Tari Tari
Tari Tari sounds better on paper than it is in execution. It's a drama about teenagers in school and their dreams that include music AND ALSO BADMINTON AND ALSO HORSERACING AND ALSO BEING A POWER RANGER. It's a melange of ideas, some of them comic (most of these don't work) some dramatic (which usually feel forced, like cookie cutter bits of anime drama assembled together and sent on their way). Tari Tari may not be quite as bad as I found it - it's well animated, and the show clearly wants you to care about its characters, zeroing in on some key relationships rather clearly - but with messy pacing and frankly uninteresting cast I just didn't care anymore by the time the big emotional conclusion rolled around.* And I did love
Hansaku Iroha, so I can't just chalk it up for me not caring for this kind of anime drama.
Rinne no Lagrange S2
I did enthuse about the first season, and the second season upped the ante in some respects and gave us some crazy stuff in the conclusion... but I don't feel in the last analysis it was better than the first year or it built on the idea of the Rinne in a really interesting way. It's a competent conclusion and one that feels dramatically solid, but it's not a mindblowing ending or a great one - Rinne no Lagrange is a triumph in style (music and animation especially) more than it is a triumph of substance, though that substance works better than it might have.
Still. This is a perfectly okay mecha series with some crazy images and some genuinely funny moments, and a great soundtrack. So it has all that going for it.
*
