Link Click
a review by Cocko
Cocko
3 years ago·Apr 7, 2023
90
/ 100
a review by Cocko
3 years ago·Apr 7, 2023
Link Click - my introduction to Chinese anime, and it is nothing short of a masterpiece. Every arc by itself is fantastic but the overarching plot elevates it to an even higher level.
Honestly, I could write a whole essay about every single arc. They're amazing self-contained stories with strong, resonant themes often tackling societal issues and very heavy topics such as toxic work culture, sexual abuse, child trafficking, death of loved ones, suicide, love troubles and more.
The manner in which these complex matters are handled is just phenomenal. In a very limited span the show gets an insane amount of emotions across and makes you care more deeply for these characters you just met than most others do in dozens, even hundreds of episodes.
The drama is just on an another level and it's this absurdly high involvement, this insane intensity and suspense, this absolute emotional roller-coaster that I ADORE in anime.
Every single episode is just... profound. Everything is cranked up to 110%, but not in a bad way - it never feels excessive or artificial. But be sure that just one episode will have you completely DRAINED - did I already mention that this show is quite intense?
It just HITS you. Right in your very core. Do. not. ask. me. how. BUT IT JUST DOES! I don't know what kind of black magic the creators use but every story, however simple and basic it might seem first, becomes the best shit you've ever seen.
Each character feels so... alive! Not necessarily as realistic or nuanced as in Vagabond or Monster but just... alive. Natural. Authentic. You feel for them, you really do. You cry with them. You laugh with them. Though for the most part, you just suffer with them through wonderfully excruciating suspense.
Only exception is the Ramen shop arc which is just a step down from all the others. It's still pretty good but not comparable to the rest in any area. Luckily it's short.
Now, let's delve into different aspects of this show.
Our main characters are not too spectacular, but super likable. And that's not a problem, it's just one thing the show might want to expand upon in the next season - a bit more depth. Xiaoshi already had some of his backstory revealed; that was really beautiful and made his relationship with Ling much more sincere.
Regardless, I really like and root for them, and that is enough here. No complaints.
The characters exclusive to one arc feel humane, vulnerable and just genuine. And most importantly - the show never fails to make you compassionate and caring for them.
The side characters (basically only Ling) are similar, just with less heavy issues and more likability.
Overall you're quite attached to most characters, no matter how irrelevant. You either like or dislike them - there's no indifference. You'll always be taking a side - the specialty of this anime is to quite literally put you in another person's shoes, and trust me it's pretty damn good at it.
I really like the concept and as you heard often enough now, the structure with the small, isolated arcs. However, that's not all there is - and I'm glad about that.
We'll get to the standalone arcs later, for now lets talk about the overarching plot. It only gets revealed pretty late, but it is spectacular. There are some truly shocking reveals and high stakes, and it gets extremely suspenseful - I won't go into details so as not to spoil. S2 will have that as the focus (I assume), and I'm extremely excited. To be honest I doubt it can live up to this amazing formula with the separate arcs, but I'm sure it'll still be phenomenal. Then again, they don't necessarily need to abandon it as the last part of S1 showed.
Concerning said plot I have to admit I didn't quite get everything. It becomes somewhat messy and complicated at some parts and for the love of god I cannot remember these names, which makes it really hard to keep track of who they're talking about when the person isn't on-screen. (Fun fact: every time you read Xiaoshi I just pasted that in lmaoooo)
So yes, I did not figure out what they did in detail but it certainly was enough to understand what is going on and enjoy the show. I cannot blame the anime alone for this, but it is hard to keep up with at some points in the final arc.
In general the plot is very straightforward, and while there isn't enough time to delve into every small aspect due to the short runtime and fast pacing, this rarely ever becomes a problem. Achieving this alone is a remarkable feat - many anime in this format struggle a lot with it.
The visuals are absolutely gorgeous, just like the characters. I'm in love with this unique art style. Furthermore, the movie aspect ratio (black bars) makes everything feel even more... intense and beautiful. I know it makes no real sense but that's how it feels to me. It also makes it feel like a movie, which is actually not too far off considering the show's structure.
The Chinese voice acting is top-notch. For someone hearing this language for the first time, it is quite odd and even irritating at times, but overall I really like it and definitely recommend watching in Chinese!
The OP and ED - latter is in Chinese - are absolute bangers, visually and musically.
