Link Click Season 2: Episode 9 FULL LENGTH Reaction!
Added 2023-09-11 17:00:02 +0000 UTC**THREE-ACT HEADPHONE WARNINGS**
Ohhhh, is this the best episode of the season so far? I BELIEVE IT IS! Stylistically breathtaking, emotionally gut-punching, mysteries solidified with some answers and so much still unsolved, and a three-part structure giving us just enough exposition to build into the final "act" of this season, where the question is:
Is Cheng going to alter the past or has it always meant to be this way?
And what do we DO with that?!
LINK TO REACTION: https://share.vidyard.com/watch/zFPh1eNsc6Pha9LDU6Apfh?
Thank you for watching with me and for all the support!
Comments
Yeah, Qian has had it rough, but the decisions he's made have also made it hard to TOTALLY sympathize with him. I think the neighbor reacts that way with Qian because he was involved in the murders by association and is nervous that they're confronting him about it? Yeah, I'm just hoping NO ONE of our main trio dies -- I don't think I'm ready for that possibility. @_@ TianChen is hard to read, too, because we're not sure if he's using Qian, if he really killed the parents, etc. Still so much mystery, but TianChen having Qian as a guide definitely has warped him in a negative way, I believe. But YES, the laughing is haunting in this episode! So much left to go, right!? Thank you for the kind words and comment! Have a great day, too!
Romaniablack
2023-09-15 15:33:55 +0000 UTCI have these conflicted feelings for Qian because I totally feel bad for him but also he has done so many horrible things. Fuck them for making such great characters. XD I think the back pain from Qian's wife comes from a pregnancy. Now if it's Qian's or not, I really have no idea. Ohhh, the idea that when at the start Qian's wife and the other actor are lying about having looked at the building could have been that they or at least she was going to the hospital to maybe find out if she really was pregnant and it really didn't was an affair all along. That definitely would be a twist. When Xiao ling said that Lu Guang sacrificed himself for Cheng Xiaoshi and that is the inevetible future then if the theories are true that Cheng Xiaoshi dies in the future and Lu Guang is coming back to save him, Cheng Xiaoshi dying would also be inevetible, right? My biggest question is why did the neighboor react like that when he saw Qian? That moment bugs me so much. It could be him feeling quilty because he was one of the people that started these rumours but why would he react like that only when he sees Qian? That is driving me crazy. When we saw the neighboor at first I also thought it might be Ma because of the lips. XD At first when the colour came back when Qian saw the twins I thought he maybe got sympathy for them, which he did have, he feels their pain in a way but well, he definitely didn't get fatherly feelings for them as I hoped. I want to say Tianchen is saying he killed his parents to cover up what happened but seeing how he is now it could be that this crazyness came out the first time there and he did kill them. I'm really not sure if Liu Min is the friend or if it's his brother. That confuses me. The fairytale segment was also great. How Tianchen is so focused on revenge, on the game, that he doesn't notice how he destroys what he probably wants. When at the end the song plays and we get all the laughing scenes after another the song lyric is "It feels like comedy" and it just fits perfectly. The laughing scenes gave me chills. I don't want to believe that Tianchen is purely bad. I feel like it was just the circumstances that brought out his evilness. And that Qian shows a lot of similar signs the husband had was a good call. His aura definitely felt like the husbands. Wish you a wonderful day!
Toni simi
2023-09-14 12:33:50 +0000 UTCRuby and Huckleberry’s primary goals are “Belly Rubs” and “Throw Ball” but they also dislike spoilers! 😛 It definitely makes sense why Cheng would feel uneasy without a “guide” – now I’m curious if it connects to how TianXi feels right now, separated from TianChen? And Cheng running “in” Lu’s body was a great technique used, too! The animation was out of this WORLD stylistically – I was so impressed! The shadows along with the creepy laughter? Yeah, the whole vibe was unsettling in the flashbacks! And the flashbacks being linear and in three parts – this show loves the number three! And the callback to Shakespeare was really well done! Oh MAN! I questioned that TOO! Part of the plot of the song “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” is that a man’s friend tells him that his wife’s been cheating on him with another man…but also reveals that the FRIEND was also having an affair with her too, adding insult to injury, so for a second, I also thought that Xiao was going to reveal that HE was having an affair with her too and that was going to be just INSANE! Glad I wasn’t the only one thinking about that! I agree that the bench represents a place TianChen and Liu Xiao met frequently during their childhood. That would be interesting if Xiao “left” overseas after that convo and is just NOW coming back…hm. That is interesting about the birds spreading the rumors – maybe that she saw things from around the apartment (possibly hinting to her powers that we learn about in EP 10? With that logic, I’m going to talk about the results of this flashback considering what we learn in EP 10 too). Of course, it’s tragic because we see that the brother heard the rumors as well. For being an “exposition bomb” of an episode, they found ways to do it with such finesse! That is SUCH a good point that her running past Cheng was from two days prior! Good catch! And Ooohhhh, I’m with you….they’re getting us used to a cliffhanger red herring, only to slam us with a penultimate or season finale cliffhanger that we should ACTUALLY be scared of…now what that will BE…I’m terrified of, honestly. Yeah, I didn’t take her body language as speaking to a lover, but maybe trying feeling guilty about the nature of the conversation (talking about her failing marriage) but I could also see why Qian would assume that it was that of a lover possibly, too. And of course, there’s no way as of right now to know what the TRUTH is, so the show just leaves it to us to speculate endlessly…why not?! 😀 Yeah, considering his reaction to her death, I don’t think he staged the death, and if it was the actor that arranged her death…that’s so messed up. I hope by the end of this season we learn the truth of the matter, but considering how focused on the twins we are, I’m not sure that’ll happen or not. I’m going to talk about Emma and who hired her in Ep 10 so we’ll see about that, hahaha! But yeah, it’s definitely the first domino that’s fallen. True, if Lu was the one that sent the location, it does suggest he knows way more than he was letting on…hm. Thank you for the kind words and comment! Seriously, this season has been SO MUCH FUN to talk about and I am glad we’re at least getting SOME answers before the show leaves us on the edge of the cliff to wait for the third season and live action!
