Shiguang Dailiren II

The attempt to capture the mysterious perpetrator who possesses people ends tragically: Lu Guang is rushed to the hospital in a critical state, while Cheng Xiaoshi is arrested for the alleged crime. In light of recent events, the father of Liu Min unleashes his skilled, ruthless lawyer—Qian Jin—after Police Chief Li Xiao, who is spearheading the investigation related to the photo studio owned by Qiao Ling.

It appears that no one is safe from the unpredictable and fatal attacks of the adversary who painstakingly hides their identity. As he tries to learn from his past mistakes, Cheng Xiaoshi must act swiftly and decisively to put an end to this devastating trail of death.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Cheng, Xiaoshi Main

Toyonaga, Toshiyuki Japanese

Lu, Guang Main

Sakurai, Takahiro Japanese

Qiao, Ling Main

Koga, Aoi Japanese

Li, Tianxi Supporting

Murase, Ayumu Japanese

Li, Tianchen Supporting

Murase, Ayumu Japanese

Liu, Xiao Supporting

Hanae, Natsuki Japanese

Liu, Min Supporting

Xu, Shanshan Supporting

Lynn Japanese

Chen, Bin Supporting

Morita, Ryousuke Japanese

Wang, Juan Supporting

Kimura, Kaori Japanese

Li, Haoling Director, Original Creator

LAN Episode Director, Storyboard, Key Animation, Animation Director

Tenmon Music

Tomassian, Alexis ADR Director

Reviews

Sep 22, 2023

234Mannan

Recommended

Link click might be the best of chinese animation and its not hard to see why. The Emotional storylines incorporated with thriller and mystery elements not to mention the sheer unpredictability of the plot itself.
Unlike the first season, the story enters a linear plot line, which involves our main characters entirely. With addition to giving hints on how far the abilities can go and quite possibily a teaser on where they began.



The main theme of this season happens to be domestic violence. And how it can be extreme in many cases. Considering how little it is represented in media despite being one of the most ... common issues in asian countries and how well a job someone rarely does in portraying so I applaud the creators for the work they did and making it standout from a psychological prespective. From the children having psychological issues though in a non traditional way with addition to the extreme cases of murder and paranoia, it does an extremely good job.


All the characters are good standouts especially the twins. However some can be stereotypically "mad" as well. In addition to this, Lu guang happens to be the best of the trio this season. Considering how it was primarily focused on the twins mostly, the protagonists can take a back dive however Lu guang with his development as a character and his actions makes up for it. Season 1 was primarily focused on Cheng Xiaoshi while the main storyline(which begins in this season) happens to center around Lu guang especially considering the concluding episode.
The plot explains everything up to a satisfactory degree... How it happens and why it happens though it can become a bit hard to follow in the middle. Considering we are talking about time loops etc. But it explains it later on in case you miss it in the previous episodes so its a win either way.
All of the 12 episodes are connected however with a astounding reveal making up for another cliffhanger ig. But overall while it has some short comings since it was experimenting with some stuff(episode 9) it did a job well done overall in more ways then I can count. Link click stands out among similar storylines involving timeloops with its emotional touch and real world elements. The plot contains a sense of Alturism which is rare in many thrillers.
The art and aesthatic is beautiful overall. In terms of quality it improves from first season and the story boarding is nothing short of unique in many cases. The Music just adds to the entire thing putting a cherry on top, every score is enticing and the opening sequence being complimentary to the plot itself without containing spoilers is also pretty good.
The last thing I will probably mention is the action. The creators definitly researched martial arts. There are several sequences and all of them are done beautifully.
All in all A great season that ultimately sets itself for the next.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Sep 24, 2023

ConstantReader

Mixed Feelings

Let me preface this by saying that season 1 of Link Click was one of the most enjoyable original "anime" (I know it's a donghua but it's my first and so far only one besides Scissor's Seven) that I'd seen in a long time. It instantly made it to the top five of my personal favorite time travel stories, just behind the legendary Steins;Gate. I loved the framing device of using photos to jump into the past, I loved that the main characters weren't the main focus for the majority of the show but still likable and intriguing enough to care about, and that the ... episodic stories told were all equally compelling and heart-felt, and I loved loved loved how all the plot threads came together in the end to culminate in a truly intense final arc that brought us even closer to the main characters personally, rounding out with a jaw-dropping cliffhanger while leaving so many questions open for another season to answer.
I ain't gonna lie, my expectations for this second season have just been building and building in the two-year wait (helped along by all the promotional material released, and promises of what to expect from the creators), until they reached admittedly unfairly high levels.

So it's with a heavy heart that I have to call this second season, in a word, a DISAPPOINTMENT. It wasn't terrible, but it definitely did not live up to the hype built by the first season (and the show's promotional team) at all.