OST is rather unusual, but in a refreshing way. Lots of great tracks, many with lofi vibes. Sometimes it's a bit too obtrusive though.
What I love here is the raw, painful portrayal of social issues and toxic work culture.
The best, or rather most effective way to communicate with humans is not through numbers, facts or headlines.
It's through emotions.
The media will do this by using photos, but this show goes further - and that's the crux of what makes it so amazing.
We, the viewers, literally become a woman suffering these troubles and get to feel everything for ourselves, in the truest sense. Seeing her chats with her worried parents who really just wanted the best for her was so damn HEARTBREAKING - it hit me like a truck.
The same goes for feeling the horrors of sexual assault - it will never look as bad from the "outside" or from the assaulter's perspective. But putting you in the shoes of the victim, giving you actual POV shots - goddamn they should run this as an ad in workplaces. It is DISGUSTING. And it makes you FEEL it.
And of course, this arc is an absolute roller-coaster as well: I was so happy for Emma when she decided to turn her life around and get the hell out of there but... SURPRISE. She got fucking MURDERED. Out of nowhere! And that was our introduction to this show. My heart already can't take it anymore...
And then Emma comes back for the very last arc. I'd been eagerly anticipating the continuation of her story, but what I got far surpassed even my wildest expectations:
The conversation she had with Xiaoshi on the verge of killing herself is indisputably my favorite moment in the entire show.
Emma, in the height of an emotional breakdown, devoid of all hope and filled with despair and trauma. On the other side Xiaoshi, aware he only has seconds to save her, but also bearing the weight of knowing that he cannot change fate - for him this is just as traumatic. He's thrown right back to when he tried to save the people from the earthquake and is scared of failing yet again.
This scene truly elevates Link Click to masterpiece levels.
It's so profoundly moving, so wonderfully touching, so emotionally loaded and dramatic and yet just... beautiful.
Beautiful. Forget cutting onions, my eyes were looking like the Niagara Falls.
Add to this the conclusion and relation to the main plot - the absolutely HUGE reveal that we got in the same moment - and this reaches sheer unfathomable heights.
**This story alone would've been enough to create a sensational anime.
But we're just getting started.**
It did not quite catch me at first but oh my god in the end it might be my favorite out of all!
Xiaoshi's conversations with the girl 'he' loved, with 'his' mother, his desperate attempts to change the future paired with the parallels to his actual parents' deaths and in the end: ultimate failure on all fronts and utter betrayal by his one trusted friend. Holy shit.
That was a lot right? Did you even get it all on the first read? Now just imagine all these plot points actually unfolding at the same time.
Speechless.
Every one of the things I listed alone is enough to make this arc incredible just by itself, but let's just go through it slowly:
First of all, they manage to pack a full-fledged sports anime in the midst of this show; the game is exciting, the team is likable and there's lots of common themes such as conflict between academic and athletic career or poverty.
Next, I could write a whole essay just about the dynamic between him and the mother. Their heated argument once again touches open lots of social issues: themes of family and motherhood, such as the father's absence, the mother's resulting pain and desperation to not lose her son, yet still wishing the best for him. On the other side we have the son who wants to follow his dreams rather than an academic career, despite the mother's worries. All very common issues that many young people have to deal with, all presented here excellently - you truly understand both sides, especially the mother's.
Then we have the highlight of this arc - the mother's death. It is the culmination of the previously established themes, showing how far a mother's love truly goes, no matter what happens in between them. Her sacrifice and final moments were some of the most touching scenes I've seen in anime; Xiaoshi's screams are haunting me to this day. Truly masterful writing, an unforgettable conclusion to the arc. I was BAWLING when they dug the bodies out and Xiaoshi just totally broke down and cried for his mother.
But that's far from everything - we also have the plot line with his crush. They were insanely cute together, but seeing them like this while knowing they can never be together is nothing short of torture.
And as if that wasn't already enough, what makes everything way, way, more suspenseful and tragic are Xiaoshi's desperate attempts to change the fate he knows cannot be changed. To save everyone. To not be powerless. Of course, we know his attempts are doomed to fail, and so does he... but it doesn't feel like that.
This time, the show makes you feel like our main character.
You feel his hope, his sheer desperation, the immense pressure on him - you can barely sit still because it's so tense. And when it all fails, you break. With him.
What?
