So, for the one-year mark of the blog, I’ve decided to do a top ten list! This time, it’s the top ten moments from anime that I’ve found darkly emotional. I titled the list as Sad, but Sad doesn’t quite cover it as when preparing the list I wanted to include some things that weren’t traditionally sad, but had more complex emotional profiles, hence the air quotes in the title. The scenes will include sorrow or crying on the part of the audience, but can also be ones that touched on fear or had you crying for reasons other than straight-up tragedy and loss. I did, however, have a couple rules. First, I had to be able to determine a fairly contained scene, rather than a longer sequence. At the very least, it needed to be contained to one episode in the end. Second, it did have to have some element of pathos, it couldn’t be a purely fear-inducing horror moment. Something in the scene had to be something that would make you cry. Third and finally, I both restricted myself to multi-episode shows rather than movies or one-off OVAs and also would not give more than a single mention to a particular property, even if it had many strong moments.
Now, I am not a review-bot who has
watched every Anime in existence (shocking, I know!) and scenes that
threaten to start the waterworks can be intensely personal. So if
you think there’s something else that should be mentioned, either
because I didn’t consider it or because it’s in something I haven’t
spoken about… leave a comment! Let me know! Tell me about the
scenes and shows that moved you. And, if you can, leave a comment as
well telling me what you think about the “Top 10 List” format,
and if this is something that should be an occasional feature.
All that said, while this list is
intended to cover something of a spectrum, it does hit on a LOT of
turning points and especially character deaths, so from this point
forward, there will be spoilers. Consider yourself warned.
First, let’s briefly look at the
“honorable mentions” — an assortment of moments that
didn’t make the top ten, but did at least deserve the nomination.
Yuki Yuna is a Hero – The Audition Tape: The sadness here is from broken dreams; Itsuki wanted to be an idol, and sent an audition tape to follow her dream. Her voice and earnest passion earned a positive response, but by the time she received it she’d lost her voice, possibly permanently, because of Magical Girl-related endeavors. The scenes of her coming to terms with having her dreams snatched from her, especially when we hear her audition tape, are very well-crafted.
AnoHana – Hide and Seek: AnoHana is a show I largely tore into, in part because most of the emotional moments it presented as earnest were more flat or melodramatic because the weren’t set up well. The exception is in the final episode, when a game of Hide and Seek with a fading Menma turns into a goodbye with the waterworks flowing from everyone involved. It’s hard to get crying scenes to reach the audience, and yet in the depths of its ignorance, AnoHana actually managed.
The Promised Neverland – Finding
Connie’s Body: The list, overall, excludes normal “horror”
moments, but the emotion of existential dread does fit. The first
episode of The Promised Neverland gets close to straightforward
horror, but the extra pathos of the discovered corpse being a sweet
little girl we were joyfully seeing off minutes ago makes it worth an
honorable mention.
Steins;Gate – Deleting the Last D-Mail:
This scene is by no means lacking in quality: the sorrow and
desperation of Okarin having to choose between the world’s future
(and Mayuri) on one side and Kurisu on the other is hugely
legitimate, and Kurisu’s last intrusion on the scene, followed by
Okarin’s defeated declaration of victory, is really dynamite.
Dusk Maiden of Amnesia – Final Journal Entries: I said I wouldn’t include longer entries, which is why the entirety of Yuuko-san preparing to vanish isn’t in the top ten, but the last moments where she’s losing her ability to be seen and heard are painful and heartfelt. The end is approaching, and it can’t be stopped and our love-birds trapped on opposite sides of the veil of death have to come to terms with their brief time. At least until the scene after.
Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl
Senpai – Screaming for Mai: This is a show that really knows how to
tug at the heartstrings, but the most tear-jerking moment is oddly
enough the triumphant one, when Sakuta, having remembered Mai and how
precious to him she was, declares his love for her at the top of his
lungs, praying that it will force reality to confront her existence,
and bring her back from the void of non-being she had slid into. And
if not for the fact that she’s one of the two titular characters, you
could really believe it might not work.