Romaniablack
2023-09-12 02:49:39 +0000 UTCI love Ruby voicing her agreement for people not to send you spoilers or share them with you 🤣 The show was seriously way too evil with all those scares of "will he get spotted/stopped?" But Qiao Ling was right that it's inevitable that what they already saw come to pass, will happen again. Also I feel like Cheng Xiaoshi's nervousness over it all links nicely with how he mostly relies on his connection with Lu Guang to guide him through photos. The only two times he hasn't had Lu Guang's guidance was when he went back and accidentally became a witness to Liu Min assaulting/almost killing Emma before Liu Min's car accident, and I'm pretty sure Lu Guang wasn't guided him when Cheng Xiaoshi was jumping from photograph to photograph whilst fighting Red Eyes/possessed Liu Min in the developing room. The latter he didn't require a guide because he was just jumping between photographs, but the former made him witness something that broke a part of Cheng Xiaoshi, so his nervousness about going through all this without Lu Guang's guidance definitely adds to the tension all these moments create. They truly did so well with all the lighting and artistry with this episode. Really showed off their abilities as an animation studio. Gotta admit the show faked me out on two parts with Qian Jin's story. The first with the emotion on his face in the theatre, I thought the same as you that he was watching Romeo and Juliet being performed after his wife's death. And then with Xiao Li saying there was something he should have told Qian Jin before. Dread pooled in my stomach as, considering the context of the previous conversation leading into this one, I got worried that Xiao Li was the one Lisa was having an affair with (or that he had knowledge of the affair but never spoke up about it). I love that they use Cheng Xiaoshi in Lu Guang's body running as an almost intermission between the three stories. Great way for the current plot to slowly progress, whilst also dropping more hints and clues about Qian Jin and the twins' pasts. I think the childhood friend is Liu Xiao as he's the only other young member of the Liu family we've been told about. Going by Season 1 when they gave us his age, Liu Min would've been too old to be Li Tianchen's childhood friend. But he going by his comment "so you live with him" I do think this moment on the bench is some time after the death of Li Tianchen's parents and the 'him' in question is referring to them now living with Qian Jin. Perhaps this bench was the place they met on a frequent basis before Li Tianchen's parents died, and this moment with their discussion that Li Tianchen can become a hunter is the first time they've been able to meet up since Liu Lan and Li Fan's deaths. It felt like a bit of a goodbye between the two so it makes me wonder if this is when Liu Xiao went "overseas" and now in the present he's finally coming back "soon". Strangely enough the events this entire episode have been pretty much shown in a linear fashion, with no backtracking to flash back to a previous occasion until all three parts were shown. And then the flashbacks were to finally reveal the information and context we were missing for the bits they'd already shown us and linking things together. The erratic, crazy laughing definitely adds a dark and creepy factor to this whole episode. The moment they showed us the happy family from a fairy tale form I was dreading that we'd see it again. Thankfully it wasn't *just* as rough in this episode, but still a pretty hard watch. But I'm left very suspicious with how everything went black as to how both Liu Lan and Li Fan died (even with Li Tianchen saying he did it, I'm a bit dubious about how exactly it all went down). Also with re-watching this part of the episode during your reaction I realised something: the only lines of dialogue come from the birds when they spread the rumours and taunt Li Fan. Very interesting considering this part is basically from Li Tianxi's perspective and *her* story. The way they went back through each Act and gave us those final reveals one after the other was just so good. Also so like Link Click to just suddenly fire this information at us towards the end of an episode. Have to agree with you that this episode is probably my favourite from a storytelling and art style point-of-view. So so good! For the moment where it seemed like Li Tianxi and 'Lu Guang' crossed paths, Li Tianxi was already found by police before Cheng Xiaoshi possessed Lu Guang. She was found two days prior to Li Tianchen trying to abduct Cheng Xiaoshi at the police station. It's just that she was brought to the police station Xiao Li is at *after* Lu Guang got taken by Li Tianchen. The lighting is just ever so slightly different for when 'Lu Guang' is running and Li Tianxi is running in the direction 'Lu Guang' just came from. I think them then linking the two scenes up is just to show that they both passed along the same place, just at different times. Link Click just giving us cliffhangers