Recap: The Club members settle into their roles preparing for the White Festival. Taichi has some trouble making himself useful, but there are much larger problems looming over the entire school.

Jel’s Thoughts: Tari Tari has pretty much followed the formula of “Hype Big Performance -> Throw Huge Obstacle In Front of It” from day one, but shutting down the ENTIRE SCHOOL is just ridiculous. That’s right, take down the huge, fancy, super rich looking school that has shown no indication of having any financial or enrollment problems until the plot deemed it convenient. It felt like the writers ran out of ideas on how to slow down the Club’s progress and just pulled the ripcord.

In conversation with Marlin, our resident romance anime connoisseur, he mentioned how surprising it was that Tari Tari hasn’t played the romance card. I think it’s a little refreshing to see any show, anime or otherwise, let the characters be defined by their goals and not who wants to get in who’s pants. After Taichi’s little creepy voyeur mission, I really REALLY hope they don’t tack that on in the final two episodes. I mean it is Sawa we’re talking about, so I couldn’t blame the dude. But pulling that out this late in the game would be setting off all kinds of Shark Jumping alarms, especially combined with this episode’s big dumb announcement.

If I’m fishing for positives, I guess it will be nice to wrap up Wakana’s story with her finished song and what not. That still might be able to stir some emotion out of me. And Sawa continues to be the Best Character, almost a little too good this week. I have no idea when she had time to learn how to BACKFLIP but whatever. At this point all I can ask of Tari Tari is to tie up its loose ends and not embarrass itself. I think it can accomplish that much at least.