With that out of the way, it’s time for
the top ten.
#10: Madoka Magica – Mami’s Death
Who, these days, does not know about
the death of Mami Tomoe, the moment where Madoka Magica really showed
its true colors? This is a scene that’s more traumatic than truly
tragic, but boy howdy does it ever land that trauma. I’ve shared
anime series, including Madoka Magica, with a number of friends and
family members, all of whom are adults and fairly normal in terms of
their media tolerances. Mami’s death is a scene that’s given at
least some of these grown adults nightmares.
I think a big part of what makes this
scene so effective — and this is a comment you’re going to be
hearing a good deal in this exercise — is the timing of the scene.
Mami’s death is actually fairly quick, only a few seconds, but the
motion lingers exactly enough to let you really soak in what’s coming
and what’s just happened. Charolette stretches down to her, we see
her horrified expression, and then the iconic chomp. After that, we
actually get an intense action scene before the real payoff of Mami’s
demise occurs outside the Labyrinth, when Sayaka challenges Homura
over the Grief Seed recovered from the defeated Charolette. However,
that’s not the part people remember. The few seconds of Mami’s
actual death are likely to be seared forever into the brains of many
viewers, along with how those seconds transformed the whole
wavelength that Madoka Magica appeared to be operating on to one much
darker.
#9: Magi – Mogamett’s Redemption
Matal Mogamett, from the second season
of Magi, stands as one of my favorite antagonists in anime I’ve
watched lately. He’s a deep, complex, tragic figure, who is explored
in lesser or greater detail throughout much of the season. For those
who don’t know, especially since I can’t just link a review of Magi
for the fuller explanation, Mogamett is the leader of the nation of
Magnostadt, a country ruled by magicians that’s first heard of when
enchanted weapons begin being a serious problem in circulation. To
both better his magic and find the source of the dangerous magic
weapons trade, Magi Aladdin travels to the academy of Magnostadt
incognito, and lives there for some time. During that time he meets
chancellor Mogamett, and we learn more about what made Magnostadt the
place it is today.
Over a long time, we see how the nation
that was before Magnostadt was a brutal tyranny, and that magicians
had it worst of all. Ultimately, a populist rebellion, spearheaded
by Mogamett and the other magicians, overthrows the old order and
establishes the kingdom of magic in its place. Under Mogamett’s
rule, Magnostadt becomes a place of opulent wonder… but that wonder
is fueled by the desperate and destitute lives of its lowest
non-magician citizens, who are placed in an underground tier of city
where they want for no basic necessities and do no work… but have
their magoi (magical power and life-force) slowly sapped away,
causing them to become lethargic and sickly and ultimately die
miserable, premature deaths in the depths.
This is informed by Mogamett’s own rise
and fall, from how as a youth he wanted to build a better world for
all people, until now as an old man where he only wants to protect
and care for his own people, the magicians. His slide into myopic
racism, even as he retains a kindly core, is excellently executed…
but that’s not what we’re talking about today.
Instead, the scene that really does it
comes much later. Mogamett has offered himself to corruption and
darkness to become the core of a black magic abomination, an act he
performed hoping to defend his city against the foreign power laying
siege to it. However, the abomination runs wild, destroying
everything, and in order to stop it, Aladdin has to cut off its power
source: Mogamett, and Mogamett’s hatred.
That Mogamett will, ultimately, die is
a foregone conclusion, and his death isn’t what’s sad. Instead, as
he and Aladdin interact in mental space, the sorrow comes first from
seeing (sometimes again) all the suffering and indignity that he’s
witnessed and gone through in his life, and then what he does when
Aladdin’s perspective allows him to recapture his once-lofty ideals.
