English Dub Review: Link Click “To Lose, Not to Win”

Overview:

The team gets a request from a man who wants to deliver a message to people from his past during a basketball game. However, things don’t go as planned.

Our Take:

Chen Xiao is not happy with his life. He’s been living with regret ever since a specific basketball game, which he refers to as the worst day of his life. He hires the Time Photo Studio crew to deliver a message to those people he hurt in the past. I wondered if this would be against the rules since this would likely change the timeline. Cheng has the same concern, but Lu says nothing will be altered.

Of course, when Cheng is actually in the photo and is participating in the game, that doesn’t go as planned. The captain gets injured during the game, so Cheng has to step in for him. Cheng is excellent at basketball, but Lu reminds him this isn’t his life and his team has to lose.

The coach tells Cheng that there isn’t much hope for a basketball team in a small town like the one they live in. However, the team is determined and so is Cheng. The game is suspenseful all the way up to the last shot, which is sure to have an intriguing outcome in the next episode.

The time travel concept is more confusing here than it has been in the show so far. I can’t think of any possible way a request like this wouldn’t affect the timeline in some way. Lu seems confident it wouldn’t, even before Cheng goes off script. Maybe there was a possible outcome, but that’s certainly not applicable anymore.

I like the tonal shifts in this episode. It starts off dark and ominous, but it soon changes. The tone is more serious than not in this episode, but it still has some lighter moments.

This is the weakest episode so far, but it’s still nowhere near bad. Since the conclusion of this episode is open-ended, it’s holding my interest for how the rest of this story is going to unfold.

An important basketball game.