Tari

'⚠ This character is highly controversial among the fanbase and is one of the leading causes of flame wars. Please edit and comment with extreme caution. ⚠'

Tari is one of the protagonists of the  SMG4 series, who debuted in SMG4: Mario The Ultimate Gamer. She is a cyborg girl (Meta Runner) and pro-gamer who befriended Mario when he needed to learn how to improve his gaming skills against SMG4, and as such became friends with them both and the rest of the gang, namely Meggy and Saiko. She was introduced during The Waluigi Arc.

History
Tari first appears in SMG4: Mario The Ultimate Gamer where she is seen in a game store playing Super Smash each other in the ass Bros. against Bob. Fishy Boopkins claims she is one of the best Super Smash each other in the ass Bros. players in the world. Upon hearing this and seeing her skills, Mario wanted her help to train for an upcoming rematch against SMG4. She initially refuses but decided to give it a go by telling Mario to be more focused when playing Whack-A-Luigi. She then gets distracted by a crane game, calling it a "chronic gambling addiction disguised as a children's game" and comments on how cute the prizes are.

She and Mario then grab Toad with crane claws and destroy the machines, then they proceed to go to the pond and relax. As Mario went to go back for the rematch, Tari stayed behind as she didn't like to meet new people. However, during the match, Tari came to the castle to see how Mario's training went. Her training succeeded, though she showed sorrow for SMG4 for his loss, so she decided to cheer him up by playing a match for fun as Mario celebrated in the background.

She later reappears in SMG4: The Mario Carnival, fishing for ducks at Bob's carnival. SMG4 asks if she can help him get a lot of tickets to beat Mario for tickets to win an Eggman football. Tari, antisocial as usual, lies to SMG4 and says that she's unavailable but later helps him anyways and eventually meets Meggy for the first time to challenge her at a duck Hunt Mini-game. After many shots, Bob, in fear of losing all of his Bob Tickets, sets the difficulty into POWER DRIVE. Overwhelmed, Tari sets herself into Expert Mode using her mechanical arm and shoots a ton of ducks, winning infinite points. Meggy is amazed at her power and starts asking how Tari was able to shoot all of the targets. This is when Tari reveals that she's a cyborg. In the end, everyone receives and shares their Eggman Football and Tari receives her duck prize and they leave the carnival celebrating.

She appears in SMG4: The Mario Convention!, exploring the convention with Meggy. She and Meggy visited Fishy Boopkins's anime booth, where Tari bought several action figures, Later, they encountered a large crowd gathered around a booth for Hideo Kojima. Ecstatic to see him at the convention, Tari begged Meggy to go get an autograph from Hideo. While Meggy pushed her way through the crowd, Tari got bored of waiting and decided to explore the convention some more.

Later, after Waluigi took over the convention with his new T-Pose Virus, Tari is seen emerging from a dumpster, where it was revealed that she had been searching for a very rare Wizard duck figure, which she'd found in the dumpster. She then realized that the convention was eerily quiet. After a little investigating, she found Waluigi creating a new army of T-Pose Zombies and announcing his plan to take over the world with them. Staying hidden, she watched in horror as Master Hand arrived to try to stop Waluigi but was quickly subdued by Waluigi's mind control powers.

She appears on SMG4: Mario and the Waluigi Apocalypse as a minor character, where she tried to recover Meggy from her T-pose state but couldn't get through to her. She was then noticed by Master Hand, who proceeded to attack her. In an attempt to ward him off, Tari threw her controller at Master Hand, to no avail; however, the controller was knocked into the Staff of Rejection, which zapped the controller with some of its energy. Tari grabbed the controller and frantically pushed its buttons just as Master Hand was about to catch her when he suddenly stopped short.

To her amazement, Tari then discovered that, because of the magic energy it'd been infused with, her controller could now control people. Tari began to play around with her newfound power, using the controller to make Master Hand do silly dances. After this, she was about to get Master Hand to try to free her friends, but before she could, SMG4's Deathbus broke into the convention center, catching her off guard. She was not seen for the rest of the episode.

In War of the Fat Italians 2018, she makes a surprise appearance in the last challenge, in which Waluigi forced Mario and SMG4 to fight to the death in a real-life enactment of Super Smash Each Other in the Ass Bros. by using his powers to control Mario's body and forcing him to fight SMG4. Just as Mario was about to (very reluctantly) finish SMG4 off, Tari showed up and used her magic controller on SMG4 to defeat Mario. She then sent him after Waluigi, who retaliated with a storm of lightning bolts.