With the way the first season ended, it was clear season 2 could not continue in the same episodic format. I expected this and in fact anticipated it, as I was eager to learn more about the main leads, Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang themselves. Unfortunately, far from just being different to the first season (and not in the right ways), this second season doesn't even feel like the same show. There are glimpses of what it used to be in the first few episodes, when the titular time agents actually do some time travelling, but the majority of the rest of the show is taken up with the things happening in the present time, which isn't a whole lot. I'm sure anyone who enjoyed season 1 didn't like it for being an action crime drama (because it wasn't!), and yet this season seemed to be trying so hard to transform itself into that... and ultimately failing. Look, the fight animations were cool, but they're essentially just filler scenes and they took up WAY too much screen time in some episodes. What's fun about watching police officers beat up a bunch of goons for FOUR AND A HALF MINUTES when the actual main characters are in danger somewhere else?

It wasn't only fights that ate up a lot of time that could've been dedicated to actual character exploration and plot development; from episode 6 onward, SO much of this show is just backtracking and redoing scenes over and over again for the sake of "revealing" things they could've shown the first time around. I swear the plot took a complete standstill for THREE WHOLE EPISODES while we backtracked and flashbacked our way through plot points we'd already seen or inferred. It really gave off this vibe of the show's writers wanting to stall as much as possible before moving forward with anything really TANGIBLE in terms of plot progression, because they didn't actually know where it was they wanted to go with this story. And it IS just one story here, unlike the first season. While that would have been fine, the fact is, this just wasn't a very INTERESTING story. The antagonist from the end of season 1 turns out to be pretty lame and too cartoonishly over-the-top in his mannerisms (complete with maniacal laughter that also goes on for way longer than it should...) to take seriously, and the other characters introduced aren't much better. I couldn't give a flip about Qian Jin because his motivation and backstory is so uncompelling and unsympathetic - the dude is just a douchebag and I only wanted him taken out.

And I haven't even talked about the over-abundance of fake outs and cliffhangers. This is a problem that rears its ugly head right from the first episode. Given that anyone who might be watching this season now won't have to wait for it, I don't feel any qualms about spoiling something that happens in that first episode. Do you remember how the first season ended? That big cliffhanger that left those of us who had to wait two years for this season on the edge of our seats, while each teaser and trailer that came out in the meantime made us believe that a certain character was going to die? Boy did that create a lot of expectations for what this season would be about. Well, halfway through the first episode of season 2, they reveal that... that character is totally fine. Not dead, not even in danger of dying. They play it off like a joke and move on.

That first episode basically represents how the show handles all its cliffhangers (and there's one for each episode!) for its entire run. They make you think something is going to happen, then bail on it immediately. Oh no, a character who's hiding is about to get caught? Next episode: Sike! No he doesn't! Oh no, a character is about to change something in the past that wasn't supposed to happen? Next episode: Nah, he doesn't. Oh no, some characters just got blown up! Did they survive?? Next episode: Yeah they're fine, they didn't even get a scratch. Literally every ending for every episode was done in a way just to string its viewers along to make sure they tune in next week, without actually doing anything major in the story. Maybe this will be less annoying to people who binge-watch this season all the way through, but for us weekly watchers, it was really aggravating waiting a whole week to see what consequences would occur, only to be shown that there weren't any.

Honestly, about the only things I can credit this season with that make it enjoyable are the FEW moments we get between the three main leads (and I think I can count those moments on one hand), the opening theme which is even better than the first season's and almost seems to tell a better version of this season's story, and the very last scene of the last episode which finally reveals something actually worth caring about.

And of course, sucker that I am, I am still looking forward to another season because of that reveal.

Because overall, this season was really just a transitional part of the story, the bridge that will (hopefully) lead to all the answers we originally wanted. And it really shows; it was clunky and not very well paced or prepared, and the plot never really goes anywhere, but I never missed an episode and it was fun to laugh at even as I was frustrated by it at times. And by the time season 3 rolls around, if the writers actually do it right this time, it won't have harmed the story much in the long run. (The only thing that could do THAT for me is if they actually make the two male leads a couple - please don't.)

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Aug 30, 2024

Lucianael

Not Recommended

Look, I don’t think this season is terrible, if you like it, you do you. What I do believe, however, is that this season is a tremendous letdown when compared to the first. That is also why this review is marked as [Not Recommended], not because this season is garbage, but just because I wouldn’t recommend it to people who liked the first one, like myself.

Let’s get the good stuff out of the way. The animation is just as good as it was in season 1, the same goes for the direction and music, though there are fewer memorable tracks this time. Voice acting is ... as Chinese as ever, and the OP and ED are both great.

