"Firstly, you only get 12 hours. Secondly, follow my lead and change nothing. Thirdly...
...past or future... just let them be."
...past or future... just let them be."
— Lu Guang and Cheng Xiaoshi
Shi Guang Dai Li Ren (时光代理人) also known as Time Agents and then renamed to Link Click, is an original animated series under Haoliners Animation League and Studio LAN produced by Bilibili. At the time of its debut, it was streamed by both Funimation and Crunchyroll.
Somewhere in the city, rumors float about a mysterious goddess who can solve problems by traveling through photos. Reality is not that far off from the rumors; while there is no goddess, there is Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang. They're college friends who run a photo studio called "Time Photo Studio" out of their mutual friend Qiao Ling's building, where they are able to time travel to the exact date of the photos their clients provide for them and complete their requests. The catch is that they only have twelve hours to work through each photo, and they have to work in the body of the cameraman. Most importantly, they need to be careful rummaging through time, as they'll never know which change could radically alter the future—or their own present.
The first season aired between April 30th and July 9th, 2021. A season 2 was announced shortly after the airing of the 11th episode of the first season, and premiered on July 14th and was completed on September 22nd, 2023.
The series provides examples of:
- Absurdly Long Stairway: The Ou family training grounds are situated on top of a mountain, with its only way up being a large stone staircase. By Lu Guang's estimates, it took at least two hours for Siwen to climb them, and they're steep enough to make him nearly pass out in all of his shown attempts.
- All Men Are Perverts: When Cheng Xiaoshi inhabits Emma's body, he stares at his new form for a few seconds before he attempts to touch his chest. Lu Guang immediately calls him out and tells him to stay focused.
- As You Know: The series opens up with Lu Guang explaining his three big rules to Cheng Xiaoshi. The latter, for the most part, is bored halfway through and whines that he's already been told multiple times.
- Batman Gambit: Cheng Xiaoshi pulls a pretty elaborate one in order to capture Emma's killer. He first implants the idea of a "game" to the killer when Xiaoshi dives into Xu Shanshan's body, and then implants a specific time based on one of her photos. That time then gets relayed to the present-day version of the main characters so that they'd be on guard for the killer. After this, the killer arrives at the photo studio at the specified time; tricked into thinking the studio had more than one person, they move to take out anyone still left only for Lu Guang to lock him up in the photo film developing room. With the killer now caged, Cheng Xiaoshi can force a conversation with them, get them to admit to their crimes, and even psychologically catch them off guard using carefully placed pictures of all the killer's victims he'd arranged earlier in the day.
- Bittersweet Ending: Most of the cases the main trio solves end up this way. Since they want to make sure time doesn't change, even the bad events have to happen the same way (or similar) before any good can come out of their dives.
- Doudou unfortunately is still kidnapped, and his parents still devastated by losing him, but Xiaoshi's meddling ensured that his kidnapper took proper enough care for him throughout his three year abduction. The info they receive from the dive also allows them to arrest the kidnapper and finally return Doudou home safely.
- Nothing could be done about Chen Xiao's friends and family dying in the Wenchuan earthquake. At best, he got to express his thoughts and feelings to them before they died, and is well on the road to properly talking with his dad, but he's long made peace with the event and went on to have a family of his own.
- Episode 5.5 ends on a more sweet than bitter note. Siwen and Ou Yang finally get permission to wed, but this is after decades of Siwen's challenges, and the couple is in their twilight years by the time they enlist the Time Photo Studio's help. At the very least, they did have a son, as mentioned by Ou Yang's father.
- Breather Episode: Episode 5.5 aired after the traumatic events of Chen Xiao's arc and just before the team tackles Doudou's case. Unlike either one, which focus on the destruction of an entire town and a child kidnapping respectively, Siwen's story is a much lighter case of proving himself to his beloved Ou Yang's father. It seems to happen before the events of either arc, however, since Xiaoshi and Guang are still on speaking terms at the beginning of the episode.
- Butterfly of Doom: Lu Guang's most important rule—don't go messing around in the timeline of the photos, or you could risk something in the future changing, often for the worse. Xiaoshi begging Lu Guang to help Emma message her parents was, unfortunately, one such example, as it led to her encountering Liu Min.