In a panic, Tari activated her cybernetic arm's enhancement to put herself into Expert Mode, after which she got SMG4 to flawlessly dodge Waluigi's attacks, kick him in the face and destroy his Staff of Rejection, causing all the T-Pose Zombies to revert to their former selves. Waluigi then initiated a rap battle with Mario and friends, in which Tari got one line where she said that fighting was lame and that everyone should just be friends.

At the end of the episode, after Waluigi and Wario made up and hugged, Tari asked if anyone wanted to play video games with her, to which everyone happily obliged. After the episode, a "cryptic clip" played in which an unknown video game was being played. After almost a minute of this footage, the camera zoomed away from the TV screen and panned over to the player's controller and arms, one of which was a bionic arm, indicating that the player was Tari, which was later confirmed by SMG4, afterward the text "DECEMBER 2018" appeared on screen. The text would be the date when the trailer for Meta Runner was released.

In Mario's Late!, she was at the Mushroom Kingdom Awards show with her friends Meggy and Saiko. She was seen with a new hat with a Pac-Man pin and some more stylized hair and a red bow tie.

In SMG4: The Mario Purge (Halloween 2018), Tari took shelter from the Purge in Peach's Castle along with the rest of Mario's friends. She was seen trying to convince Saiko to play Super Smash Bros. Melee, which she succeeded in after telling Saiko it had a ton of violence. Later, when the Teletubbies broke into the castle and everyone split up to get away from them, Tari followed Saiko into the castle's basement. They ran into two crossbow-wielding Teletubbies who began shooting at them. Tari pushed Saiko out of the way and they both dodged the arrows, but Tari's wizard rubber duck got hit.

Tari started crying over the "death" of her duck, who she'd named Quackington, but Saiko snapped her out of it by shoving her out of the way as the Teletubbies fired at them again. Tari then got angry and wanted to fight back, and she got an idea after noticing a torch on the wall. She asked Saiko if she still had her wine bottle; she did. The duo came up with a plan and then charged forward. First Saiko jumped out and poured wine all over the Teletubbies, then Tari came out and threw the torch at the Teletubbies, but unfortunately, it turned out that Tari isn't good at throwing. This ended with her and Saiko getting captured, but luckily the purge ended before the Teletubbies could do anything to them.

In Mad Mario, Tari was a member of the Wild Childs during the apocalypse, which appeared to be comprised of women. However, Bob was also a member of the group, though he didn’t appear to do anything other than executing hostages.

In Mario and the Bob Mansion..., Tari and her friends are all invited to Bob's mansion for "Bobsgiving". While Bowser and Meggy go off to cook the turkey, and Saiko, Mario, and Fishy Boopkins go off to find some "secret Bob juice" in Bob's "secret room", Tari and SMG4 stay behind with Bob. Bob offers to tell the history of Bobsgiving, to Tari's delight and SMG4's chagrin. After the explanation, Tari asks that if everyone worshiped the Bob tribe, then why hasn't anyone from said tribe been a leader of the Mushroom Kingdom?

Bob asks if he should also explain the history of "Bobmas". Tari is delighted again, while SMG4 becomes angry. This history lesson moves Tari to tears, and after a little sobbing, she asks if Bob Claus could get her a new duck for Christmas after Quackington's death. Bob responds that he will if she's been nice. An enraged SMG4 tells Tari that both histories have been made up, and storms off to go check on the cooking. After an awkward pause, Tari asks Bob that if she's super nice if she could get some games as well. Shortly afterward, a fire breaks out, and after said fire caused the mansion to collapse, Tari can be seen happily chatting with Meggy while eating turkey.

Appearance
Tari wears a blue and white hoodie, brown pants, white and blue socks, and brown flip flop sandals. She has a metal left arm, blue hair (with a fringe covering her right eye, similar to Lilyncookies and Rosalina), purple eyes and pink cheeks. Unlike her Meta Runner counterpart, it is not explained why her left arm is made of metal. It is shown in SMG4: Untitled Mario Video that the arm can be removed.

