Jun Maeda 's particular fixations as a composer could fill their own article, so I'll just talk about two completely different examples of his songwriting that were created ten years apart from one another: Air 's "Tori no Uta" and Angel Beats!
I'm not embedding unofficial YouTube uploads, so you'll just have to look up the songs yourself for comparison. Tori no Uta Bird's Poem is a techno song, which aren't usually known for their great depth of emotion, but Maeda manages to do a lot with very little. The song's atmospheric feel, interrupted by only a simple piano melody, immediately brings to mind flying and open blue skies.
In fact, it's almost too much, as the digital swooshes and whooshes become more obvious and sound-effect-like. However, as the song progresses, the stronger techno downbeats come in, and those atmospheric sounds lower in pitch as they become overwhelmed.
This brings us down to earth, and the rest of the song is more reminiscent of some force trying and failing to get off the ground as it runs and stumbles, succeeding only at the very end as the pitch of the atmosphere goes up even higher than before, and the backing track fades away.
The lyrics hide a surprising depth of emotion too. Just like the music underneath them, they start and end at the same vague place, drift down into concrete detail in the middle, and ultimately paint a pretty clear picture of a tragic journey.
The beginning is about fear of change, choosing to let go and run away because it's easier than facing disappointment. As the song progresses, the singer is compared to a bird that can't fly but still has hopes of escape from her fate. From here, she sinks further to earth, making memories and promises with a childhood friend as a human girl.
That's all well and good, but the song has to end the same way it began, which means dragging that childhood friend with her while "chasing the fading vapor trails," leaving the ground, becoming a bird who can almost fly again, and promising that she won't let go of his hand.
Unfortunately, the last verse is the same as the first: letting go means literally sacrificing the boy's life out of weakness, so she bemoans the changes this future brought her once she can't hold on anymore. This musical theme of history repeating itself doesn't bode well for our heroine or her love interest, and the further the viewer gets into the story, the more hopeless and frustrating the song seems while still sounding pretty. Who knew techno could make you feel so misty-eyed? If Air 's main theme is an exercise in tightly calculated, subliminal emotion, "My Song" from Angel Beats!
There's no multi-layered production or fancy lyrical metaphor here, it's just one girl with a guitar bawling out her feelings. This also means the song relies on specific context, so it's not a theme song for Angel Beats! The singer, Iwasawa, is supposed to perform a big loud j-rock song as a diversion while her friends carry out a secret mission, but that performance turns out to be a little too effective when her concert gets broken up by the school administration.
In the heat of the moment, Iwasawa decides that she should perform the song she really wanted to sing before her guitar gets taken away from her. All the other songs her over-the-top band called Girls Dead Monster sings are wild, bombastic, and angsty, but that's not the kind of life Iwasawa actually lived. So for one last performance, she strips away the fantasy and sings about her short life of being lonely and mistreated in a world where it felt like everyone else was allowed to be happy.
Just when you think this is another guitar ballad about being misunderstood, Iwasawa breaks into a triumphant chorus addressed directly to the audience, saying that anyone who feels this way is blessed. She's still singing, but it's become less of a performance and more of an invitation for anyone who's in pain to let it out without fear of judgment.
By the end, she says this song will be her gift to those who need it, she hopes it gives them courage, and the last line of the song is just "thank you. The lyrics are simple and almost improvisational, but it's perfect for the moment.
It turns the audience into a big messy puddle for completely different reasons than "Tori no Uta. Just like in the real world, tragedy in fiction often arises from injustice. People have strong feelings about what should happen, but these feelings don't line up with nature and circumstance most of the time. Unfairness is, well, just not fair. Bad things happen to good people in basically every Jun Maeda work, but timing is everything. It's not so much that the world dumps all over these characters, it's that it chooses to deliver its payload right when we've already been tricked into caring.
Air doesn't start off by telling you the tragic prophecy behind the "girl in the sky. Yukito is a vagrant who's lost his mother and inherited only a fraction of her pretty useless magical powers, but that might change for him if he ever finds the "girl in the sky. At long last, he realizes that Misuzu is his "girl in the sky," and not only is his mother's life quest fulfilled, he's also in love with this girl!
Little does he know that the "girl in the sky" was placed under a curse years ago, after his own ancestors' disastrous attempts to help her ancestor, a winged being and the last of her kind. She will be reincarnated over and over in a human body to always die at the age of 15 upon falling in love. This tiny repeat of history unlocks the spirit of her true self, and its power is too strong to be contained in a human body, so Misuzu will lose herself, weaken, and die within a few months.
All Yukito did was fulfill that prophecy. Good job, lover boy! Free will is an illusion and you've just sealed her doom. Clannad After Story and Angel Beats! We get to know Nagisa for dozens of episodes before she dies, following her relationship with Tomoya from their very first meeting all the way up through their marriage and the arrival of their first child.
Tomoya's initial rejection of his daughter Ushio is terrible, but not unsympathetic. He lost the only woman he ever loved and got a baby he'd obviously never met before on the same day, and the safe barrier of fiction allows the audience to feel the injustice of this character swap even more strongly.
Yurippe suffers a similar cruel fate in Angel Beats! Even as the world begins coming apart around her, she keeps traveling down into the belly of the earth until she finds the broken system "God" left behind. She can take his place and try to rebuild a Perfect World using this system, but it will cost the lives of all her friends.
On the other hand, she can destroy the system completely and save her friends, rendering her entire afterlife's mission pointless and giving her no choice but to accept all this loss and pass on to the next life. We all know that life isn't fair, but life's unfairness tends to matter way more to people when it's not fair to them specifically.
