General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

Modern Love Tokyo

Modern Love Tokyo (モダンラブ・東京～さまざまな愛の形～, Modan Rabu Tokyo: Samazama na Ai no Katachi) is a Japanese romantic anthology television series, the Japanese adaptation of Prime Video's anthology series Modern Love, which itself draws on the New York Times column of the same name.¹ Its seven episodes premiered worldwide on Prime Video on October 21, 2022, each telling a self-contained story about a different form of love set in Tokyo.²

Key fact	Detail
Native title	モダンラブ・東京～さまざまな愛の形～ (Samazama na Ai no Katachi, "Various Forms of Love")³
Format	Seven self-contained anthology episodes of roughly 38 to 39 minutes each²^•⁴
Premiere	October 21, 2022, worldwide on Prime Video²
Directors	Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Naoko Ogigami, Ryuichi Hiroki, Nobuhiro Yamashita, Naoko Yamada, and Atsuko Hirayanagi²
Animated finale	Episode 7, "He's Playing Our Song," is an anime episode directed by Naoko Yamada, director of Kyoto Animation's K-ON!⁵
Audience rating	6.7/10 on IMDb from about 400 users⁶
Availability	Streaming on Amazon Prime Video by subscription³

Spoilers

Premise and structure

Like its American parent series, each episode adapts a personal essay from the New York Times column "Modern Love" into a roughly half-hour drama, and the Tokyo version adapts different stories from those used in the original to make them more familiar to Japanese viewers.⁷ The seven episodes depict various forms of love, from love almost forgotten, to love between mothers and sons, to love that transcends borders.³ Themes across the season include parenthood, infidelity, romance, divorce, aging, and dating.⁸

The season's synopsis gives two examples: a working mother's journey toward understanding what loving a child really means, and a hard-edged journalist making an unexpected emotional connection.² Episode 3, "How My Worst Date Ever Became My Best," follows Natsuko, divorced for several years, who reluctantly meets a man from a dating app and gradually warms into a lively conversation.⁹ Episode 6, "He Saved His Last Lesson for Me," centers on Emma, a UK-born woman in Los Angeles teaching English online, whose Japanese student Mamoru asks her the question "What is love?"⁹

The animated finale

The seventh and final episode, "He's Playing Our Song" (Japanese title "Kare ga Kanaderu Futari no Shirabe"), is an anime episode directed by Naoko Yamada, known for directing Kyoto Animation's K-ON!.⁵ In the story, Tamami (Hana Kuroki) is stuck in her job and life until a song from her youth sends her mind back 15 years, to high school, where the reserved Tamami met Rin (Masataka Kubota), who played the piano, and the two connected through their shared love of music.⁴ The episode's music draws on the 1979 song "You May Dream" by the Japanese rock band Sheena and the Rokkets.¹⁰

Production and direction

The series was produced as an Amazon Original with six leading Japanese film directors, each directing episodes set in Tokyo.¹¹ The credited directors are Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Naoko Ogigami, Ryuichi Hiroki, Nobuhiro Yamashita, Naoko Yamada, and Atsuko Hirayanagi.² The cast includes Asami Mizukawa, Sôsuke Ikematsu, Atsuko Maeda, Ryô Narita, Nana Eijura, and, in the episode featuring a British woman living abroad, Naomi Scott as Emma.³^•²^•⁸ The cast is predominantly Japanese and of various ages, one episode features LGBTQ+ characters prominently, and the series is available subtitled and dubbed in English.⁸

Place in the Modern Love franchise

The American Modern Love, developed by John Carney, ran for two seasons on Prime Video between 2019 and 2021.¹² In 2022 Amazon expanded the franchise with localized versions, adding Modern Love Tokyo, Modern Love Mumbai, and Modern Love Hyderabad; a Dutch adaptation, Modern Love Amsterdam, followed the same year.¹³^•⁷ TVmaze lists Modern Love Tokyo as a foreign remake of the parent show, with its status recorded as "to be determined" rather than confirmed for a second season.⁴

Reception

The series holds a 6.7/10 rating on IMDb from about 400 users, with individual episode scores ranging from 6.4 to 7.4; the two highest-rated episodes are the anime finale (7.4) and episodes 3 and 6 (7.2 each).¹⁴ Rotten Tomatoes lists only one critic review for the season, from Radhika Menon of Decider, who wrote that despite some room for growth in cultural specificity, the anthology series continues to center on the beauty of love in all of its forms.⁹ The Compare TV review team gave it 4 out of 5, calling it a beautifully crafted anthology while noting that some episodes feel flat and the pacing uneven.¹⁵ Common Sense Media described it as a compilation of very human stories showing how love can be both complicated and simple at the same time, and rated it appropriate for ages 13 and up.⁸

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026