Personality
Tari is a nice, insecure and shy girl, who likes video games (e.g. Super Smash each other in the ass Bros.) and rubber ducks. She is shown to be a pacifist and often tries resolving problems with words rather than actions. Tari is very skilled with weapons such as guns, but is not very athletic and seems to have low stamina. She appears to be very danger prone, as she often finds herself getting hurt or in danger.

Tari seems to be a quick thinker, as shown in The Mario Purge, where she and Saiko Bichitaru attempt to fend off the Teletubbies with a makeshift Molotov, or in War Of The Fat Italians 2018 when she attempts to save Mario and SMG4.

However, Tari's execution of these ideas usually fails due to her clumsiness. She was gullible enough to fall for Bob's lies in SMG4: Mario and the Bob Mansion..., though she did question why none of the Mushroom Kingdom locals ever had one of Bob's ancestors for a president. Despite her shortcomings, Tari is very friendly and was able to become fast friends with the majority of the cast, even with Saiko, her foil.

Tari shows her obsessive and possessive side in her first appearance in a Christmas special, being extremely eager to get a rubber duck. Saiko of all people is freaked out by her behavior.

She is also extremely sensitive, as shown in SMG4: The Splatfest Incident, where she bursts into tears right after Fishy Boopkins calls her "a very bad friend". This sensitivity is further explored in SMG4: The Big Bad Bully.

Trivia

 * Tari's name is a reference to the video game company Atari, as well as the company's gaming system which was also called Atari.
 * She mains Yoshi in Super Smash Each Other in the Ass Bros.
 * SMG4: The Mario Carnival reveals that she's a cyborg.
 * Tari having a mechanical left arm may be a reference to the Power Glove. Meta Runner implies she replaced her arm to make playing video games easier.
 * She has only appeared in one War Of The Fat Italians so far.
 * It was believed that she was voiced by Ellyn Barclay with a British accent. However, in a blog video, it was confirmed that it is actually a voice actress named Celeste Notley-Smith.
 * She appears to have an affinity for rubber ducks, as seen in SMG4: The Mario Carnival and SMG4: The Mario Convention!.
 * She appears to have many video game-related clothing articles since on SMG4: The Mario Convention! she's seen with a slight cosplay of Link from The Legend of Zelda series & on SMG4: Mario's Late!, she dons a PAC-MAN hat pin and what looks to be a Doctor Who Eleventh Doctor red bow tie.
 * Her love of video games is also possibly a reference to 9-Volt from the WarioWare series, who is "Nintendo's #1-Fan" and is also a gamer himself.
 * Tari appears as the main protagonist of a CGI web series Meta Runner, in a separate continuity non-canon to the SMGverse. She is notably more realistic and like a human being in the Meta Runners universe than in the SMG4 universe.
 * She is shown to love anime just as much as Fishy Boopkins does, though she is not an otaku like him, possessing no merchandise and waifu pillows.
 * She is one of the few main characters to never become a T-Pose Zombie.
 * Her creation and history are detailed in the video The Making Of Tari. She was made by SMG4's sister. She was made when SMG4's sister is, according to SMG4 himself, around 12 years old.
 * Tari's concept art is more anime-like than her final counterpart.
 * Tari was the first major character to debut during a story arc (The Waluigi Arc), the second being Axol in the Anime Arc.
 * Her codename during the 'Infiltrate the Castle' scene in SMG4: Mario Saves Anime is a reference to the fact that her personality was based on a blue jay.
 * Tari, Luigi and Fishy Boopkins are the only(?) characters who are Pure Good.
 * She and Mario were the only major characters that never got infected by the T-Pose Virus during The Waluigi Arc.
 * Her arm is apparently strong enough to block a sword as shown in SMG4: World War Mario.
 * In SMG4: There's Something Up With Meggy... it's shown that she finds Dark Souls 3 relaxing, a game that's part of a series that's known to be quite the opposite, partly due to its difficulty.
 * In SMG4: The Mario Convention!, Tari claims that she loves Hideo Kojima because of his work when he appears at the celebrity meet-up.
 * Tari's counterpart in Meta Runner is confirmed to be 22 years old as shown in the fifth episode. However, it is unknown whether this incarnation of Tari is the same age.
 * As revealed in SMG4: The Big Bad Bully, Tari lives in Onett.
 * Judging by her lack of social skills, frequent nervousness, vulnerability and obsession with video games, Tari may have high-function autism.