Link Click

(This is the first time that I'm writing a review.)

Link Click is a mystery-thriller donghua (or Chinese animation) released in 2021. The story revolves around two guys, Lu Guang and Cheng Xiaoshi, who have supernatural abilities. Cheng has the power to travel back in time using a certain photo and he switches his body with the person who has taken the photo. Lu on the other hand has the ability to foresee the events which are gonna happen in the next 12 hours after the photo was taken. They can communicate simultaneously and they've to figure out what they want, but they can't change or alter any event that has happened in the past.

Now why did I like this? The first time I came across the OP song from YouTube recommendations, I was curious to check out what this anime was. I found out that this isn't actually an anime, it's a Chinese anime or to be precise, a donghua. Now I didn't have any experience of watching anime-influenced animation of any country, and I also felt like I won't be able to catch up with the Mandarin language. After I started watching, the episodes felt really good, the plot and development of characters, as well as the ending of episode 1, which gave me goosebumps. As I proceeded further, the real emotions of the character Cheng Xiaoshi, his past, losing his parents at a very young age etc. gave me the hype of what I generally watch in slice of life genre. The background music added to the mysterious and melancholic atmosphere of the series. The story beats every time hard, when we know that whatever Cheng does during time travel, he cannot change anything, since it will change the future/present. The bittersweet truth was explained properly throughout the series, and it didn't make a great deal out of the facts, so if you're a slow watcher or have difficulties in understanding anime concepts can also grasp the plot easily. Most of the cases explained in the series have been related to the plot itself, and the anime does have some drastic development with the main protagonist. Almost every episode has a twisted ending, which makes viewers more and more interested to watch the next one. The voice acting was also not that bad, it was a lot better than my expectations. Now, the series ends up with a cliffhanger and creates the hype for season 2. (It is also getting a Japanese dub currently)

The area where it needa a bit of improvement is the animation. In the first few episodes the animation used few key frames, it appeared that the pictures were just moving. The animation wasn't that smooth.

Plot: 10/10
Animation: 9.5/10
Voice acting: 10/10
Characters: 10/10
Music: 10/10

Overall, a great series if you like thriller and drama genre!

I hope donghuas as wonderful as these will be coming out in the near future, in fact every country should step out and create their own animated series!