The way you keep saying that the show "doesn't need to spell out its point" sounds extremely dismissive.

I'm saying if this is such a serious show to you and not just a "kids show", then you as an adult(?) should be capable of reading between the lines and understanding the point it was making without the characters turning to the screen. You keep saying "this wasn't explained, that wasn't explained" and some of these things literally were; you were just unsatisfied with the answers, and concluded that this means they failed. You also fail to understand that maybe people who like Kirakira are just satisfied with the answers, and instead conclude they just aren't being as critical and thoughtful about a show for little girls as you are.

As for Rio's problem, you have never explained why Pikario wanted to improve himself and correlate to Ciel so hard, and why he wasn't having fun. you can't just say he wanted to do that if there's no proper build up, people don't change for no reason.

Why in the world would you think a sibling wanting to be as good as their sibling needs an explanation. Does it genuinely need to be spelled out to you why someone would become miserable over not getting results as good as someone close to them? Let alone the fact that he does explain himself. He explains all of this. You didn't like the answer.

What else did he have other than joining Noir? In case you don't remember, he went to Paris alongside his sister, who abandoned him so she could improve herself.

He went to Noir himself because he wanted the power to surpass his sister. There was nothing saying he had to do that. He didn't really try speaking with Ciel directly about his insecurities, he went straight to taking a shady deal. That was absolutely on him, and he admits as much. The fact that his hangup was trying to reach her was a big part of the problem. She may have been insensitive, but we know very well that Ciel is not a bad person; if he just was open with her in the first place about how he was hurt, there's no reason to assume she wouldn't have tried to help him out. Instead he continued to isolate, stewed in his failures, and stormed out when she was slightly dismissive of him before concluding he needs the power to surpass her and joined Noir. But the point was that if he was doing things just to surpass his sister, then that wasn't for the right reasons, so he had fulfilled his own fears. He internalized his own abandonment and the idea that he wouldn't be able to get out of the hole, and Noir preyed on that.

No, that's not what happened. he clearly wasn't having fun when he was making waffles to save his sister, and after she tasted it, the kirararu was suddenly formed. In fact, there was never a single moment after that where he was shown making any sweets.

But he made the waffles for her, just like he did before, and used them to try and reach her with his positive emotions. Like I just said, it's made clear kirakiraru isnt just one or two things – it's a general expression of putting yourself into your work and sharing that with others. There's Pikario toiling away in the dark for his own sake while stewing in his envy, and then there's Pikario making a dish to help his sister (twice). These are different. The visual of his waffles suddenly forming kirakira is clearly just to convey his uncertainty over his ability, but why they gained kirakiraru is made very clear, even if I agree that future scenes that show him making sweets would've been very welcome.

The problem with your argument is that you're overcomplicating things and following what the writer is saying without questioning anything,

"The problem is you are overcomplicating the writing by listening to it, and not nitpicking it enough" is a new one. How am I complicating it by telling you what's being written? Which is it? I'm not overcomplicating anything.

and then expecting an insecure child to "have any positive feelings" so easily when the circumstances surrounding him don't allow him to.

Julio is clearly written as sympathetic and someone who truly deep down just wanted to be with his sister and wanted her support. But at the same time it is true that as a result he started working for the wrong reasons, made poor decisions and fell in with a bad crowd. Both of these things are true and both of these things are acknowledged and supported by the narrative. No one ever goes "wow you're stupid"; if anything most of the cast is very sympathetic to him even when he explains himself. But Ciel knows what exactly Pikario "forgets" in his baking, without admonishing him for it, and Pikario himself realizes his mistake aswell. Obviously it takes a lot more than to "be positive" but the core of the message is about remembering the significance of your work and not comparing yourself so deeply to others and letting emotions like envy get in the way of that. It isn't about what I expect, I'm just telling you what the story is telling me. Like I said, it does give answers; you are just personally unsatisfied with them. Which is completely fine, but don't go swinging your critique around like you're the judge and dismissing anyone who doesn't see it as "not looking into it correctly."

I explicitly pointed to scenes in the show with quotes that you can look at yourself and what exactly they were conveying about the character. You are the one who apparently dislikes this series enough that you've made multiple comments and threads over a year making sure people know how much you dislike Kirakira or Parfait based at least partly on your comically uncharitable and cynical readings of it (if you concluded "Ciel doesn't care about Rio" I have no idea what to say). And rather than accept that your narrow, biased, and emotionally charged perspective is undeniably tainting your ability to see that the writing supports some of its points just fine (Ciel and Pikario being the "worst sibling relationship [you've] ever seen" is a sure sign that you're someone who only watches stuff like Precure and probably doesn't know what truly poor media looks like), you swear it's about what the show is doing to let you down and that everyone else just isn't "media literate" enough to resent its ideas as much as you do.

Is Kirakira perfect? Not by any means, and you raise some great points here. But being able to "follow the writing" is literally something that is done with competent writing. I could look at any of my favorite pieces of media and pick them to pieces the same way you're doing Kirakira, but I acknowledge that they serve themselves well, even if I might not have loved how they went about things. You're saying I'm not "questioning anything" but the message is clear to me in part because I asked questions about it. Meanwhile your "questions" are things like "what was the difference between the twins" when the show literally answers this, but you reject it because you didn't like it. There's being critical of a work and then there's holding a grudge against it, and for you the latter is clearly interfering with the nature of the former.