Time travel, while a classically beloved trope, can also become stale with beating the paradoxical dead horse. Link Click breathes new life back into the motif with an actual refreshing, innovative take on the genre. Some narratives are more humorous with nihilistic, cynical outlooks on the futility of time travel like Rick and Morty. While some have more serious interpretations of the genre, too often the consequences of the episodic events are still emotionally detached from one another, even in series like Doctor Who.
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Link Click, on the other hand, gives the category two things that are too often overlooked: a clever new tool for time travel and actual deep emotional connections between the people involved and the consequences of such a power. It’s a widely well-received Chinese anime (donghua) in its own right, but it still doesn’t get as much recognition from Western audiences as perhaps expected, despite a familiar premise. But Link Click, which is available to stream on Crunchyroll, is worth your time in more ways than one.
The Developing Story of Link Click
Link Click, written and directed by Li Haoling, is a Chinese donghua web series created by LAN Studio and produced by Bilibili and BeDream. The Original Net Animation (ONA) aired in 2021 on Bilibili and Funimation and consisted of 11 episodes plus the special 5.5 episode. The series was followed by a second season in 2023 and a special 6 episode prequel season, Bridon Arc, that just finished airing in January of this year with the English dub still being released. Along with supernatural time travel, the genre also includes drama, mystery, and suspense. With Link Click, the concept is accompanied by a memorable body of rules:
“First rule, you get twelve hours. Second rule, follow my lead and change nothing. Third, past and future must remain untouched.”
Link Click follows the duo Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang as they run the business Time Photo Studio under their landlady and close friend Qiao Ling, who is Cheng Xiaoshi’s childhood friend and often provides clients. Though they run under the guise of a photo studio, their trade instead involves the client providing the photo. With it, Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang are able to travel back in time.
While Lu Guang provides guidance with his ability to see 12 hours into the photo’s future, Cheng Xiaoshi leaps back to the moment the photo was taken, assuming the identity of the photographer along with all of their memories and emotions. The two then must work together in order to solve the client’s request and relieve them of their past regret. But they must do so with Lu Guang’s direction towards the right path of events in order to only gain information without changing any circumstances, often taking a toll on Cheng Xiaoshi’s emotions when witnessing increasingly tragic events he’s not allowed to help.
A Tale That Puts a Heartbreaking Twist on the Time-Travel Trope
Link Click’s Lu Guang has a more serious, steadfast personality that perfectly aligns with his commitment to guiding Cheng Xiaoshi through the correct series of events. Cheng Xiaoshi, on the other hand, is the exact opposite. With a very optimistic, spirited nature paired with unabashed emotional openness, he often gets caught up in not only his own emotions but his extraordinary empathetic capacity for the individual he possesses. Whether it’s bringing old friends together to bond over noodles or witnessing a loved one’s death, Cheng Xiaoshi is the one who takes the brunt of the emotional tolls.
A picture’s worth a thousand words, as the saying goes. But to Cheng Xiaoshi, Lu Guang, and their clients, it’s worth so much more in Link Click. Regret, forgiveness, lost love, rekindled friendship, life, and death, are each common in time travel anime, but Link Click still remains refreshing. The duo doesn’t just time travel to complete tasks as distant observers, but they actively participate in the experience of the human condition. With these experiences the series encapsulates the epitome of the word “sonder” — “The profound feeling of realizing that each individual, even strangers, is living a life as vivid, full, complex, and real as one’s own”, a word coined in 2012 by author and neologist John Koenig in his project, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.
The use of photographs here isn’t just a visual symbol, but an allegory that pervades the entirety of the narrative. The photos capture the moment the person’s life changes course; a mere vignette to the sequence of events that brought them there. The individual Cheng Xiaoshi embodies provides a candid view of their life’s lens and exposure to their emotions and memories. Lu Guang’s twelve-hour limited depth of field narrowing the aperture of time needed to zoom into the info they need to gather. The two try to find a resolution without changing the composition of events. The ever-sharpening portfolio of jobs not just leaving a watermark on their business, but saturating their mental chiaroscuro with the blurry shadows of others’ pasts. Link Click gives truly vibrant developments within the snapshots of the human experience.
[RELATED: 7 Time Travel Movies That Won’t Make Your Brain Hurt]
Art That Matches the Tone
Like the story itself, the captivating animation absolutely exudes emotion through all facets, even down to its background’s colorful, textured line art and ambient lofi-esque soundtrack. LAN Studio, alongside producers Bilibili and BeDream, creates the perfect environment to match the surrounding story.
Throughout the series, the soundtrack, directed by composers Yuma Yamaguchi and Tenmon, aligns perfectly with the given situations and moods presented with the different unfolding circumstances. Season 1 opens with Dive Back in Time by JAWS, the perfect song to propel the core theme right into a smooth introduction to the show. Its ending theme, OverThink by Fan Ka, leaves the viewer realizing just how deep the rabbit hole of emotional depth the show is yet to be felt. In Season 2, the opening ups the ante with another banger by JAWS, Vortex, against the dual 2D and 3D backdrop of ever-fleeting visuals of characters just out of Cheng Xiaoshi’s reach and symbols of tragedies yet to unfold.
The music compositions, coupled with the skilled, detailed art direction, create a world within Link Click that opens its doors to the numerous parallel worldviews of Time Photo Studio’s clientele.
You can catch Link Click on Crunchyroll of you’re wishing to rekindle the hype for the genre of time travel.
Let us know in the comments your thoughts on how Link Click handles time travel!
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