Minor spoilers alert (no plot points spoiled, just some very general stuff).
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Overall, while I think that this show has many flaws, I personally respect it for its overall messages.
The flaws:
- Given the nature of the premise, there probably are a lot of plot-holes. I’m not aware of any, but I think some people might have pointed some out. Regardless, I won’t mention them due to spoilers, but I just want to get the obvious flaw out here first.
- The over-reliance on shock value. This show probably has the most cliffhangers I’ve seen. Characters are laughing, the audience is smiling, and Boom! A cliffhanger. Usually, the mood does a complete 180° from whatever it is you’re enjoying to destroying your peace of mind. There’s no build-up or anything to the cliffhanger and no hints are dropped. The result: this maneuver comes off as cheap, unplanned, and manipulative. Some cliffhangers are so quick that they don’t even make you scared, but only make you go “what was that!?” And the worst part?
- Too many cliffhangers = they became predictable. For the later episodes, I was SURE that they would have a cliffhanger, and guess what? They did. Maybe I shouldn’t have done this, but come on I really couldn’t help thinking about it. And it ruined some of the experience.
- You can’t really tell whether this story is supposed to have a direction, and if yes, what kind. Is it about separate heartwarming arcs that don’t tie into each other that much, or is it about this grand mystery plot? There’s no sense of direction – it’s all muddled. As the audience, we don’t know what to expect (in the bad way) and the story can become confusing. This confusion is made worse by the non-stop switching-back-and-forth-between-slice-of-life-and-thriller.
- The sound quality is bad sometimes – you could HEAR that the voices were recorded in a studio. They also make some lines sound real cheesy. I usually don’t comment on voice acting, but I have to here.
The good:
- One character gets some character development, and they are none other than the black-haired boy, Cheng Xiaoshi. He’s the only one that has his background shown, and he changes from this annoying dude to someone more self-aware about his flaws. The specific scene when Cheng Xiaoshi develops is quite well presented and creative (I remember even the screen ratio changed), and it definitely speaks volumes about the hidden talent that the producers have (but unfortunately fail to use fully).
- About the art, I have nothing but general praise. Lighting and color were great, and backgrounds were consistent in their level of detail. CGI is really sparse and not distracting. Quite a few of the shots have a reflective quality to them, especially ones with flat surfaces like floors and tabletops. The basketball game particularly stood out, and so much that I recommend watching that game just by itself even if you are not planning to finish the entire show. A minor nitpick would be that characters’ faces look slightly different in their shape and layout between far and close-up shots, resulting in a hint of inconsistent art that some might call ugly.
- There are two good underlying meanings that I like:
- Normally, time travel stories demonstrate that time travel is necessary to solve all your problems. But Link Click also says that we don’t need time travel. Sometimes, we must learn to accept the bad parts in life. We can’t erase them because they are a part of who we are.
- This one is kind of meta since it directly connects to us. You know how the MCs dive into photos? Like they’re some kind of gateway into lives? Well, quite literally photos are gateways to what makes us human. It repeatedly shows how photos are reminders of our important moments and experiences, and that we should look at photos to gain a better understanding of ourselves and to move forward in life. At the very end of the extra episode 5.5, there is a sequence of montages in which real-life photos showing key memories of Internet users are depicted one by one. This sequence ends with the statement that no matter the emotional context (mostly), our photographs show how we are remarkable in each of our ways. We should not be afraid to show the true side of ourselves in these photographs to the outside world (mostly). Now, that’s a great message. It really strikes home for me and makes a lasting impression.
- Lastly, I cannot help but gush about the opening and ending songs and sequences. All of them are pretty cool, not least the animated finger-tutting in the opening. They have really been a joy to watch and hear.
Comments on the iffy parts (but no penalty to the show):
- How the time travel works and who started the photo shop are some unanswered questions. Explaining them could help make the story’s background feel more ‘real’. If there were to be only one season, I would’ve been okay with this ambiguity, but with the announcement of the second season, I can’t help but suspect that there will be a looong info-dump later on.
- Implausibility is an interesting criticism. It’s usually not valid if it’s about an underlying mechanic (e.g., time travel) since this is fiction we’re talking about, but it can be valid if it’s about the choices that characters make. Unfortunately, in this show those two scenarios interact to create a couple of unconvincing moments to me. But I don’t know which part I should criticize and which I shouldn’t, so I’ll just leave it as a tie.
- I personally don’t like semi-realistic characters making faces like > _ < or • _ • all of a sudden (unless they’re in a moe form). Whenever they do that, you automatically know it’s going to be a Funny Scene™. What’s more, it just feels jarring. Or maybe I just like realistic, mature shows too much. Poor me.
I must stress and re-stress the fact that a rating is nothing much more than a mere number, and what matters is that YOU watch it and YOU experience all that this show makes you go through. A rating is arbitrary, but your experience is not (wow so cheesy). And that’s what individual scores really are. Different people feel different ways about a show and then proceed to hammer a number that they felt was right onto their thoughts.
Thanks for reading this review, in part or in whole. Until then…