Mogamett, essentially, turns down
‘redemption’. Though his own soul is cleansed (and with that, the
danger of what he created as reduced as it can be), he refuses to
move on to any sort of peace or reward. Why? Because the spirits of
countless others that he damned to a torturous, corrupted existence
are all around him, and still bound to the dark side of fate.
Mogamett chooses to go with them, and accept karmic punishment for
his crimes, even when given a “get out of jail free” card,
because that’s who he really was under the decades of bitterness,
scars, and loss — a person with too much empathy to accept a good
outcome that was only for himself. And it’s tragic and poignant that
Mogamett only remembers as much when it’s far, far too late.
As for why it’s only in the number 9
slot? Magi likes to take its time with these sorts of scenes, and
really hammer in what’s going on. I personally found this one, in
particular, effective, but I wouldn’t blame someone for finding the
repetition and spelling out long-form of what’s going on a little bit
patronizing.
#8: Black★Rock Shooter – At the Hospital Door/Chariot’s Fall
Because of its subject matter,
Black★Rock Shooter is a show that set its self up to either deliver
one of these or fail as they fell flat. Mercifully, the show was
able to pull off at least a few scenes that work very well, and
perhaps the most powerful of those is the one that marks the end of
Kagari’s arc. After Kagari puts herself in the hospital, dragging
Yomi with her to watch over her. Mato, our lead, has none of it, and
challenges both Kagari’s selfishness and Yomi’s self-denial, offering
the latter friendship against the former’s desire to control.
The scene between the three girls is
woven with a battle in an otherworld of color that the audience
doesn’t quite at that point understand. However, out of all the
times in the show the technique is used, it’s timed and arranged best
here, with the blows being struck against Chariot (Kagari’s
alternate) synching up beautifully with Kagari’s tantrum in the real
world. In a sense, this is the point in the show where the alternate
world works, potentially powerfully, as a metaphor rather than the
mystical something-or-other that it actually is. Seeing the action
helps lend weight to the screaming in this instance, because of how
it stretches the pace and visualizes the impact.
Because, when you get down to it, this
is very much a screaming/crying scene. And, true, many of the scenes
on this list have elements of that, but it’s something that’s hard to
get right. When I think about emotional scenes that worked, more of
them have quiet moments to them, that let the weight of what’s being
said sink in. In this scene, the quiet moments were replaced with
visceral imagery, and even saying that should tell you that it wasn’t
a safe choice. Shows need quiet moments, a fact that Black★Rock
Shooter actually seems to understand more often than not since many
of its other moments are given the silent beats and rests that they
need. This one going all out with energy is deliberate, and even
though it easily could have failed for that, I think that choice is
part of why it stands the tallest out of a show full of good tragic
moments
#7: RahXephon – Asahina’s Final Message
It’s no secret to anyone who read my
review, but I had some very mixed feelings about RahXephon. Its
visual storytelling and symbolism were brilliant, but its story was
scattered. Its world and mystery were engrossing, but its answers
were nonexistent. And its diet Evangelion characters did some of
their own things, but could also get lost as you play the “guess
the motivation” game.
One thing that the show did purely
well, though, was the arc of a tertiary character, Asahina. She was
friends with the main character, Ayato, before the show really kicked
off with some hints that she might have been playing the “Tsundere
childhood friend” type. She’s left behind in Tokyo Jupiter,
though, and isn’t seen again until Ayato revisits his old stomping
grounds in the second half of the show.
The exact interchange is somewhat
complicated, but Ayato ends up pulling Asahina out of Tokyo Jupiter
even though she (as she dreads but doesn’t know) is a blue-blooded
Mulian. In order to protect his friend, and perhaps a little because
he’s already wanted anyway, Ayato goes on the lam with her and his
super robot, trying to live roughly off the grid and absolutely on
the move. During this period, it’s clear that Asahina’s feelings for
Ayato are a good deal more than friendship, especially catalyzed by
how he rescued her, but that she feels a deep gulf between them
because of her suspicions of where they stand on the Mulian/Human
divide.
