REVIEW: ‘LINK CLICK’ Season 2 Episode 9 — “Three Stories”

As the season reaches its home stretch, LINK CLICK Season 2 Episode 9 ratchets the intensity up yet another notch. Lu Guang is in the hands of Li Tianchen, while Cheng Xiaoshi traveled into the picture Lu Guang took right before he escaped the hospital. Only time will tell if Cheng Xiaoshi will be able to understand why Lu Guang left the photo for him to find and if he can figure it out in time to save his beloved friend.

Seeing Cheng Xiaoshi in Lu Guang’s body is such an interesting premise and makes for Cheng Xiaoshi’s toughest challenge yet. Lu Guang is the thinker of the too, with Cheng Xiaoshi often acting purely on impulse instead. There had to be a reason Lu Guang left the phone with the photo on it for Cheng Xiaoshi to find, but it’s going to be a challenge to understand what that reason was.

Lu Guang’s message to Cheng Xiaoshi has always been that he can’t change the past, but his emotions are surely going to get the best of him and send him out to alter what happened in order to save Lu Guang. Lu Guang had to know this when he left the photo, seeing as he always thinks three steps ahead, which means he knows what Cheng Xiaoshi is likely to do and has a plan for how to handle it. It is always possible that Lu Guang acted emotionally and just wanted to put himself in Cheng Xiaoshi’s place as Li Tianchen’s prisoner, but given everything he has done as a character so far, that would seem out of place.

In keeping with the series’ approach of going back in time to give more context, LINK CLICK Season 2 Episode 9 gives more backstory on Qian Jin. He has been a relatively mysterious figure throughout the season, but his exact motives and goals are still not entirely clear. It was nice to get a flashback of his life when he was a police captain. His relationship with his wife, Lisa, was rocky, to say the least, which clearly ate at him and made him a more bitter person. Her death obviously affected him, but the situation is more complicated than just a man out for revenge on his wife’s killer.

We also get to see how Qian Jin and Li Tianchen met after the death of Li Tianchen and Li Tianxi’s parents. He was the officer who took over the case of the deaths, which explains how he came to know the children. There is a deeply disturbing scene after he embraces the children where Qian Jin and Li Tianchen both break into an uncomfortable laugh. It could typically be explained as just two people laughing through the pain, but given what they go on to do later, it seems much more sinister. A similarly disturbing moment happens when Qian Jin and Li Tianchen are shown meeting Liu Min several years later. When hatching the plan that begins in season one, Li Tianchen bursts into another bout of sinister laughter that foreshadows just how villainous and disturbed the young man has become.

One of the more interesting choices in LINK CLICK Season 2 Episode 9 is the retelling of Li Tianxi and Li Tianchen’s parents’ deaths and what happens to them afterwards in the form of a children’s cartoon. Seeing the brutal events that lead to their parents’ deaths in a cartoon form doesn’t dilute the impact of those moments. It actually makes it land even harder. It’s as if viewers are seeing the events unfolding through a child’s eyes, similar to how Li Tianxi would have seen them.

Li Tianchen’s descent into madness is also shown this way, as well as how Li Tianxi takes it all. Someone clearly influenced Li Tianxi, but it’s still not completely clear who that might really have been. That part of the mystery is surely going to be explored more in future episodes, but the suspense it builds now is incredibly well-done.

LINK CLICK Season 2 Episode 9 explores the villainization of both Li Tianchen and Qian Jin in a visceral way. While Lu Guang and Cheng Xiaoshi take a backseat here, it sets up perfectly for the season finale, where everything that has been building up will come to an epic end.

LINK CLICK Season 2 Episode 9 is streaming now on Crunchyroll with new episodes every Friday this Summer Anime season.