Link Click

时光代理人 (Shiguang Dailiren)

9.2(1)

OtakuDen

8.7(192,309)

MAL Score

Ranked #67

Popularity #542

Drama
Mystery
Suspense
Adult Cast
Super Power
Time Travel

Episodes: 11
Duration: 23 min per ep
Aired: Apr 30, 2021 to Jul 9, 2021
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

In *Link Click*, Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang run the modest Time Photo Studio, offering an unusual kind of help to clients. With their supernatural ability to step into photographs, they relive the moments surrounding an image through the photographer’s perspective, searching the hidden details needed to fulfill each request.

Each visit into a picture comes with a dangerous constraint: a single misstep can ripple outward, changing the future of the person behind the camera—and beyond. As the cases grow closer to home, the two partners must keep their emotions in check and stay focused on completing the job without rewriting what comes next.

Otaku Consensus

Link Click earns its 8.7 MAL score and #67 rank by pairing Haoling Li’s tight direction with LAN Studio’s sharp, modern suspense staging, turning an 11-episode run into a binge that accelerates hard in its second half. Critics and fan writers consistently single out the pacing, emotional case writing, soundtrack, and character chemistry as the reason it travels beyond the usual time-manipulation crowd. The real caveats are practical and structural: availability has been a headache for some viewers, and a few supporting characters leave a stronger impression than their limited screen time can fully satisfy.

Why You Should Watch

Watch Link Click if you want time-travel tension without the lecture-heavy mechanics that can slow the genre down. It scratches the mystery itch of Erased and the consequence-anxiety of Steins;Gate, but compresses its pressure into compact urban cases built around memory, crime, family life, and grief. The adult-cast setup gives the show a grounded workplace texture, while the photography device keeps each episode visually and emotionally specific rather than abstract. At only 11 episodes, it moves with unusual confidence: early installments play like sharp supernatural procedurals, then the second half tightens into a more dangerous chain of cause and effect. Viewers who like suspense anime with tragic emotional payoffs, not just clever rules, will get the most out of it.

Key Characters

C
Cheng Xiaoshi
Cheng Xiaoshi is the volatile heart of the partnership, the character fans tend to latch onto for the way his empathy turns every assignment into a personal risk.
L
Lu Guang
Lu Guang stands out as the colder tactical half of the duo, giving the series much of its tension through his insistence on rules, restraint, and precision.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
LAN Studio builds the show around a clean urban-fantasy look rather than ornate spectacle, which fits the office, police, crime, and family-life tags that dominate its casework.
2
The structure is unusually efficient: 11 finished episodes aired from April 30 to July 9, 2021, and multiple reviews note that the pace becomes especially forceful in the second half.
3
The photography-centered premise is not just aesthetic branding; AniList tags Photography at 89% and Time Manipulation at 97%, reflecting how tightly the visual object and the supernatural rule set are fused.
4
Tenmon and Yuma Yamaguchi share music credit, and the soundtrack is repeatedly highlighted in web commentary as one of the elements that makes the drama land beyond standard mystery plotting.
5
Its reception is unusually strong across databases for a non-franchise suspense title: MAL lists it at 8.7 from 192,309 votes with a #67 rank, while AniList scores it at 86/100 with 10,974 favourites.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: The original character design is credited to INPLICK, while the final character design work is shared by LAN, Dan Xiong, and Simeng Huang, giving the production a broader design pipeline than a single-name credit suggests.
Fun fact 2: The art direction is credited to three people: Takumi Tanji, Tomoya Asami, and Lipiao Zhu, an international-looking staff mix that helps explain the show’s polished urban interiors and atmosphere.
Fun fact 3: AniList’s tag breakdown shows how the series is perceived by viewers: Time Manipulation at 97%, Super Power at 93%, Photography at 89%, Tragedy at 83%, Crime at 80%, and Urban Fantasy at 77%.
Fun fact 4: Although it is often discussed alongside Japanese anime on major databases, Link Click is also known by its Chinese title Shiguang Dailiren, which is why it frequently appears in donghua recommendation circles.
Fun fact 5: The show’s popularity profile is unusually prestige-heavy: on MAL it ranks far higher by score (#67) than by popularity (#542), suggesting a title with intense approval among those who seek it out rather than sheer mainstream saturation.