Tari Tari: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

Tari Tari: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie Review

Glee: the anime.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 22, 2014

Those of us who make music an integral part of our lives will probably feel that Tari Tari is both figuratively and literally preaching to the choir as it attempts to prove that music, like time, can offer a salve for virtually any wound. Laura Nyro long ago wrote the great anthem “Time and Love”, but in the case of Tari Tari, the thesis might be slightly altered to “Time and Singing,” for within a resolutely traditional framework the series brings together a quintet of high school kids in yet another after school club setting (in this case a choir club), where they discover that no problem is too large to be overcome by friendship and some nifty four part harmonies. There’s nothing even slightly innovative about Tari Tari, and it certainly echoes other music-centric anime like K-ON!, but in its very simplicity and heartfelt honesty, the series manages to be rather touching in its own small scale way. This is a fairly unambitious entry, but one which manages to craft some uniquely compelling characters in a story that at least maintains interest (if not outright fascination), with a meaningful moral at its center that should appeal to anyone who has suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and has turned to music for comfort.

Parts of Tari Tari play quite a bit like “comfort food,” even for Westerners who might not completely understand the social (and even technical) aspects of Japan’s club-centric school system. There’s quite a bit of time spent detailing the various hoops students need to jump through to even set up a club, something that will no doubt be familiar to Japanese viewers (and probably to many otaku), as Konatsu Miyamoto decides she wants to form a new choir club at her school, despite the fact that her school already has a choir club. In a kind of uncomfortable little scene, it’s shown that the current choir’s faculty advisor has told Konatsu in no uncertain terms that the girl should stop singing since she has little talent and no prospects of improving herself. That’s mentoring?

One of the rules for forming a new club is that a minimum of five members need to be recruited, and so Konatsu’s first task is to round up other interested parties. She has no problem getting her best friend Sawa Okita to join, despite the fact that Sawa is already wrapped up in her own after school activities revolving around horses. Konatsu has a much harder time trying to convince another girl named Wakana Sakai to join, and in fact Wakana rejects Konatsu’s inquiry out of hand. Wakana’s refusal to join provides Tari Tari with one of its more maudlin plot arcs, one that’s obviously designed to tug at the heartstrings and provide a prominent lump in the throat.

Unlike K-On!, which deals mostly with girls, Tari Tari also features two male characters, though truth be told they’re often shunted off to the sidelines while the trio of females is given a more prominent placement in many episodes’ plotlines. Badminton aficionado Taichi Tanaka is given an assignment early in the series to reintegrate transfer student “Wien” Maeda into Japanese society, after the boy has spent the past several years in Austria (as his nickname indicates). There’s some gentle humor offered as “Wien” struggles to remember his native Japanese and come to terms with some of the oddities of high school life in Japan.

Ultimately it turns out that both Taichi’s badminton club as well as Konatsu’s choir club are in danger of being disbanded (no pun intended with regard to the singers), and so in a not that surprising development, the two groups decide to merge so that they have the requisite five members. The school where the kids are students is part of a huge cultural festival that has been going on for some 35 years and which provides opportunities for prospective professional musicians, and so of course Konatsu has dreams of getting her club on stage, despite the fact that Konatsu herself suffered a debilitating case of stage fright at the previous year’s festival, leading to that mentor’s dismissal of Konatsu’s chances for a music career.

Other than the initial intrigue surrounding Wakana’s reluctance to join the club despite her vaunted background in music, there’s not a whale of a lot of drama motivating Tari Tari’s development. Instead this is a kind of combo slice of life and shōnen outing that is content to detail the lives of its characters without offering too much in the way of trauma (at least in the present) for them to confront. This small scale (again, no pun intended) approach gives the series an intimacy which is often quite enjoyable, but it also means that most episodes don’t really offer much in the way of excitement or flourishes.

It’s the sweetness of this series which finally redeems its more predictable aspects. The fact that it’s music that unites this motley crew will no doubt appeal to those with a musical bent anyway, but even those who have never seen even one episode of Glee may intuitively understand the camaraderie that ultimately forms between these kids. It’s actually a little refreshing to see an anime which doesn’t rely on over the top histrionics to provide any passing interest. Tari Tari gently invites everyone to join the chorus, and those willing to go with the flow here are more than likely to end up enjoying singing along.

Tari Tari: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Tari Tari is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sentai Filmworks with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Kind of like the series itself, the video presentation here is pleasant if never mind blowing. Colors never really pop incredibly, except in some lovely outdoor sequences, where the water glistens a bright blue and colorful foliage often is seen in backgrounds (like many similar series, Tari Tari seems to take place in almost an idyllic oceanside town). Character design is not especially innovative, but line detail is sharp and well detailed. Contrast is intentionally pushed on some sequences, including a recurring motif that details the horrifying stage fright of Konatsu. Once again there's some very minor banding in evidence, especially in scene segues, but otherwise this is a solid if not especially vivid presentation.

Tari Tari: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

It's perhaps a little odd that series so focused on music as Tari Tari is only offers a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mix (in the original Japanese —no English dub is available on this release), but what's here suffices perfectly well, supporting both the musical elements as well as the series' dialogue. The mix is very well prioritized and there are occasional nicely evocative ambient environmental sounds thrown into the aural presentation. Fidelity is excellent and there are no problems of any kind to cause concern.

Note: I could not get the subtitles to turn off when I played this on my PS3. The Pop-Up menu offered no help, and the Subtitle button similarly did nothing. Oddly, when playing this in a BD drive, the subtitles were removable.

Tari Tari: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Japanese BD Spots (1080i; 00:17 and 00:32)


• Japanese TV Commercials (1080i; 00:17 and 00:17)


• Japanese Promos (1080p; 1:58 and 2:14)


• Clean Scenes (1080p; 3:12)


• Clean Opening Animation (1080p; 1:32)


• Clean Closing Animations (1080p; 1:32, 1:32, 1:32, and 1:59)

Tari Tari: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Tari Tari doesn't do much of anything new or even anything that remarkable, but it's resolutely sweet and tender hearted, and for those craving a little simple, honest entertainment, worse choices could be made. The design aesthetic here is similarly not out to push any envelopes, but there's a solid professionalism to this effort all around. Nothing special, maybe—but also nothing to frustrate, annoy or cause eye rolling. With an understanding that a somewhat low bar obviously having been set by the series itself, viewers' expectations should be similarly skewed, Tari Tari comes Recommended.