This changes when, one night, the city
they’re staying in is attacked by a Mulian Dolem that is able to
control the city’s power grid. In order to protect Asahina, Ayato
summons RahXephon and does battle. As he does, it becomes apparent
to the audience (who can see all) but not to him that the Dolem is
somehow tied to Asahina’s life, so that the damage he inflicts on the
Dolem is mirrored onto her.
While this is going on, perhaps
suspecting that she’s going to die and isn’t going to get another
chance, Asahina’s desperation reaches the boiling point. She tries
to write a message to Ayato, telling him how deeply she feels, and
all the while her thoughts and feelings flash across the cityscape,
written in the patterns of electric light and darkness that the Dolem
creates.
The focus in the scene is on the
message, and Asahina’s terminal suffering. Any actual “action”
from Ayato fighting the Dolem fades into the background, a looming
meanace as Asahina’s words flicker in and out of existence and she
writhes in agony as she tries to say what she could never previously
manage to put into words, not to mention the dramatic irony of the
fact that Asahina is dying because Ayato is trying to protect her
from something he has every reason to believe will kill her otherwise
(and indeed it might have; we have no reason to believe that
Asahina’s card wasn’t marked either way). The scene’s payoff comes
when, after the steady accelerating and ever more desperate
communication from the dying Asahina, the victorious Ayato returns to
the hotel room and discovers both what he inadvertently did, and that
the last words of a cherished friend who he became an outlaw for were
words of love. This pretty much breaks him – Asahina may not be
mentioned by name very much after this sequence, but she casts a long
shadow over Ayato’s thoughts and actions as he’s reintegrated into a
darker TERRA than the one he left behind, and it sets the emotional
tone of loss, desperation, and despair for the show’s next act.
Supported by RahXephon’s powerhouse visuals, I think it would be
nearly impossible for anyone to not feel something from the sequence,
whatever color your blood is.
#6: Kaguya-sama: Love is War – Can’t Hear the Fireworks
This is the first of two entries on
this list that I feel stretches the definition of “sad”. At
first, it very much is. Kaguya Shinomiya has been called to heel by
her distant and emotionally repressive father, which threatens to
cancel her opportunity to see some summer fireworks with her friends
from the Student Council. The situation is absolutely devastating to
her, which gives me an opportunity to talk about something I haven’t
in these moments: stakes.
One thing that the moments on this
list, at least the ones where something is lost or in jeopardy, have
in common is that they’re technically fairly low-stakes affairs.
Only Mogamett’s death/redemption actually has something beyond the
personal level hanging in the balance, and it’s not the threatened
city/world that makes the scene tragic. Mami dies alone, Asahina’s
message has meaning for only one person who doesn’t see it until too
late, and breaking through to Yomi only changes the life course of a
couple of messed up girls. For Love is War, the stakes are even
lower – we are concerned with not even the life course, but the
momentary happiness or sadness of one girl and to a lesser extent her
friends. We kind of know that if things don’t work out, they’ll all
deal. Nothing is really lost in the long term or the big picture.
And that, I’ll argue, is necessary for
many of these moments, particularly the one here, to work. The thing
is, once the stakes get big enough, as humans we can’t quite deal
with it. One is a tragedy, a million is a statistic. So a lot of
scenes where extras and “red shirt” types get absolutely
massacred, you can watch and be pretty unaffected unless a lot of
careful work is done to humanize and show the threat to or suffering
of particular individuals. On the other hand, we know small
tragedies. Most of us, I’d hazard a guess, have experienced them
ourselves, so we have an immediate and deep understanding of how this
sort of thing can mean the world to someone. So assuming the show
builds empathy with the character in question (it does), there
doesn’t need to be something big at stake, not even a single life.
Kaguya Shinomiya is sad and desperate, and because we empathize with
her, we share her emotions.
But Kaguya being called on by her
father isn’t the real scene. It hits hard, but it’s only the setup.