Maeda's stories always give us a reason to be invested in a positive outcome before they slap on a negative one instead, and that disarmingly personal betrayal is what makes us cry. It's not all sad tears, though! Do not let the cute art style fool you, as this World War II focused movie is just as sad as Grave of the Fireflies, if not even more so. The moments of violence and loss are all the more shocking in this film because it also focuses on the good and the simple.
The main protagonist Suzu is an easy character to root for. The anime does not so much focus on the war as it focuses on her life. She is in an arranged marriage, which is neither demonized or romanticized, which is quite refreshing. The war is just an outside force, at least until the end of the film. By the end of the film, it is easy to cry or to at least be in shock by the turn of events.
Made by the same people as Clannad you can see it in the way the character's eyes look , Air TV is another tear-jerker. Like Clannad , it was based on a visual novel that worked a little like a dating game. However, they picked Misuzu to center most of the story on. The protagonist, Yukito, is more of an audience surrogate and there is even a point where he is basically erased and turned into a crow that narrates for us.
To be honest, a lot of fans are still unsure how that happened. It is more of an emotional story rather than a logic one. As the title suggests, this anime is about an earthquake in Tokyo.
For those that do not know, magnitude 8. The main characters are children, Mirai and Yuki, who brave a ruined city to try to make it back home. The biggest tearjerker is the twist, which is that the brother, Yuki, died in the tragedy and has actually been traveling with his sister as a ghost. Code Geass has a lot to offer other than sadness, but it still makes it on this list as one of the saddest anime due to its epic bittersweet ending.
The ending is especially brutal to anyone who loves the protagonist, Lelouch. The protagonist, Tomoya, is a slacker high school student with a carefree attitude, wasting away his academic career down in the doldrums. His attitude changes when unwittingly befriends a strange girl named Nagisa, whose dream is to revive her drama club.
Feeling that there's nothing better to do, Tomoya aids her in her quest, eventually befriending several other girls. Through helping them all with their problems, Tomoya himself begins to open up, enjoying and appreciating life a lot more.
However, the second season, Clannad After Story , is where things really take a turn for the melancholy. Several years after the first season, Tomoya and Nagisa are now adults in love and hope to start a family of their own.
Things become a bit more serious than usual when the daily grind of adult life starts to wear on the two. Later, Nagisa is diagnosed with a strange illness that claims her life right after she delivers her and Tomoya's child Ushio. Sana Hidaka returns to his hometown after having lived in Tokyo for five years. As he walks the streets, he feels uneasy. On a detour to his apartment, he notices a girl in a shrine-maiden outfit watching him. He finds out the next day at school that the girl is his childhood friend, Nanaka Yatsushiro, but she has changed.
Once sweet and innocent, Nanaka is now depressed and sad. Takayuki Narumi is set up with a girl but he cannot follow through with it. Later, Takayuki is planning to meet the girl again but he is delayed and she gets into an accident. She slips into a coma that lasts for three years and awakens to tell Takayuki that she wants to see him again. Twelve-year-old Kouyama Mitsuki is devastated when she is diagnosed with a malignant tumor of the throat.
She had made a promise to the boy she loves that she would one day become a singer, but the illness makes singing impossible. To make matters even worse, two angels of death, Takuto and Meroko, appeared to Mitsuki and informed her that she only had one year left to live. Now Mitsuki is even more motivated to fulfill her dreams, and with a little bit of divine intervention, she begins her quest to become a professional singer.
It tells the tale of two couples, Kuze and Mizuki and Yuuko and Yuu. Alternating between the past and present, as well as between two different twin-cities, the story reveals the connections all of the characters share, as well as their tragic past. When Himura Yuu meets Amamiya Yuuko, she seems to know him but he doesn't know her. But he soon remembers that he knew her long ago and she shares a secret: He was her first love and her first love has not ended yet.
They spend a lot of time together, but unknown to Mizuki, Kuze had contracted a fatal illness and has little time left to live. Kuze decides to break all romantic ties, but things get complicated when Mizuki tells him that she loves him. During the winter, Yuichi is hospitalized for hepatitis.
He tries to escape from the hospital but is beat up by the nurse. One day he meet Rika, another teenager, in the next hospital building. He is fascinated by her beauty, but she is very selfish.
When Rika tells him about her illness, a weak heart valve, he understands why she acts the way she does: She doesn't have long to live. Where is Your Lie In April??? YLIA will always be the 1 most emotional anime in my heart btw :.
You have to add Guilty Crown. Especially because of their music. You can basically experience the sorrow through the music. Has anyone watched grave of the fireflies I know you cannot cover every single series that leaves one in tears but the only one on this entire list I have actually watched is Elfen Lied. Plastic Memories and Kimi no Na wa both belong on this list. They're the only two animes I've ever watched that have made me cry. Plastic Memories should be in this list..
Both are great anime's where in the end it either made me satisfied or unsatisfied. I honestly can't say I have a "best" sad anime I like. That being said, I can, however, tell you out of ALL the different animes out there that jerked my heartstrings and gave me feels Gurren Lagann you know the scenes , final fantasy advent children, claymore, darker than black, colorful movie , FMA some of them eps got me , FMA bro-hood a few manly tears were shed , and lastly Great Teacher Onizuka some of those episodes were straight depressing man.
Those anime I listed were the only ones that got me to cry. I'm a weirdo, I really don't cry on the ones everybody says is supposed to be sad. I can't believe how quickly I'll start crying after hearing Lilium from Elfen Lied. The music coupled with the tragic events have me sobbing with shocking speed. Love the series. A shame it felt so short. Come on! How could you miss Your Lie in April???
Madoka Magika is a "magical girl" anime so sad I would never let my own children watch it. Tokyo Aftershock 8. You need to rethink the article. But most of them are not even mentioned in this list. Memories was amazing, but Melodies sucked. Honestly, where the hell is "Your Lie in April".
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