- Bystander Syndrome: The crowd around the DOU DOU café don't rouse suspicion when its namesake gets abducted in broad daylight. Two customers question it, but (due to the ambiguity of addressing strangers in Chinese) they are comforted thinking Doudou's "auntie" came to pick him up. Qiao Ling however is extremely caught off guard by Doudou walking off with a stranger in a daze, but she doesn't speak up about it and outright pretends she didn't see anything to Li Liang. She's haunted by that moment for years as a result.
- Cliffhanger: This show is fond of giving these at the end of each episode. In the season 1 finale where the true serial killer is revealed and they kill three people simultaneously from Emma in the past, Liu Min and Lu Guang in the present.
- Engagement Challenge: Siwen challenges Ou Yang's father to a fight for her hand in marriage. The latter being the head of a martial arts institution and hostile to outsiders and younger men dating Ou Yang; as such, the challenge never proves easy and Siwen's knocked on his butt every time. Still, he tries to challenge the elder Ou every year, and has been doing so for decades. One other young man, the Ou's best student, also tried challenging him for Ou Yang's hand, but after years of tries he finally got cold feet and surrendered.
- Inevitably Broken Rule: You see the page quote? Rules 2 and 3 ("Follow my lead and change nothing; stick to the script" and "the past and future must remain untouched") will, under multiple circumstances, be worked around. Sometimes Lu Guang will allow for a minor alteration as long as the time period's end result is the same; and sometimes Cheng Xiaoshi's impulsiveness will get the better of him and he'll enact changes that last well beyond the time period.
- It Was with You All Along: Season 1 episode 2 is spent, in part, on the boys trying to find the Secret Ingredient to Lin Zhen's noodles so Yu Xia could find some closure and expand their business. The ingredient actually came from her; it was a powdered herb that came from the girls' hometown that Yu Xia brought with her to college, but Lin Zhen liked it so much that she continued to use it in her food.
- Localized Name in a Non-Localized Setting: Downplayed. The characters' actual names remain the same in the Japanese dub (i.e. Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang), and they are referred to as such in formal conversations. They are however also given nicknames (or "codenames" according to the intro) based on the Japanese readings of certain characters in their names: "Toki" for Cheng Xiaoshi, "Hikaru" for Lu Guang, and "Rin" for Qiao Ling, presumably to make it easier for Japanese audiences.
- Loophole Abuse:
- In order to dive into a picture, Cheng Xiaoshi needs to touch hands. With who is never specified, although for most of the first season he believed it had to be with Lu Guang since they both know how to get in the pictures. Xiaoshi later realizes he can simply clap his hands together to do the same thing, which he later uses to find out what happened on the night Emma died.
- All photos the main characters use to dive are single use. Once they spend their twelve hours in the time period displayed in the photo, they can't use it again. However, that doesn't stop them from using other photos of the scene depicted taken around the same time.
- Mental Time Travel: A variation. Cheng Xiaoshi's body still disappears whenever he dives, but his consciousness overrides that of the person who takes the photos he jumps into while his body never makes an appearance. This is not the case when the cameraman isn't a person, but a security camera or similar; he will simply jump to that time period in body and soul, while Lu Guang can access all of the surrounding cameras that picked up similar footage.
- One Character, Multiple Lives: Cheng Xiaoshi possess the people in the photos and acts out their lives while trying not to change too much that would affect the timeline.
- Opposing Sports Team: The Long Yang First Middle School basketball team introduces itself as arrogant jerks who think the Factory Middle School team are far beneath them. Their leader in particular is the biggest jerk of the bunch, even breaking Cheng's glasses and hurting Hongbin's knee (although both were accidents).
- Race Against the Clock: Lu Guang and Cheng Xiaoshi's cases are usually limited to twelve hours with each "dive" and have to uncover what it is their client wants within that time limit and also fulfill their clients request.
- Recycled Animation: Cuts are reused with abandon outside of flashbacks. The Stock Footage of Xiaoshi and Lu Guang touching hands is used almost every episode, and when Xiaoshi has to replicate something the audience just saw the person he possessed do, they'll use the animation again.