Sadly, that leaves us with the writing, and, oh boy, is there a lot to talk about. I am certain that I missed at least half of the stuff I would usually critique a show for simply because of:

1. Focus. The show flows well from episode to episode, but it doesn’t build anything. This is a problem to such a degree that I thought this was still the opening chapter/arc, both after episode 2 and episode 8. In other words, it is fun to watch, but it doesn’t use its time. The story told in these 12 episodes is a laughably small and incoherent excuse of a show. There is nothing wrong with small-scale narratives, I enjoy personal drama just as much as big-scale action set pieces, which is why a lot of my favourite shows are romances, but Link Click just manages neither. It wants to be this action-packed thrill ride, without using its time to build up an interesting conflict. It wants emotional parts while having no interesting moral or emotional conflict at its heart. Likewise, it has the production to really make you feel something, the music, the direction and animation are all more than good enough to deliver these high points, but the writing just doesn't make that possible. Everything just feels so utterly pointless, if the conflict at hand feels uninteresting on its own and also completely detachable from everything that came before it. Our leads from season one were not designed to make for good emotional drama on their own, they function phenomenally at telling other people's story, but there is just no reason for them to be this deep into a conflict this shallow. The moral conflict here is basically on the level of "I don't want bad things to happen" and then the antagonist goes "Well, that sucks 'cause I'm evil". Everything seemingly is only built to deliver that one shocking moment per episode, it doesn't matter if that moment makes sense, it just needs to be unexpected. If you disagree, then might I ask you one thing:

2. Are cliffhangers really that important? Season one had a lot of the episodes end on a cliffhanger, and while I think that these cliffhangers made, for example, the first episode a lot more engaging, they don’t lead anywhere. We are giving up narrative complexity for popcorn entertainment, and I would be completely okay with that if it didn’t also:

3. The show lies to us. The more I watched season 2, the clearer it became that the writing staff of this show did not preplan a solution for the murder mystery of the first season. If you don't get what I mean by this, might I ask why the pink-haired guy from the second season, who is the killer from the first, killed Emma? He, his name is Tianchen by the way, also didn't even show up once throughout the entire first season, which makes it pretty obvious that they didn't preplan any of this. I wouldn't mind all that if it actually made sense, but Tianchen's craziness runs counter to that of the killer presented in the first 12 episodes, especially when we take into account that he is meant to act tactically under the control of Jin Qian (evil glasses guy). It is much like the cliffhanger, it is about the expectations, not the payoff. Again, if you just want some popcorn entertainment, that’s fine, but I care about this story, I want to take it seriously, and because of that, I am going to judge it like that. If you want me to care, to get emotional like I did watching season 1, to be hyped and frightened to see what happens next, then make a narrative that works. If there is nothing but the production, that I can call good, if there is not a single episode that doesn't completely shatter my immersion through nonsensical storytelling, then I can't enjoy this season. There is so, so much wrong with it, but it really doesn't matter, even though I could count immersion breaking bullsh*t for days, it can't break the show, because its core conflict already did. All this has once again to do with cliffhangers, so if you don’t get why these cliffhangers are so bad, and maybe you don’t understand what I am mad about, let me explain it by saying:

4. Season 2 feels entirely pointless. The arc starts by rewriting the psychopathic serial killer from the first season in such a way that he can actually be compelling. With this, the cliffhanger of the first season’s ending is pointless. If you have already completed the show, you might already know where I am going with this, but if you haven’t, I am just going to say that season two ends with a cliffhanger, and oh boy, is it a good one. If each and every cliffhanger this show has presented me with throughout 20+ episodes was worthless, then why should I care about this one? The writers proved, that they did not know the answers to the mysteries they set up, that they care more about the set-up than the quality of their narrative, so why in god's name should I expect there to be a good answer to this cliffhanger? When the next season comes around, I might be shocked to see that they actually had a compelling answer after all, and that would make me very happy and look kind of dumb, but it doesn't matter. Don't get me wrong, I still want these payoffs to be good, but the fact that the show has conditioned me into believing that they aren't going to be, already speaks more than everything I could write. If a show manages to disappoint you to such a degree that you lose all hope in future instalments, then that is a pretty big f*ck up, and even if they manage to turn it around, if they somehow crawl out of this hole and start writing a competent third season, even then, this one would still be bad enough to disappoint me to such an extent. I don't want this show to be bad, I love its first season and for a good 6 episodes kept telling myself, that this one would be the same, but it wasn't, it is so fundamentally bad in so many ways, it ruined the show's mystery, it doesn't have a compelling plot and at best manages to be fine popcorn entertainment. We are talking about Link Click here, one of, if not the best show of 2021, the fact that I can say these things about this show, the fact that it got so bad is both incredibly disappointing and just sad.

Look, I wanted to like this show. I absolutely loved its first season, and the second didn’t change that. I find it a bit sad to know that the whole murder mystery was pointless, but even then, season 1 is still amazing and well worth your time. Likewise, I cannot ignore the obvious writing flaws, the incoherence, and the fact that the writing staff completely failed to map out the story of their show. If you can ignore all that, if you can still have a good time with this, by all accounts, don’t let me, some guy on the internet, ruin that for you. But even then, I am not going to turn away and ignore how they completely messed up one of the most entertaining pieces of television of the last few years. If I want more Link Click, I’ll rewatch season 1, because this sure as hell isn’t the show it promised to be.

[This review was reworked on 06.09.2024 and by that I mean, I reworded a few things that annoyed me, fixed writing errors and made wording more precise]

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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