‘Kirari Books Meisouchuu!’ is the first manga by Aki Hamaji - creator of ‘Bocchi the Rock’. The series was published in ‘Manga Time Kirara MAX’, which also acts as an important aspect of the story as the protagonist is obsessed with a manga from the magazine. The fictional manga is never explored beyond brief references, and fades in and out of relevance depending on what the plot requires. For readers outside the magazine’s fandom, the explicit Kirara references aren’t very interesting. The art is brightly coloured and cute. The characters are endearing, but aren’t very deep and fall into common mode tropes. Both in termsof writing and art, the series is satisfactorily ‘moe’. However some of the art - specifically environment and animals - is very clearly 3D models. This gets worse towards the end of the manga where some characters’ hair and clothes appears to be 3D models. This interrupts the art style, and in some cases explicitly clashes.

The series contains the typical moe mild-sexualisation of minor characters, but notably has two separate predatory female characters - one with a fixation on a twelve year old, and one who takes creep shots of her daughter’s friends. These are the manga’s weakest moments.