There are a lot of great moments in anime. These of course vary from person to person and 1 I never really hear or see all that much are sad moments. I don’t mean moments that you go “oh thats a shame”. No no no, that will hardly do at all. I’m talking about moments that bring you almost to tears or make you feel so depressed that you need to do something else to cheer yourself up. So why do a list about this then? Well because I can and these moments while indeed are sad, they are so wonderful in their own way that they deserve to be seen by all. These are in no particular order so lets get down to it shall we?

Clannad Episode 9 – Fuko’s Arc End

An incredible series converted from an equally incredible game that should be on everyone’s list to play. This episode was the most sad for me of the entire series. At least what I saw of the series. I stopped watching around episode 17 as I had just come off playing the Visual Novel, and refused to have the endings i’d played through, ruined for me by the show. Fuko is a girl who on the day of her opening ceremony at school, got into a car accident and was left in a coma. If my memory serves me correct, 3 years later, when the story takes place, her ghost shows up in school carving starfishes for everyone so they can celebrate her sister’s wedding. Long story short, at the very end there is a really tearful moment where she appears in front of her married sister, congradulates her and dissappears, making everyone forget all about her, with only deja vu type memories remaining. It’s such a sad yet touching scene where she finally gets her only wish granted, seeing her sister happyly married. 

At the very very end of the episode, we get a sweet moment where Tomoya is imaging Fuko coming up to him and offering him a starfish while she asks for him to be her friend. This is the happy ending for Fuko’s good ending. Now some of these story arcs have 2 endings. a Good, and True ending. Each different ending moments or tales that play out past certain intervals. Since the show is based on Tomoya eventualy choosing Nagisa as his girlfriend and future wife, the true ending could not be shown on tv. This is unfortunate as Fuko’s true ending is what stopped me from almost crying. Yes call me a wuss or whatever names you want, but ever since playing Kana: Little Sister i’ve almost, and have cried numerious times during anime. But that is another story all together. 

Fuko’s true ending goes like this; bearing in mind of course that it has been a long while since I played this, so details may be a tiny bit fuzzy or off, but are nearly spot on. Fuko and Tomoya go to the school at night (this is shown in the anime, but with Nagisa present) and they have a sort of celebration for her. Party hats and what not. Very cute. As the night goes on and both of them become tired, they decide to sleep at school. Tomoya sits down and fuko sits down beside him. They talk for a bit and after awhile Tomoya pulls Fuko onto his lap and hugs her. Here is where her endings split into 2 paths. You are given the option to kiss her, or stay hugging her. In the TV version you get the “keep hugging her” option. So Tomoya kisses her and finaly confesses he likes/loves her. They fall asleep together hugging. When Tomoya wakes up Fuko is gone and no one can remember her except for him. Of course he is sad but goes on with his life. I’m not sure how much longer, a girl runs into him in the halls at school. Fuko has woken up from her coma finaly (long story) and holds up a starfish for Tomoya and says “Will you go out with me?” And thus ends Fuko’s arc. Of course he would go out with her.

Since I can’t find a video of the ending i’m talking about, here is a short video of Fuko doing what she does best, Spacing out.

Oh and there is this AMV of Fuko’s whole story which should show you what she is like, and why she is my favorite Clannad character.

Kanon Episode 10 – Makoto Arc End

Another anime from the awesome story tellers Key, who are responsible for Clannad. In this episode, we see the close of an even sadder story than Fuko. Granted this is a little bit more supernatural than a ghost. Yuichi (the main character) found a little fox that was injured 10 years before the main stories of Kanon start. he rescued it and all summer long looked after it, nursing it back to health. When the summer break finished he released it back into the wild and said goodbye. 10 years later when the story starts. Runs into a girl called Makoto. She has no memories of anything but knows she hates Yuichi. Another long story short (key are very good at building romance, so just watch the series already) it turns out Makoto is the same fox that Yuichi took care of when he was a child and she has transformed into a human only for a brief period of time so she can be with him. 

Both Yuichi and Makoto fall in love together, and her time starts to run out in the world. She starts to revert back to her more fox like qualities like being unable to talk or remember things except for Yuichi. Seeing (and after being told what will happen by another person) what is happening, Yuichi decides to give Makoto what she wanted, which was to marry him and stay with him forever. They go to a hill where Yuichi has bought a wedding veil and puts it on her. He says the usual speech and they get “married”. As the sun starts to set Makoto starts to slowly fall asleep and before long, she disappears entirely from Yuichi’s arms leaving him all alone. I just cannot get over how much crap this guy goes through. This isn’t even the half of it. Of course due to the original material being a visual novel, he meets 3 or 4 other girls who all either dump him, or die on him. This guy has the worst luck in the anime dating world and he is THE single best male lead character in romance shows. Still, all the other girls pale in comparison to the epic tragedy that is Makoto.

