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The Refracted Self

If the shoujo manga of the 1990s was defined by the loud, brash class warfare of *Boys Over Flowers*, then *Love Through a Prism* represents a quiet, devastating maturation of its creator, Yoko Kamio. Released on Netflix today, this collaboration between the legendary mangaka and WIT Studio is not merely a "historical romance"; it is a lush, suffocating meditation on the violence of artistic ambition. Director Kazuto Nakazawa (*B: The Beginning*) strips away the candy-colored excesses of the genre, leaving us with a London that feels damp, heavy, and painfully real.

The premise—Lili Ichijoin, a Japanese student in early 1900s London, clashing with Kit Church, an aristocratic prodigy—could easily have dissolved into cliché. Yet, from the opening sequence, Nakazawa and Kamio signal a different intent. The camera doesn’t linger on romantic tropes but on the physicality of paint: the scrape of a palette knife, the stain of charcoal on fingertips, the way light dies in a studio filled with tobacco smoke.



Visually, the series is a triumph of atmospheric pressure. WIT Studio renders London not as a postcard, but as a cage of brick and fog. The "prism" of the title is not just a metaphor for romance, but a visual directive. Scenes are frequently shot through glass—rain-slicked windows, crystal decanters, and the literal prisms Lili uses to study light. This fractures the image, isolating the characters even when they share a frame. The animation captures the specific loneliness of being a foreigner in an imperial capital; Lili is constantly framed in doorways and reflections, present but displaced.

Atsumi Tanezaki’s vocal performance as Lili is the show’s gravitational center. Tanezaki, known for her range, avoids the plucky optimism one might expect. Her Lili is driven by a terrifying quietude. The stakes here are not just romantic rejection, but erasure. The scene in Episode 3, where Lili destroys her own canvas because it fails to capture the "truth" of the gray London sky, is a harrowing display of the artist's ego. It pairs beautifully with Koki Uchiyama’s Kit, whose detachment is revealed to be a defense mechanism against a world that values his title over his talent.



The series falters only slightly in its pacing around the mid-season mark, where the sheer number of side characters—the inevitable gallery of eccentric artists and jealous rivals—threatens to dilute the central tension. However, the narrative quickly rights itself by returning to the studio. The romance, when it blooms, does not feel like a prize to be won. It feels like a mutual recognition of scars. The chemistry between Lili and Kit is forged in the silence of shared work, a refreshing departure from relationships built on grand declarations.

*Love Through a Prism* ultimately suggests that love, like art, requires a breaking of the self. To see the world clearly, one must shatter the lens. It is a sophisticated, melancholy, and visually arresting entry into the canon of animated drama, proving that the stories we tell about love can grow up alongside us.