Top 10 Sad Anime That Will Wreck You
Anime is unusually good at grief, partly because it takes its time and partly because animation can show a feeling without a face to hide behind. These ten are ranked on how thoroughly they earn the tears rather than how many they force.
The rankings
- Grave of the Fireflies. Two children in wartime Japan. Nothing in animation is heavier, and nothing is more necessary.
- Clannad: After Story. The first season is a school comedy. The second is about what comes after, and it breaks people on purpose.
- Your Lie in April. A pianist, a violinist and a letter. The music makes it worse.
- Violet Evergarden. A child soldier learns what love means one letter at a time. Episode ten is the one everyone warns you about.
- Anohana. Childhood friends and the ghost of the one who died. The finale is a group cry.
- A Silent Voice. Bullying, deafness and the long road to forgiveness.
- Angel Beats. The afterlife as a school, and every goodbye lands.
- Plastic Memories. Androids with expiry dates and the humans who love them anyway.
- Wolf Children. Motherhood, told with more honesty than most live action films manage.
- Made in Abyss. Looks like a children’s adventure. Mitty’s episode is the cruelest thing on this list.
What separates sad from manipulative
Every entry here makes you love the characters before it hurts them. That is the difference between grief and a trick.
My take: Grave of the Fireflies is number one because it is not trying to be sad. It is simply true, and that is far worse.
