Tari Tari - Episode 5

Having lived up to his side of the bargain by fulfilling the musical duties of the club, it's now time for the other members to do their bit by supporting Taichi has he takes his place in the badmington tournament that he's been working so hard towards.

Despite the cheers of his friends, and indeed despite the fact that he manages an impressive top eight finish, it still isn't the top four result that Taichi required to reach the national finals, leaving him feeling a little down in the dumps as you might expect.  Sawa seems to cheer him up soon enough however, leaving herself and Miyamoto to turn their concerns to Wakana, who is far from being her normal self in the wake of the letter from her mother handed to her in last week's episode.

This letter seem to have brought back memories aplenty from Wakana's past, and not particularly happy ones at that - while Wakana's mother was always looking to goof around, sing songs and play music, Wakana herself was (as she is now) deadly serious, and primarily concerned with school grades and exams to the point of shunning her parents and their frivolous (in her mind) thoughts as a result.  Such was Wakana's drive to succeed that her mother didn't even tell her that she was ill, leaving her only to find out when it was far too late to say any goodbyes - a decision which has left this youngster not only regretting that, but also blaming herself for her mother's sickness.

After failing to grab me last week, this time around Tari Tari did rather better at drawing me into its emotional crux as it related the full story of Wakana and her relationship with her mother before she passed away.  Much like everything else within this series it didn't feel particularly original, yet it still had sufficient impact to move me somewhat and create an important pivot within the series for both Wakana and her club-mates, while still finding time for just the right amount of character-driven humour to offset that drama.  Tari Tari won't be winning any awards for originality, as I've asserted before (so maybe me and this show have something in common?), but it's still doing a decent enough job as a piece of throw-away entertainment that will most likely be long forgotten by the time the end of this year rolls around.  Sometimes it's okay to be disposable entertainment just like that.