- Seers: Lu Guang can see 12 hours of what had occurred in the photos and uses that to help guide Cheng Xiaoshi in order to not change anything in the past. It's likely he saw Emma's death occurring which was why he was so adamant Cheng Xiaoshi not do anything crazy, nor wonder about Emma's future and doesn't tell him about the news reporting Emma's "suicide".
- Shout-Out: In episode 5.5, the main cast are playing a mobile fighting game that vaguely resembles The King of Fighters. In the game world perspective, they are even wearing outfits referencing Kyo Kusanagi, Mai Shiranui, and Terry Bogard.
- Stable Time Loop: It's ultimately a time travel story, so the boys' meddling can sometimes be key moments in other people's lives.
- Qiao Ling has always secretly been ashamed of the day when Doudou was kidnapped, because she remembers seeing him look back at her when he was dragged off and she didn't think about helping him. As it turns out, Xiaoshi in Doudou's body was drugged, and he was the one who looked back at Qiao Ling.
- Talking Down the Suicidal: After a long, horrible night of trusting the wrong person, getting strangled for things she never did, almost dying in a car crash, and ruminating on how she feels she's failed herself and her parents, Emma limps herself to a bridge to end things. Luckily, she's stopped by a time slipping Cheng Xiaoshi, and he's able to calm her down and tell her that her life is still worth living while apologizing for his own role in her current tragedies. For what it's worth, it actually works—until the other time leaper decides to kill Emma and Liu Min not only to tie up loose ends but to even the score in their "game".
- Theme Naming: The 时(time) in Xiaoshi's name and 光(light) in Lu Guang's name combine to make up 时光, another word for time or era. It doubles as a reference to the title.
- Time Travel: Cheng Xiaoshi can travel through time in the photos, usually going back twelve hours from when the photo was taken. He can even go back years depending on what their clients have provided them, but can only stay in for twelve hours in each photo and then the photo is useless.
- Wham Line: After Lu Guang gets stabbed by a possessed Qiao Ling, the true serial killer smiles at Cheng Xiaoshi who had just come back from his failed dive to attempt to save Emma."And now the game has been reset."
- Wham Shot: The end of the first episode provides one where, after asking and making sure that Cheng Xiaoshi really didn't do anything crazy as Emma Lu Guang looks at a news report showing Emma's profile with her eyes blocked out saying her body was found in a river in what appears to have been a suicide. He calmly closes his phone after Cheng Xiaoshi calls him over to meet their next client.
- Wonder Twin Powers:
- Although Lu Guang and Cheng Xiaoshi aren't related to each other, their abilities only work as seamlessly as they do when the two work together. However, when they are alone, they can only access half the powers (Lu Guang with seeing 12 hours into the past, Xiaoshi with entering the photos) and cannot communicate with each other.
- Season 2 introduces Li Tianxi and Li Tianchen (Red Eyes) whose powers work in a similar manner to that of Cheng Xiaoshi's and Lu Guang's, albeit Li Tianchen can possess people through photographs in the present, rather than the past, and Li Tianxi feels the client's emotions and memories, but can't possess the client directly.
- Word Power: When Cheng Xiaoshi utters "Gear Up. Dive!" before beginning their work. He has proven that he doesn't always need to say it.
- You Can't Fight Fate:
- Lu Guang constantly tells this to Cheng Xiaoshi when they dive, saying that no matter what he cannot change the past, especially someone's death. This comes true as Cheng Xiaoshi attempts to stop Emma from committing suicide, only to fail as the true serial killer possesses her and forces her to jump to her death.
- Beyond that, there are constants in time that can't be changed because of an individual's actions. Xiao's school, for example, was always going to tear down the factory they use as a basketball court and disband the basketball club, and winning a game against a prestigious school wouldn't change that outcome.
- Lu Guang defies this in the Season 2 finale, when it's revealed that he's from an alternate timeline that traveled to this one in a last-ditch attempt to prevent Cheng Xiaoshi from dying. The reason Lu Guang always tells Cheng Xiaoshi this is because he's afraid that further changes to the timeline might inadvertently cause his death.
