Love Through a Prism Is a Beautiful Fantasy That Forgets Its Own History
The review identifies a core tension in the series: its visual and emotional romanticism is undercut by a refusal to engage with the historical setting it chose, a choice that feels deliberate given the show's diverse cast and international premise.
Reporting from 1 sources: Anime Feminist.
Love Through a Prism is a Netflix original anime, a historical romance set in 1910s England, and a new review takes its measure. The review praises the series' lush background art and romantic tone but finds its treatment of the period's social realities hollow. Class divides, sexism, and racism are reduced to personal obstacles easily overcome by earnest speech, while the British Empire and colonialism go unmentioned. The final act introduces major historical events only to gloss over them in favor of adventure-novel plot points, which forces the reviewer to accept the show as pure fantasy rather than grounded fiction. The verdict is that the romanticism is real and the craft is real, but the chosen setting is decoration the story declines to engage. The complaint lands harder because the show picked a real time and place and a diverse, international cast, then stepped around the history that came with that choice rather than confronting it.
The series comes from Yoko Kamio, the creator of Boys Over Flowers, and premiered on Netflix in January 2026. The 20-episode story follows Lili Ichijoin, a Japanese art student at an English academy in the early 1910s. The review credits the gorgeous pastoral backdrops and earnest romantic heart as the show's strongest assets. But it finds the historical setting treated as a costume. Systemic prejudice is absent. Colonialism is never mentioned, even though a major supporting character is from India. When characters face class or gender barriers, the adults in power reliably yield once a young person speaks up, so the obstacles never carry real weight. The final act brings in major historical events and then moves past them quickly in favor of adventure-novel turns. The reviewer concludes that the show works only when accepted as a fantasy, and not as a story grounded in the real period it chose to depict.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.
Sources
- Anime Feminist Love Through a Prism – Series Review