Love Through a Prism is a new Japanese anime, set in the early 20th Century, which is absolutely stunning.
Revolving around Lili Ichijoin (Atsumi Tanezaki), a young Japanese girl who’s going to olde-world London, given that the opening chapter titled is “Black bread and iridescent hope“, I learned the penultimate words means “showing luminous colours that seem to change when seen from different angles”. Every day’s a school day!
In this world, cars do exist, but they’re more like the typical vehicle driven by Laurel and Hardy.
For our heroine, however, she loses the piece of paper with the address of St Thomas Art Academy written on, but while most of the locals are far from helpful, she finds a guy who sketches fantastic drawings, named Kit Church.
Jumping to incorrect conclusions, at school, she’s a friend of Dorothy… I mean, Dorothy is her friend, and assumes Lily is a Samurai, and that she must commit “hara-kiri” if found out. Erm….
But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, since her mum has given her just 6 months to prove herself, to be the No.1 student, otherwise she’ll turn home, marry and run a family boutique, never mentioning her art again. Bah, tell ’em to get stuffed, and furrow your own path!
Beyond this, as we get into Lily’s story, it’s about seeing the world from a different angle, like the light from a prism – and given the class hunk, hence we have the title, Love Through A Prism.
It’s moderately entertaining, but like a lot of anime, it’s not there to really be critqued upon too much. You just sit in front of it and take it all in, and it’s a gorgeous landscape to behold! For 20 episodes!
However, it is amusing that some of this is rated PG for “dangerous behaviour”.
English dubbish is available, as is the same for several languages, but it’s not quite the same as Japanese original dialogue. That said, since it’s set in London, it has been a while since I’ve been down there, but I’m pretty sure most of the residents born there are not native Japanese speakers 😉
Thanks to our friends at Netflix for the screener prior to release.
Love Through a Prism is on Netflix from tomorrow.
It’s not yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD, but when it is, it will be listed on the New DVD, Blu-ray, 3D and 4K releases UK page.
Check out the trailer below:
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 25 minutes per episode (20 episodes)
Release date: January 15th 2026
Studio: Netflix
Format: 1.78:1
Director: Kazuto Nakazawa
Writers: Sakiho Fujii, Yôko Kamio
Voice cast:
Lili Ichijoin: Atsumi Tanezaki
Kit Church: Koki Uchiyama
Charles Brant: Hochu Otsuka
Dorothy Brown: Megumi Han
Joffrey O’Brien: Yohei Azakami
Peter Anthony: Shogo Sakata
Shinnosuke Kobayakawa: Yuki Kaji
Sakura Kobayakawa: Akari Kito
Take Ichijoin: Yuko Kaida
Richard Church: Junichi Suwabe
Catherine Astor: Sumire Uesaka
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.