every episode that I'm now at the point of automatically thinking each one is a red herring. But with how Link Click is I have this niggling feeling they're making us get used to all these cliffhangers actually just being nothing big, only to hit us with a potential bang in the penultimate or final episode that truly will be a cliffhanger. Having the tragedy and comedy in this episode feels like a nod towards Shakespeare's works. Just that extra link with the theatre and Qian Jin watching his wife act as Juliet. I'm not familiar enough with Chinese either but I think the term 'Da' that Qian Jin uses when greeting Zhuang Shuai is potentially an honorific used when the person is older/more senior than you. Zhuang Shuai also greeted Qian Jin with 'Da'. It could be a different meaning with a similar sounding word or they unlike with the Da for DaShuai, they translated this one to show the honour Zhuang Shuai was showing Qian Jin in the form of calling him Captain Qian. In the context of the scene it's possible both were using Da to convey their respect towards each others' profession/ability within their professions. Yes my mind went to the gutter for Lisa's back hurting (I blame reading too many BL with the bottom complaining of a sore back for that one) 😂 The lines of dialogue definitely felt more like chatting with a close friend or family member, but her body language and the way she talked at times felt very stereotypical of chatting in a teasing way to someone you're dating. Potentially she was saying all this on the phone because Qian Jin is barely ever there and so she didn't expect him to suddenly be in the house and able to listen in to her conversation. Also it can be little things like this when they get a bit complacent that is how cheaters slip up and get caught. But there is definitely the possibility that Qian Jin was hearing hoofbeats and thinking zebras. As a detective he's used to relying on body language tells to give him information on potential suspects, victims, and/or witnesses; so it's highly possibly he saw her body language (along with discovering she'd been lying about visiting the new potential space for the theatre because that was definitely a blatant lie) and put two and two together to make it be her cheating. In actual fact it could be she went to the hospital to get a check-up when she said she was viewing the theatre space, and her phone call was discussing with a friend/family member that she's been having these signs and that's why she went to the hospital (just we the audience, and Qian Jin, didn't hear the beginning part of the conversation for that context). She may have died before getting the results of visiting the hospital (i.e. that she's pregnant) or she hadn't gotten the chance to tell Qian Jin. The show has certainly portrayed it in such a way that there are multiple possibilities that fit the scenario, and then just leave us without further confirmation for us to go all mad-happy on theorising (as per usual 🤣). The 'peh peh' that Lisa does on the phone is a thing to ward off something bad. For example if the person on the other end had said "Maybe you're pregnant?" and Lisa didn't want to have a child then she's do the "peh peh" to ward off such an idea. Basically a bit of a superstitious thing similar to the (I believe) Western superstition of knocking on wood after you say (or someone else says) something you hope doesn't happen. I can't remember if I said this theory in the discord, but Qian Jin might have cared what happened to the murderer after believing Lisa cheated on him if the murderer and her lover were one and the same. They said it was a burglary gone wrong, but who's to say that the burglary part wasn't staged and the original intention had been to kill Lisa? And the potential motive could be that she told her lover she was pregnant with his baby. There is also the wilder possibility that Qian Jin arranged for someone to kill his wife because he thought she was cheating on him, but I'm not so sure on that theory considering how we've seen he acted after entering the home and seeing her dead. We don't know yet who hired them for Emma's case but it definitely feels like it's a mystery that needs an answer because it truly was the start of the domino effect for Cheng Xiaoshi et al to become involved with the Red Eyes' cases and to end up in Qian Jin and Li Tianchen's lines of sight. It doesn't matter so much if it was Cheng Xiaoshi that sent Qiao Ling the message with the location of the river, but if it was Lu Guang then that suggests he had quite detailed foreknowledge that something was going to go down at the river, rather than he took the picture as a just-in-case save point that Cheng Xiaoshi could go back to in order to ensure his own safety. Such a great reaction and discussion as always! This season really has been so much fun. We definitely got a lot of answers for this episode as well as a few more questions. And I feel like that'll be how things go until we end the season 😅
Anime Annie
2023-09-11 21:51:30 +0000 UTC