The scene itself is actually when Kaguya decides to do something
about it, slipping out of her house and making her way towards the
fireworks venue by any means. And… she misses it. She neither
meets up with her friends nor manages to reach a good viewing point
before the display ends. Stuck in an alley, the normally invincible
Kaguya is brought to the lowest point we’ve yet seen her at… which
is when Shirogane appears. He talks a bold and suave way that he’ll
regret the next day, but brings her to Fujiwara and Ishigami so the
four of them, together as it was meant to be, can catch a cab and
race to somewhere another fireworks display should still be visible.
In the end, they end up watching from
the back of the cab as fireworks bloom in the sky. It’s not perfect,
but it’s a moment of absolute catharsis and elation for Kaguya, so
that she says she can’t hear the fireworks over the pounding of her
own heart.
The whiplash really works to the
advantage of the sequence. We go very quickly from Kaguya’s lowest
point to her highest, and whether you’re ready to cry when she is or
ready to cry tears of joy when they’re all together at the end, “I
Can’t Hear the Fireworks” serves as a deeply emotional climax to
the first season of a show that’s mostly comedic antics, pushed
forward with excellent timing and a deep empathy with both the
character and situation.
#5: Haibane Renmei – Reki’s Nightmare
As of this writing, Haibane Renmei is
not a show I’ve talked about on its own. It is, in my opinion, one
of the best if not the best anime I’ve seen (though it isn’t my
favorite, that has different qualifications), but it’s one that’s
devilishly hard to recommend because most of the show consists, when
you really get down to it, of a few girls talking or occasionally
crying in darkened or soft-lit rooms. It’s a highly symbolic,
slightly magical slice of life, but ultimately it is more a slice of
life than anything else.
Key to this discussion are the Haibane
themselves. They’re people with charcoal-gray wings and… that’s
all we really know for sure. The show has some clearer
interpretations but much of the rules of the universe, including the
nature of the lives of everyone in it, is never explicitly explained.
The Haibane come into being fully formed (almost; their wings erupt
shortly after they’re ‘born’ from cocoons) with no memories except a
fading fragment of some dream they experienced before coming to this
world. From an element of their dream, they’re given names.
Eventually they reach their “Day of Flight” when they depart from
the world we know for the show for parts unknown, and in anticipation
of that day, the order that helps and manages them gives them a
revision of their name, one that’s read differently in a meaningful
way to represent their personal growth.
However, some few Haibane become
“sin-bound”. Burdened by a terrible something, they cannot free
themselves and do not achieve their Day of Flight unless they shake
off the status, missing the opportunity forever. Both the main
character, Rakka, and her much-older-as-a-Haibane (but similar-aged
in appearance) mentor Reki grapple with being sin-bound. The most
obvious implication of their stories is that the Haibane are
undergoing a sort of purgatory, and both Rakka and Reki have a much
darker sin than do the majority of their peers: suicide. Rakka
overcomes her sin-bound nature earlier in the show thanks to personal
epiphany and some clever spiritual guidance, but in the final episode
Reki still hasn’t managed… and her time to fly or not is at hand.
She knows she’ll soon be a failure, and is suffering a breakdown from
the threat of it, one that’s worsened by the guardians giving her her
“other name”, which will change from “Small stones” (as she
remembered a gravel path of sorts from her dream) to “one who is
trampled upon” unless she can break free. In her room, she works
hard on her art, with which she tried to depict the dark dream that
brought her to this world.
As Rakka confronts Reki, and tries to
help her see the light, the paintings come to life, and Reki’s
memories with them, recreating the time of her death. The path of
small stones is a train track, and the engine is coming, ready to run
Reki down once again. Like Black★Rock Shooter, we juxtapose an
emotionally charged argument between characters with intense action,
but here instead of a timed battle, it’s the slowly unfolding madness
of Reki’s darkest hour, the depths of her despair filling up the
room, literally and figuratively transporting us to the experience of
a girl ready to commit suicide as another girl pleads desperately to
save her friend from ruin, until at last Rakka breaks through, not
only managing to free Reki from her sin-bound state so she can fly,
but also bodily pulling her out of the way of a phantom locomotive
for good measure.
