Link Click Season 2

This is honestly painful to say, Link Click was one of my favorite shows from the last 3 years and I was hyped when season 2 was announced. Now that it’s over I can confidently say this was a massive disappointment.

Before we get into that I have to say this wasn’t horrible, the animation and soundtrack have mostly stayed the same, and every character brings a very lively performance, so props to their hard work, I dont want that to go unrecognized.

Now what’s wrong with this season? I blame entirely the attempt at a serialized plot that fell straight on its face.

The only new interesting characters were Tianxi Li and Tianchen Li, I could somewhat get behind their storylines, if they didn’t include a bunch of bullshit involving the Hawaiian shirt thug and the glasses guy in a suit (his name is Jin Qian) that make the mystery convoluted for the sake of being convoluted. I don’t care if he murdered his coworker or his girlfriend. Why are you even here? I swear there's this blonde guy, Min Liu, who showed up for like one episode only to have a laughing fit with Jin Qian and Tianchen Li for no reason. It’s so mustache twirling in the most played out way. And don’t even get me started on those geriatric ass masked super heroes that showed up in episode 3.

Tianxi Li and Tianchen Li at least have the brother sister relationship that parallels Cheng Xiaoshi and Ling Qiao that make for some good moments in the later part of the season. Just cut out all these side characters we don’t need them.

Another part that annoys the shit out of me is the mind control powers. I can’t take a cop drama seriously when people fade in and out of consciousness, take over people's bodies remotely, find abandoned theaters to make hostage situations like all of this is extremely unnecessary. Especially when the police are so undermanned. So many scenes of like 1-2 police officers WITHOUT GUNS surrounded by like at least 10 thugs. Even in the hostage situation there were like 3 cars at most.

Let me say the time manipulation from the first season was a plot device for the character interaction, you weren’t supposed to think about it too much because it was used to explore the lives of the characters Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang were involved with. Now that it’s trying to be ERASED pretty much anything is possible and people can make up whatever ‘theories' they want on how these powers work in the overall mystery, it doesn’t make them any less nonsensical and immersion breaking.

Now I’ve been pretty negative, even though theres still a lot of what made Link Click good in the first season. I’ll say it here I enjoyed myself, but just not to the degree of the first season

Lu Guang was probably at his best this season. What he did despite being in a hostage situation with a goddamn STAB WOUND made me love his character even more. He is abso-fucking-lutely one of the boys B)

Like I said before, the Li siblings had an extremely heart wrenching backstory, and their plot lines intersecting in the last couple of episodes made for some extremely tense scenes. I especially like the episode when Tianxi Li was brought into the police department and Qiao Ling calmed both her and Cheng Xiaoshi down. The flashback with them as children almost brought me to tears. :’(

The ending and opening themes were both really fucking good. It kept the same ethos as the last season with the punchy edit into the ED that made for some cool cliffhangers. The animation for the opening was even better than last season, despite how cool the hand movements are (and yeah IK their rotoscoped, idgaf).

Just… man I’m bummed that this didn’t live up to expectations. Oh well maybe Season 3 (pls) will turn it around.

And yeah, if you enjoyed it then I’m envious, but also good for you.