Top 5 Tear-Jerker Anime That Will Make You Cry
Earned, not engineered. Five anime that make grown adults cry, and the reasons why.
Every anime fan has one: the show that made them cry so hard they had to pause it. These five come up again and again when people talk about it, in Japan and everywhere else.
No spoilers below, only why each one hurts. Watch them with someone, or at least with a box of tissues.
1. Clannad: After Story (2008)
2008 · TV series · 24 episodes · Kyoto Animation
It takes its time making you love this family. Then it tests them.
After Story follows Tomoya and Nagisa out of school and into adult life, with all the weight that brings. Tomoya's relationship with his own father is the backbone of it.
Fans have called it the saddest anime ever made for over fifteen years. It is also, in the end, deeply hopeful.
2. anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day (2011)
2011 · TV series · 11 episodes · A-1 Pictures
A group of childhood friends, torn apart by one death, brought back together by her ghost.
Jinta is a teen shut-in. One summer, Menma, his childhood friend who died years ago, appears to him and asks him to grant a wish she cannot remember. To do it he has to reunite the friends who stopped talking after she was gone.
Eleven episodes about grief and guilt, and a final scene of hide-and-seek that has made millions of people cry.
3. Your Lie in April (2014)
2014 · TV series · 22 episodes · A-1 Pictures
A piano prodigy who cannot hear his own music, and a violinist who refuses to let him hide.
Kosei stopped playing piano after his mother died. Then he meets Kaori, a wild, joyful violinist who drags him back onto the stage. The music is animated so well you can almost feel it.
It is a story about how art helps you survive loss, and the final letter is one of the most famous tear-jerker moments in anime.
4. Violet Evergarden (2018)
2018 · TV series · 13 episodes · Kyoto Animation
Every client's letter is a small story about love, and almost every one will get you.
Violet writes letters for people who cannot find the words, while trying to understand the last thing her commanding officer told her. Each episode is a self-contained story about a family, a soldier, a playwright or a dying mother.
Episode 10 is the one people warn you about. The whole series is a quiet, beautiful lesson in grief.
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5. Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
1988 · Film · Studio Ghibli
Two children, alone at the end of a war. It tells you how it ends in the first minute.
Seita and his little sister Setsuko try to survive in Japan in 1945 after losing their mother. Isao Takahata shows their small joys, fireflies, fruit drops, a beach, and lets the war take them away piece by piece.
It is not entertainment so much as an experience. Most people watch it once and never forget it.
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If you can only take one, Violet Evergarden is the gentlest. If you want to cry the most, Clannad: After Story. If you want to feel it for days, Grave of the Fireflies.
How we ranked: drawn from the titles fans name most often as the saddest anime across the major community and Japanese reader polls, then ordered by Anime Crush.