This is one of the most charged and
intense climaxes I’ve seen, essentially without reservation. Again,
there are no worlds at stake, just the soul of one poor person at the
end of her rope, but the raw intensity of both the emotions and the
actions in Reki’s nightmare world pushes it above Shonen battles and
the like. The first time I saw it, I was glued to the screen for the
entire sequence, and left with a lingering adrenaline buzz I’d rarely
experienced from media in my adult life.
For making this list, it really is the
depths of Reki’s despair. The show forces you to sit behind the eyes
of a suicidal girl. It’s tragic, and it’s uncomfortable, and it
absolutely should be. This isn’t the top moment on the list, in some
ways because it’s too intense for the metric I’m measuring here, but
it is absolutely one of the most powerful moments you’re likely to
encounter in anime.
And it’s in a show that could all too
easily be written off as cute girls doing cute things if the viewer
doesn’t look deeply.
#4: Darling in the Franxx – Life Returns to Earth
This is the other one that, for me at
least, was significantly different than the “traditional sad”.
It’s a strange experience, so before I describe it, here’s the setup:
Hiro and Zero Two, the lead characters of the show, have sacrificed
themselves to destroy the home planet belonging to VIRM, liberating
the souls they’d sealed away at the cost of their own lives. It’s
sad, but it’s not really worth this list. What I felt compelled to
write about is what happens after.
Earth, and life on it, moves on. In a
series of short scenes we see the characters we’ve cared about, minus
the main couple, grow up and find their way forward. No longer
children nor Parasites, they have to find their own way forward. The
Franxx stand as silent monuments. The Klaxosaurs return to the Earth
itself, restoring life to the desert land. Slowly, steadily, people
move on. They find their places. They build for the next
generation. At the end, we focus on a Sakura tree that sprouted
where Zero Two’s petrified mortal form had once stood, watching it
and civilization around it grow, from a sapling on a bluff to a grand
old tree in a park in some futuristic city.
Beneath that tree, a little boy and
little girl, implied to be the reincarnations of the leads connected
across time, meet each other for the first time. A new story begins.
This sequence threatened to start the
waterworks. It’s not the only time on this list where I felt myself
tearing up the first time I watched it (#3, #1, and a couple of the
honorable mentions also did as much), and it’s strange because it’s
not conventionally sad. But it is moving, perhaps the one moment in
a show that was largely much more fun than “poignant” that tugs
at heartstrings, and it does it very well. I kind of liken it to the
part at the end of Toy Story 3 that made everyone cry. You know the
scene. If you want to claim not to, it’s the one where the Toys are
passed down. It’s what they want, what the kid wants, even what Andy
wants after a fashion. It should be a happy moment, and it is, but I
guarantee you that everyone in the theater was either crying or
fighting hard not to.
In both cases, what we have is a
culmination and a changing of the guard. It’s a quiet yet emotional
acknowledgment that everything is coming to a close, and we will not,
in fact, be seeing once again the stuff we’d grown to like. The
adventure doesn’t continue, at least not in the way it had gone so
far.
The pacing in the “Life Returns”
sequence is exceptional. In order to have an impact, like it does,
it needs to linger. We have to soak in each step, each ending. But
it also needs to be quick. Each vigenette is very brief and has an
extremely concise point, leaving just enough room to get a last touch
of that precious character interaction on our farewell tour.
The changes to the world and the
environment are also powerful. For most of its run, Darling in the
Franxx set us up with a look and feel that’s strongly maintained. In
the ending, we see the look and feel – the world we knew – slowly
erased, with the weight that it’s being replaced with something
better. The dead, desert world patrolled by monsters and robots is
no more, and in its place a green earth we’d be more familiar with
emerges. The Plantations, the Franxx, the Klaxosaurs… they’re all
gone now.
