Crying is supposed to be good for your health. It's said to regulate emotions, allow us to decompress and process our feelings, and sometimes it's just a great stress reliever. In that way, you might even consider crying a form of self care. So today, let's practice some self care with the help of everyone's favorite Japanese export: anime! Get your tissues ready as we go over seven of the saddest anime of all time.
Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day (2011)
Genre(s): Coming of Age
A group of young, close-knit friends drift apart after one of them, Menma, dies in an accident. Five years pass, with the friend group having fractured off. Each of them exist separate from each other, but all of them carry the pain of losing a dear friend at such a young age. When the ghost of Menma appears to one of them, named Jintan, he attempts to rally the broken friends in an attempt to help Menma pass on to the afterlife. Despite the pain of dredging up all the events of that day and the pain of confronting tamped down feelings of blame and guilt, the friends drag themselves and each other out of that hole of grief and heal. The sadness of this anime lies in a few places. Menma's death when she and her friends were only in sixth grade was both a tragedy in and of itself, and in how it split apart her best friends. The subsequent feelings of grief, guilt, and anger that the former friends hold onto as they grow up, and how deeply it still hurts them, is something that anyone who has experienced the loss of a loved one has felt intimately. The ending of this series is beautiful and bittersweet, and will definitely leave you with tears in your eyes.
Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 (2009)
Genre(s): Disaster
When a magnitude 8 earthquake destroys the city of Tokyo, two young siblings, Mirai and Yuki, are caught up in the disaster. They had been in the city to visit a museum exhibit on robots, but the earthquake and its aftermath have left them without a way to return to their parents. They meet a motorcycle courier named Mari, and together, they traverse the ruined city wasteland to reunite the children with their mother and father. The three deal with realistic consequences of a massive natural disaster, such as aftershocks, the loss of life, and scarce resources. Much of the sadness of this series comes from that, the aftermath of disaster, and how our main characters navigate it. There's also the uncertainty of if Mirai and Yuki are going to be able to find their parents.
Erased (2016)
Genre(s): Mystery, Sci-fi, Thriller
A 29 year old man named Satoru has a strange, time altering ability called "Revival." He's able to travel back in time, before a life-threatening incident, and prevent it from happening. One day, his own mother is murdered by an unknown person, so Satoru travels back to save her. However, rather than arriving moments before the murder, he instead travels back eighteen years, putting him into the body of his ten year old self. This gives him not only the opportunity to save his mother, but to save the lives of his three childhood friends, who died as the result of a kidnapping. The sadness in this anime is intertwined with the desire to change the past, to save those you love. A key part of what makes this anime so gut-wrenching is the dramatic irony that the story offers. We know what happened and might even still happen to Satoru's friends and mother, and there are several times where Satoru grapples with the idea that maybe this time, he can't change the past. Maybe no matter how hard he tries, he can't stop the deaths of the most important people to him, and there's something of an all-consuming sadness and horror in that kind of a realization.
I Want To Eat Your Pancreas (2018)
Genre(s): Coming of Age, Drama
This film follows Haruki and his popular classmate Sakura. Sakura has a terminal pancreatic illness that will soon kill her, but despite that, she hasn't told anyone, and has instead been attending school and attempting to live as normally as possible. Haruki discovers this upon finding Sakura's diary in a hospital waiting room, and from then on, they become incredibly close. The two spend lots of time together, taking a long train ride, doing things from Sakura's bucket list, and sneaking out to see fireworks before Sakura suddenly dies, not from her illness, but from being stabbed to death by a stranger. The sheer sadness that Haruki must deal with is not from Sakura's inevitable death, but from her sudden, unexpected, and completely random death. The rest of the film follows Haruki as he slowly picks up the pieces from Sakura's death, and in doing so, informs Sakura's best friend Kyoko of her illness. The two are brought together in the way that only two people who have lost someone dear to them can.
A Silent Voice (2016)
Genre(s): Drama
Shoya, a young schoolboy, leads his class in bullying their deaf classmate named Shoko. However, when this bullying catches the attention of the principal, the class is punished and turns on Shoya. He's shunned far into high school, leaving him feeling so isolated that he considers suicide. Instead, he decides he'll make amends for his past actions by finding Shoko and reintroducing her to her past classmates, giving her the ability to form the friendships with them that she couldn't back then. The two reunite with Shoya's old elementary school friends, but when a rift forms between Shoya and his friends, Shoko blames herself and tries to commit suicide to atone for it. Shoya stops her just in time. The two both confront their feelings of blame for the other's predicament and their suicidal ideations, and agree to continue living together. On top of the saddening subjects this film presents - suicide, bullying, isolation - how the characters struggle with their situations in life carries with it a permeating air of melancholy.
Your Lie In April (2014)
Genre(s): Drama, Romance
Kosei is a child piano prodigy, but when his mother dies suddenly, he has a mental breakdown during a recital and abandons the piano. For two years, he avoids the piano and music altogether, until Kaori shows up. Kaori is a violinist, bright, bubbly, and free-spirited, and she helps Kosei to bring himself back to the piano. She helps him learn to play in a way that isn't structured and stiff, but in a more freeing, creative way. It's revealed after Kaori collapses during a performance that she's sick, and is deteriorating. She becomes depressed, and to help her regain her old vigor and encourage her, Kosei plays a duet with another person. Wanting to one day play another duet with Kosei, Kaori decides to undergo a dangerous surgery in hopes of recovering. She dies during the operation. After her death, the devastated Kosei is given a letter Kaori wrote him, revealing both her feelings for him and why it was she lived so freely in a truly bittersweet ending. How Kosei's mother's death impacts him, the tragedy of Kaori's illness and death, and the revealing of feelings and motives too late is all played out in a beautifully sorrowful manner, accompanied by a moving soundtrack.
Made In Abyss (2017)
Genre(s): Sci-fi, Adventure, Fantasy
A young orphan girl named Riko lives in a strange, fantastical world. The town she lives in circles around a giant, cavernous hole in the earth known only as The Abyss. Cave Raiders descend into the Abyss to search for artifacts, but those who ascend contract a disease known as the Curse of the Abyss when they return. The deeper someone goes into the Abyss, the more severe the curse becomes. Riko's mother, a type of legendary Cave Raider known as a 'White Whistle', is presumed dead after descending into the cave and never returning, but that doesn't stop Riko from wanting to be a White Whistle just like her mother. Soon, Riko meets a robot boy named Reg, and they discover a message from Riko's missing mother, stating she'll be waiting for her at the bottom of the abyss. Determined to find her, Riko and Reg descend, leaving behind everyone and everything they know. The sadness in this series is mixed with horror, as these two young characters struggle to find both themselves and Riko's mother in a dark, mysterious, and sometimes terrifying environment. This series has less of a permeating, constant sadness like some of our other entries, but a strange mix of sadness, pain, dread, and horror that culminates into a perfect blend of emotional suffering, for both the characters and you.