That wasn't all??
That was not enough???
Apparently not, if you ask the writers.
As if our boy did not have enough trauma for two lifetimes already, the icing on this cake of misery is... his partner's betrayal. The only person he really trusted mislead and used him, and he was at least partly responsible for all the suffering he went through. And guess what? I didn't even expand on the parallels to his parents' death, which makes the whole thing a trillion times more personal.
I don't even know what to say at this point.
ALL OF THIS HAPPENS WITHIN 1 HOUR OF SCREEN TIME
LET THAT SINK IN
Now, do you get what I mean when I say Link Click is intense?
And still, it all hits, nothing feels rushed. The sheer quality in such a dense amount of time, basically building an entire anime from scratch within an anime... I've never seen anything like this before. Not on this level. Not even remotely close, and nowhere as consistent.
Though for once I have to admit - the trauma after all this and especially Xiaoshi's mistrust and animosity towards his partner were not resolved as well as they should've been. Of course, the partner had his reasons and ultimately meant well, but still. It wasn't bad, just not enough. Here the show actually did suffer from its reckless pacing.
This, however, pales in comparison to all the amazing moments in this arc.
One thing I really liked here was just the authentic portrayal of a working family and their struggles. Sure, it was just a 2 min scene at the start of the arc... but it just struck me: This show is GOOD. It's just amazing at this kind of stuff.
Of course, this is not the main focus. This story was super thrilling because you had such high stakes and... you could directly affect the future! That is absolutely unprecedented and I was blown away by the idea. A big difference compared to the Basketball arc, now with Xiaoshi even more set on achieving something to make up for his previous failure. As always, the themes - especially grim this time - were portrayed hauntingly well and moving. Really makes you check twice the next time you see a child being led by some adult.
Watching our time travelers fail again and again until it was all on the line, then just barely making it and finally getting the payoff... what a ride. Sensational. Beautiful. Just like the girls in this show. (i needed to get that off my chest)
This arc was a direct opposition to the previous one in terms of the conclusion: a total success. Very welcome.
Now this arc, I really like for a personal reason. As a uni student it just resonates with me and I love this depiction of how my future uni life might look like. I always love it when shows show me inspiration for my life, or rather, what amazing things are waiting in the future. The only other example I can think of right now is Great Pretender, especially with Cynthia's arc. That's why that show has a special place in my heart.
And here it's the same. I really like how they went through the different phases of student life, even after graduation. The romance, which is the actual focus, is also great, though honestly Shanshan is just painfully stupid. And I mean that well. Regardless, I was strongly rooting for her - Link Click never fails at that - and like how it played out.
What strikes me the most is the incredible structure: you have all these totally unrelated stories, and there's these two absolutely phenomenal things that this show does to combine them into such a masterpiece.
Firstly, each and every one of those stories could be a full-fledged anime by itself. This goes way beyond the scale of normal episodic anime, like Violet Evergarden. That one also has many beautiful stories, however none of them are as vast as what Link Click built with some of its arcs. The sheer quality the writers manage to squeeze into such a short time is just unparalleled. Characters feel authentic and nuanced, and what I consider any show's supreme discipline is Link Click's biggest strength: making the viewer care. It never fails to completely enthrall you in the world it just built from scratch and make you smile and cry along these drawings you've known for less than 10 minutes.
The second ingredient is the overarching plot. All of these stories are stellar, but this binds them together, somehow connecting these unrelated worlds and also giving the entire anime a sense of direction and just wrapping everything up nice and tight. Link Click does this in two ways. One way is through Xiaoshi, who develops through the events in the arcs, leading him to behave differently in the following ones. The other is through the plot points which last over multiple arcs, take for example Emma or Shanshan. And with the final episodes we have an actual overarching story line - this will make S2 quite a different experience.
In conlusion, Link Click is a story, no, many stories told through emotions. It will make you feel what others feel, it will pull you in and fully envelop you in its worlds. Each of them is an emotional roller-coaster the likes of which you haven't seen before - top-notch drama, suspense and character writing make sure you'll be soaked after a single episode. It never hesitates to tackle any topic, however sensitive or taboo it might be and never fails to handle it magnificently.
On top of that, you have our dear main cast and the overarching plot which is at least as suspenseful and exciting despite just getting started. I can't wait for S2 to expand on that and make this universe even bigger!
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