Finding videos of the specific endings is kinda difficult so you’ll have to make do with this beautiful AMV that is about Yuichi and Makoto. The scenes of her finaly disappearing are in there shuffled amongst the build up between the 2. Enjoy

Elfen Lied Episode 8 and 9 – Lucy Finally Gives Up

This comes in 2 parts, and everyone who has seen this will know exactlly what I mean. This is deffinatly worthy of being on this list. But first a bit of backstory is required to get the full effect of this. Lucy is a Diclonius. Diclonius are humans with 2 small cat like ears on their heads and are able to controll what are called Vectors. Think of these as invisible (to humans) arms that can carry, block, cut or destroy nearly anything they come into contact with. Now since it has been awhile when I last watched this, I cannot remember if it is in a Diclonius’s nature to be destructive or just something that comes as a result of how they are treated. However  this flashback looks at Lucy starting off as a child that is picked on, made fun of and teased constantly about her horns. She is given horrible names like freak and animal. Even her own family aren’t very loving of her. Growing up this way is never easy, but since she is a diclonius it is a little different for her. She has this voice inside her head telling her to kill people, like a concious gone wrong. This could be her diclonius nature coming out but I do not remember exactly, but she is a nice person.

1 day she finds a little puppy out in the woods, or area she goes to be alone. She likes him and starts to look after him sort of. Feeding him and being friends with him. Meanwhile at school things are getting worse. The kids are beating her up trying to make her cry or get some reaction out of her and a girl steps in to stop them. She befriends Lucy and is shown the little puppy. A few days later the bullies at school corner Lucy after school I presume and pretty much tell her they intend to antagonize her again. But this time they have the puppy with them. Seems that “friend” (at least to me) was only nice to her in order to betray her. Lucy finaly starts to sees that humans will only hurt her. Lucy finaly fights back to try and save the puppy, the bullies take things too far and right in front of Lucy, kill the puppy by bashing it to death with a flower vase. This is a very disturbing, and sad scene where Lucy says 1 of the most memorable quotes in anime history.

“When you’re miserable, you need someone even more miserable than yourself”  

What happens next is a scene that everyone will remember. Lucy, for a brief moment snaps and in a shower of blood destorys everything in the room. Children, furnature you name it. After the carnage subsides the area looks like a slaughter house. 

Warning, this scene may be disturbing for some/most. The dog sound… aw man thats rough.

Understandably after this Lucy is upset and goes to her place to be alone. There she meets Kouta, the main character of the story as a boy. For the first time she meets someone who thinks she is great. He loves her horns and they become friends. They go to the zoo together and play all the time. She genuinely starts to like him… a lot. One day a festival happens and Lucy asks Kouta if he would go with her. Kouta has to turn her down however as he has already promised his cousin he would go with her. Lucy starts to worry and asks if his cousin is a boy or a girl. See where this is going? Kouta lies and says a boy and she is releaved. 

So she decides to go anyway, I suppose hoping to run into Kouta. Indeed she does only to find out Kouta’s cousin is a girl who is acting very close to him (Yuka loves him but that is another story). This finaly becomes to much to her and she has a breakdown right there in the street. She has a full conversation in her mind with her diclonius’s evil nature and finaly starts believing that humans only bring pain. She finaly snaps and decides to “change the world into her world”.

“No more. I can’t take it anymore. Friends or a place to stay… I don’t… have anything anymore”
“Kouta… Goodbye. I really liked you”

As in the last episode, there is a spray of blood and she clamly walks killing people that come to help her or are near her as she says 

“I’ll wipe you all out. Every damn last one of you”

With that, the good natured Lucy is gone, at least for now, and what follows is a lot of death involving her killing people as she goes from house to house slaughtering entire families just to take their house and food.

Again, finding actual scenes is kinda hard on youtube so you have this AMV that has all the scenes im talking about in it. Well at least the main ones. Also take note, this video has nudity, however brief it may be, and a bit of blood. If you’re not ok with that then don’t watch.

Well that is it for now at least. Its late so I should wrap this up. I may do another of these since these certainly weren’t the only moments I can come up with. Time will tell.