Tari Tari First Impressions--For the Fun of It

Honestly, I think that doing something just because you love doing it is the best reason a person can have.

 
While Tari Tari shares a lot of staff with Hanasaku Iroha, I hesitate to call this a repeat of that show. Aside from the art design (the most obvious comparison, being a P.A. Works show), the only other initial similarity I can see with Hanasaku Iroha is the character dynamic between Sakai and Konatsu. It's close to the relationship between Minchi and Ohana, but with not nearly the same level of initial hostility. Tari Tari's first episode does distinguish itself from its lookalike predecessor pretty quickly, though.

 
To start, I really like these characters. I was glad that Konatsu immediately told off the teacher and quit. As a grad school student who had to deal with some of that crap a few years ago, I can tell you that after a certain point, nobody really cares what you did in high school. Doing something "for fun" is as good a reason as any. Anyway, I'm also pleased that this show has two guy characters who look like they're going to have character arcs of their own outside of just being love interests. Overall, the characters act like real people, not just anime high school cliches. I hope it keeps this up, since Hanasaku Iroha showed the same promise but then fell into those traps when it needed padding.

 
And since the animation quality was already a given before this show even hit the air, it's good that the characters and story are immediately engaging. What it does with them will make or break Tari Tari. Hopefully the struggle to get a club together and get them up to snuff will be the show's dramatic focus instead of following the obvious path of just throwing them all together and letting romantic shenanigans ensue. To clarify, I'm all for that kind of thing, but I think Tari Tari can do better than take the beaten path.

Images from Crunchyroll.com.