YMMV / Manga Time Kirara

• Adaptation Displacement: Whenever one of their manga receives an anime, expect most people to be introduced to them through this.
• All Animation Is Disney:
  • A variation of this. It is quite common for people to mistake most, if not all 21st century Schoolgirl Series with a Moe art style as part of Kirara's brand due to their similarities. Kadokawa series like Non Non Biyori and Hinako Note are particularly prone to this.
  • On the other hand, Chinese fans tend to use "Houbunsha" to refer to Kirara works generally owing to it being animated the most, despite it's the youngest of the company's 4 lines—the other 3, in chronological order, Manga Jidai, Manga TIMES, and Manga Time.
• Archive Panic: As of 2023, there are 36 released Kirara anime adaptations (39 if including Wakaba Girl, Madoka Magica and its spin-off), with several more on the way. As many of them have sequel seasons, films, and Original Video Animation, good luck trying to watch them all.
• Audience-Alienating Era: After a successful run in their first decade, their anime adaptations began to fall victim to this in the late 2010s, largely attributed to the growing fatigue of their general work. While Laid-Back Camp became its newest Cash-Cow Franchise in 2018, the other 2018 releases became some of its biggest commercial and critical failures, including Anima Yell! and Harukana Receive, while Slow Start and Comic Girls were far from the successes that Kirara wanted, though the latter was moderately successful in Missouri out of all places. 2019 saw the release of the anime for the fan favorite The Demon Girl Next Door, which became successful enough to receive a sequel in 2022, but things quickly hit the nadir in 2020 with the release of Tamayomi, which became known as the worst Kirara anime to date, and the incredibly polarizing Asteroid in Love and Dropout Idol Fruit Tart. While 2021 had the successful second season to Laid-Back Camp, 2022 saw even worse results with the financial failures of both Slow Loop and RPG Real Estate, with the latter becoming the worst selling anime in Kirara's entire history and getting lukewarm reception across the board. However, Bocchi the Rock!, released the same year, got rave reviews and became a surprise Sleeper Hit, even taking home Anime of the Year at multiple events and becoming Kirara's biggest hit since K-On!, and 2023's Kirara entry in the form of the anime of Stardust Telepath was well-received, albeit did not gain anywhere near the same popularity and was another commercial failure. Time will tell if things will improve.
• Awesome Art: Plenty of their anime adaptations have great directing that truly brings their source material to life in animation. Studio Shaft's take on Hidamari Sketch and the CloverWorks adaptation of Bocchi the Rock! are notable examples of evaluating their manga in another medium.
• Broken Base:
  • Does Puella Magi Madoka Magica count as a true Kirara franchise? It was not homegrown from the magazine itself, but did have a huge push in the 2010s at the peak of its popularity with Manga Time Kirara Magica and had a huge presence. Many would at least agree it is honorary Kirara at the bare minimum, especially with its co-creator, Ume Aoki being responsible for Kirara's very first flagship series after all.
  • The same applies to Wakaba Girl, due to how it wasn't originally from a Kirara magazine and only released through the Kirara imprint once the rights were obtained. Kirara lists the anime as part of their roster on their website's home page, so it seems Kirara considers it one themselves.
• Cult Classic: As most of their catalog is rather obscure in the west sans some exceptions, they can be this to audiences outside Japan. The big ones are Hidamari Sketch, Kill Me Baby, Yuyushiki, School-Live!, and The Demon Girl Next Door.
• Fandom Heresy: Just about every major Kirara series has their fans, regardless of their popularity or success. Criticism to any of them will result in at least a few defenders coming in, especially if it's beloved hit like Bocchi the Rock! or an aforementioned cult favorite like School-Live!.
• Memetic Mutation: The Famous Actress from Hobunsha.^ExplanationA Chinese meme that started in 2015, when Kiniro Mosaic, Is the Order a Rabbit? and School-Live! (all of which are Kirara properties) aired in adjacent seasons. Viewers noticed all three series contained a tsundere girl with a serious personality who flusters easily and wears her blue/purple hair tied into Girlish Pigtails with air bangs — Aya in Kiniro Mosaic, Rize in Is the Order a Rabbit?, and Kurumi in School-Live!. The similarities are enough to make fans wonder if Kirara is running a star system for its properties. The definition has evolved over time; the "famous actress" now tends to play mildly shy, introverted (yet still easily flustered) roles rather than outright tsundere, and as the market saturation of moe school club stories increased, she started to pull double-duty as the otaku-ish mentor character for the naive newbie. Other characters played by the "famous actress" include Ruri Hibarigaoka, Ruki Irokawa, Hizume Arima, Ao Manaka, and Tsubasa Tokiniwa.
  • Kirara Jump. ^ExplanationA variation of the "YEAH!" Shot that is present in nearly every anime adaptation of a Kirara work. This is even lampshaded by Ryo in Bocchi the Rock!.
• Genre Turning Point: While they were far from the first to dabble in their niche, they are known for being the de facto face of Moe and Iyashikei throughout the 21st century, as they are synonymous with producing many of the most well-known Schoolgirl Series since the 2000s. This has led to some backlash from more critical anime and manga fans, who believe most of their canon is derivative compared to other manga magazines (which tend to have more variety in the manga they publish), and considered them all the same series retold over and over again.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Out of the Kirara line-up, the ones to find the most international success outside of Japan are K-On!, Laid-Back Camp, and Bocchi the Rock!. This is largely due to their well-received anime adaptations that were some of the most acclaimed in their respective years of release.
• Once Original, Now Common: When Kirara's anime adaptations debuted onto the scene in the late 2000s and by the early 2010s, their formula (considered to be cute girls doing cute things with a gimmick) was seen as something of a novelty among the similar anime releasing at the time. Come their Audience-Alienating Era in the late 2010s, where many grew bored of the standard with the same beats and cliches that had present in almost all their work, with almost nothing new or creative to offer. It didn't help matters when rivals such as Comic Cune invaded the scene trying to copy what came before, only to fail to reach the success as Kirara did.
• Pandering to the Base: Throughout the 2010s, Manga Time Kirara was frequently accused of "yuri-bait", using Pseudo-Romantic Friendship between schoolgirls to lure in yuri fans with no intention of following through on it. In 2023, after a string of anime flops and brand fatigue, they launched two sexually-charged Yuri Genre series pretty much back to back. Not in one of the side magazines or their online brand Comic Fuz, but the flagship magazine Manga Time Kirara. One of them, Convenient Semi-Friend, is about a blatant Bocchi-clone^note  Bocchi the Rock! being one of their biggest successes in this period who learns her roommate is a skinship nymphomanic, and features erotic nudity that borders on ecchi. The other, Chimidoro Ice Cream, is less explicit, but it's still the kind of series where the girls have strands of saliva stretched between their breathless lips and panting tongues every time they kiss.
• Sacred Cow: A good few of Kirara's series are considered to be among the best of their genre, if not the best, and some would go as far as considered them some of the greatest manga and anime of their generation, or even of all time. While Kirara's output is not above criticism, any major hate towards a particularly well-liked series will result in major backlash from a defensive fanbase.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Little Girls?: Manga that run in this magazine tend to focus on female characters drawn in adorable, brightly-colored art styles who typically hang around and do cute things together. While this can make people assume it's aimed at young girls, the magazine is actually meant for adult men.

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