Like, I have a bit of trouble crying, so watching sad stuff is really cathartic. I've lost count of how many times i've watched grave of the fireflies and i have a special save for the ending of priority: tuchanka in ME3/the end of the Citadel party. And today my boyfriend got me rewatching anohana, which is one of my favorite animus and i cannot even think about it without crying, and it got me thinking if anyone else had recs for other sad anime? I'm really behind on the current releases of my misery porn. I mean, shit. anohana. The opening makes me cry. the ending makes me cry. the actual ending of the anime had me hidden under the covers for the entire afternoon, and i marathoned that shit, i was barely even concious. Nowadays I can't binge watch it because each new episode requires emotional preparation. and i really need revenge on this whole him making me go through it again thing.
Sad things are my fav. I know everyone's probably seen it, but Puella Magi Madoka Magica is my go-to for deep catharsis. Other favorites are the D-Reaper arc of Digimon Tamers (I know it's a kids show but god DAMN I recommend it so much). But I'm gonna watch the fuck out of this thread bc I need recs of things that'll destroy me :'D *fistbump* Right there with you. Also the final mission, but that's a commitment, because it takes an hour and a half to play and then I cry for a solid two hours after. Just listening to the track "An End, Once and For All" makes me teary.
Confession: despite having the ME3 ending spoiled to shit, i still cant bring myself to finish the game. I got all teary during the banging kaidan scene despite how atrocious biowares sex is, I am not prepared. BUT DOOD, Digimon Tamers. that's one motherfucking quality children's cartoon, I fucking love that arc. Tamers is probably the best digimon season. I just remembered that the ending of Chrono Crusade is pretty much a bummer, even if the ending is sorta a trainwreck because it split from the manga and the ending of the manga is way better (and also sad. so sad) There's also Fruits Basket, which is probably my favorite shoujo - though the manga is, again, a lot better. There's no one safe and whole and happy in that cast. im REALLY hoping the sequel is good. Oh, and I think Wolf's Rain is pretty sad, even if not a reeeal tearjerker.
Tamers was so damn good. They made such an effort to have real characters rather than archetypes, and it shows in how rewatchable it is. I love the other seasons, but they don't hit as hard. Tamers was less "let's have an episode for THIS character, then THIS character etc..." and more of an actual plotted story. I remember rewatching it a few years back and being destroyed by Jeri and Impmon's character arcs. The fact that a kids show had the guts to show that sometimes hard things don't always make people stronger, but sometimes leave people broken and they don't always get better. Also the sheer number of amazing family relationships shown. No useless parents here, or if they are *cough* Rika's mom *cough* it's not played for laughs, but shown as a source of pain for the characters. I don't blame you. The fact that it ends and the credits roll just breaks me so hard. As sad as the endings are or aren't, the fact that the journey is over is devastating. I felt the same way with Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.
If we want to go with utter sadness, I feel obligated to bring up Fate/zero. RIIIIIDER At least there's a canonical AU wherein Irisviel and Kiritsugu have a somewhat happier family...
speaking of "Japanese WW2 movies for maximum emotional devastation" Barefoot Gen, Spoiler: The infamous atom bomb scene it get's even more fucked up when you realize that these stories are basically "a barely fictionalized version of the author's life, with small details changed" (the brother dies at the start of Grave of the Fireflies specifically because he feels survivor's guilt and thinks he should have died, and in Barefoot Gen he is there when his mother tries to rescue the rest of his family from their burning home. The reality was he was still somewhere in Hiroshima and a neighbor had to keep her from killing herself trying to save them since it was futile. He heard the story enough times though that he wrote himself in.)
Solty Rei. It's a mix of sci-fi and fantasy where there's something called the "aurora shell" that prevents people from aerial travel (because it holds the atmosphere of the planet in place), and something hitting the aurora shell caused a cataclysmic event called the Blast Fall. A bunch of people died, some had to be fixed with robotics and were called "resembles" and the titular character Solty is 100% resemble and no one understand where she came from. The main character, Roy Revant, is a bounty hunter who lost his daughter in the Blast Fall and it sets up for a really interesting and heartwrenching show. A lot of it is plot twists and half-truths that you need to watch to the end to understand.