In a sense, with an ending like this,
we watch each element of the show we knew, every character and every
concept, “die”. It’s happy, because what’s really happening is
that things are becoming better, but you cry because you’re not going
to see them again. The show goes to the Gray Havens, after a
fashion. And yes, I am aware that I’m talking about Darling in the
Franxx. It’s a show I have a lot to say about, but really digging
into all its triumphs and failures is for another time.
And of course, there is the
reincarnation angle at the end. I’ll be honest, I think the
sniffling for me was significantly before that, in the last vignettes
we had with the remnants of Squad 13. Part of that is probably that
it lets Hiro and Zero Two’s ending in the depths of space really sink
in. When they die, it’s a shock, so you don’t cry just yet, but
you’ve got that hanging over you as you see the world that sacrifice
saved flourishing without them. But the meeting under the tree does
put a powerful capstone on the whole thing; the last seconds of
Franxx recall the last seconds of the film “Your Name”, and
that’s somewhere that even an unfavorable comparison functions as a
positive mark more often than not. I could totally see that moment
getting someone.
A bizarre little slice of happy-sad
from a very mixed show, but worth mentioning very highly all the
same.
#3: Assassination Classroom – Final Roll Call
This one is more traditional and
extremely powerful. At the end of Assassination Classroom,
Korosensei’s card is marked. The super-powered yellow octopus, we
know for the last few episodes, is not going to be able to escape his
demise. Instead, its a matter of what gets him: the final trap set
by the governments of earth, the class he taught for a year who came
to care deeply for him and their bond with him over that time, or his
chief tormentor and failed first pupil. Class 3-E puts all their
skills to use to get the chance to say goodbye properly, and the
final, deranged form of the Reaper has been put out of its misery.
All that remains is a Korosensi too exhausted to move, and his
beloved students, who know what they have to do.
It takes most of an episode. The
students all come together, making an effort to show unity in their
final “assassination”, as Korosensi takes roll one last time,
acknowledging every one of his students and remembering the path they
walked together, how they learned self-esteem and he learned
kindness.
There isn’t that much I can say about
the scene. It’s mostly the name of each member of the class being
called out in a quiet voice, followed by a cut to that character, and
the look in their eyes (sad, often crying) as they answer roll
knowing that the teacher they love is about to die, but that this is
the best way left for it to happen. It’s everything the Honorable
Mention from AnoHana wanted to be and more, and is one of those
scenes that, in its deep sorrow and relentless inevitability, is sure
to make even hardened killers feel like crying.
#2: Robotics;Notes – Mizuka’s March to a Fall
I talked about this scene a ton in my
review of Robotics;Notes, probably more that I should have talked
about one scene in a traditional review. Like Mami’s death, this is
one where you don’t exactly cry because the tragedy is mixed in with
enough horror to keep you watching with rapt attention rather than
rubbing your eyes. However, it’s also one of the most effective
single scenes I’ve encountered.
The setup is this: Mizuka, who has a
robotic exoskeleton on her legs to allow her to walk, has been hacked
by a sinster power, and her legs are marching her, slowly but
inescapably, towards a cliff. Terrified as she realizes she can’t
control her own motion, she tries to ask the main character, a friend
she was talking to, to help her stop, though you can already see in
her eyes that she’s considering that it might not be possible.
Sure enough, it isn’t, and the scene
takes extreme pains to show you every way in which it isn’t, It’s
relentless, and it’s inevitable. The main character tries
everything. He gets in her way, pushes back, and even manages to
tackle her to the ground once in order to stop the march of the
mechanical legs, but even that, which provides a brief moment of
hope, isn’t enough, as the exoskeleton wrenches her horrifically back
to her feet to keep plodding along towards certain death. In the
end, he’s fighting back with everything he’s got but still losing
inch by inch until Mizuka, seeing he’s about to be shoved off the
cliff himself, uses her arms to push him aside, after which she
finally takes her fatal tumble.
