the mysteries of the stories that were told in the first season.
And, people absolutely loved the cliffhanger that marked the end of the first season… that so gracefully connected the first and last episode of the season.
Yeah, the first season was all about drama, and less but intriguing mysteries that were connected to it. But, Link Click II is different.
For some reason, the filmmakers just decided to switch. The drama is still there, the mystery is still there, but their roles have changed.
The second season is all about irrelevant characters dying and relevant ones just getting their asses saved somehow. The story focuses more on the protagonists finding the antagonists and trying to defeat them. The drama is still there, you know, but it’s more focused on just the backstories. The human essence that the first season was filled with is lacking just too much in the second one.
The second season was just too different than the first one. With the main focus on the murders and mysteries, the fans of Link Click didn’t come back to see this shit. They wanted some heart-wrenching drama that dripped off the first season. They wanted all that depressing, everyday stories. They wanted some seriously heart-touching writing that the first season showed it. But, the creators had decided otherwise.
And, it was this shift in the themes of the story that eventually led to the fall of Link Click II.
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#03 – Fractured Structure
Even as a mystery, the series shows signs of weak writing. The story was poorly structured and rather focused on shock factor than on some substantial plot advances.
To elaborate, I’d first begin with what I had already talked about. The second season had literally no other connections with the first season—other than the first and last episodes, obviously. If you take out the first and last episodes, the entire first season feels just another thing. If you compare these episodes to the second season, there are literally no hints that the story was going to advance in this direction. I mean, the change was just so sudden and unwanted.
And, it was most probably not planned at all. The writers must have just decided to add the first and last episodes in the stand-alone episodes of the first season to connect it somehow with what they were about to do.
The vibes of the story literally changed when the seasons switched. And, although it’s not necessarily a bad thing, it should have been gradual, perhaps, and maybe they could throw more hints to make it a little obvious that what we were seeing in the first season is not the actual story that they’re going to follow.
Then, there are also other instances of lazy planning in Link Click II, such as the cliffhangers at the end of each episode. These cliffhangers are there just to keep the audience entertained and make them click on the next episode. And, in, like, the first five minutes, these guys explain what had actually happened behind the scenes that were not shown anywhere in the previous episodes, and then soon after, the cliffhangers open up, and we get to know that nothing substantial comes out of it. They just… happened, and then ended, and then the story moved to the next cliffhanger.
In a mystery series, one important thing is that the cliffhangers should not be done like that. If the cliffhangers are there, the writers make sure that the story doesn’t have to switch back in time in the next episodes to explain those cliffhangers, and that there are sufficient hints that the audiences can kinda see the cliffhanger coming. The cliffhangers in the series felt like something just somehow happened, and how it happened was explained later. It’s lazy. I mean, drop some hints, man, so it doesn’t sound lazy and actually seems like it was planned.
Another thing I’d attribute to lazy writing is the ever-expanding power system of the story. As the story moves forward, the going-back-in-time theme is just not there. Lu Guang and Cheng Xiaoshi are not just high-fiving each other to go back in time. Instead, they are discovering their new power. Lu Guang can somehow see the past of the photo without Cheng going back in time.
Like, we never knew this was possible? And, somehow, this Cheng guy is just teleporting himself from one place to another through some security footage. There are a few more people with new powers, somehow, and even though two seasons have passed, there’s no hint whatsoever about why anybody of these guys have these powers.
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#04 – Conclusion
Yeah, I guess that’s it. I pulled off a little too much hatred at the series, even though I definitely enjoyed it and was thrilled by those cliffhangers nonetheless.
And yeah, from the end of the second season, it’s clear that there’s gonna be another season in the series. And maybe there’s no going back from this point.
Link Click is not gonna be the same anymore, and that’s pretty obvious by now. It’s not going to go back to the first season.
But, I still have high hopes from the next season. I’d be waiting nonetheless. Finishing stories halfway is not what I do. till then checkout some other amazing reviews by otaku mantra