The scene is absolutely unforgiving.
With Mami’s death, the effective part was in how sudden it was, and
making the audience feel how fragile her life was and how easily it
could be stripped away by a single mistake. With Mizuka’s death,
it’s all about how inescapable her fate is. The fight against it is
so long and so fierce that by the time she finally falls the dread of
it has fully sunk in, and yet you know that there was absolutely
nothing the protagonists could have done. From when “Kagome,
Kagome” wailed over her phone, she was done for. Bravery and
endurance are great, but they don’t stand up to the tireless,
mindless force of a subverted machine.
While this scene is more about dread
than crying, I do think it qualifies as a sad scene, since it’s
ultimately a futile struggle to protect a fun and affable person we’d
gotten to know over the course of the show. That futility is
something that I don’t think is tapped into all too often, and when
Robotics;Notes goes for it here, you feel every step. As the
audience, you don’t want Mizuka to die, but you’re also powerless to
stop it – you can only hope that something can be done, and have
that hope dashed over and over again until the end.
#1: Made in Abyss – So Much Trauma
I said I would have only one slot for
any given show, and I’m holding to that with Made in Abyss. But,
talking about traumatic crying scenes in Made in Abyss, there are two
that must be mentioned.
The first, which on its own would hold
a lower place, occurs after Reg and Riko make a narrow escape from
the Orbed Piercer, a very deadly giant porcupine creature with
poisonous quills that managed to injure Riko. As she suffers from
both the poison and the curse of the Fourth Layer causing her to
bleed from every orifice thanks to the path of their escape, she
tries to instruct Reg how to tend to her, intending to have him break
and then amputate her arm after applying a tourniquet to keep the
poison from spreading deeper into her body. Reg, desperate to save
her yet horrified to hurt her, tries his best to follow her
instructions… only for Riko to fall silent. Reg screams out for
her, utterly broken, afraid that she’s died in his care, sobbing
until Nanachi appears and reveals that Riko can still be saved.
The moment where the show tries to
bluff us into believing that Riko has died is actually surprisingly
effective. In a meta sense, we know she can’t really die (unless, in
the moment, you come up with some theory about Reg hauling her back
to the “Curse-repelling vessel”) but it sure is shot, edited, and
paced like a dramatic death, pulling you along if you have any
ability to suspend disbelief.
But the real #1 comes later. Nanachi
has a price for helping out Riko: Reg needs to use his Incinerator to
kill Mitty, Nanachi’s dear friend who has been reduced to being an
immortal, suffering flesh blob creature. It’s an errand of mercy,
but an extremely sad one all the same. The setup is ceremonious.
Mitty is brought to a beautiful place, surrounded with the toys and
stuffed animals that brought her comfort in her twisted state, and
Nanachi tries to say goodbye.
This is a crying scene in every sense.
Especially having seen their backstory, and how much Mitty meant to
Nanachi before, it manages to double dip its tragedies between the
loss of a friend and putting down a suffering but beloved pet. These
are real, raw pains, and Nanachi clearly goes through everything,
even running in with Reg’s Incinerator at the ready, heedless to the
danger, to say her last, tear-filled goodbye when she couldn’t hold
the dignified form any longer.
It has its somber moments, it has its
weepy moments, and it is entirely heart-wrenching, and well worthy of
the #1 slot on this list as far as I’m concerned. I wish there was
more that I could say about it, but like so many things Made in Abyss
did, it’s just powerful on every level. It takes catharsis, quiet,
and active keening to the top level, and all together.
And in case you’re wondering, the scene
is no less impactful in the Manga. Most of these scenes, if I teared
up, I did so the first time encountering it, in anime form that has
the advantage of timing. Even knowing Mitty’s demise was coming, and
what it was going to be like, didn’t stop it from hitting almost as
hard in black and white panels as it did in full color and motion.