I’m kinda surprised nobody has mentioned Sakamichi no Apollon (or Kids on the Slope if you prefer). It’s a great drama about the power of friendship and music and it’s a total roller coaster. The only anime I can compare it to in terms of emotional twists and turns is AnoHana, though Sakamichi definitely had a happy ending. It’s the kind of happy ending that makes you cry anyway if you’re a punk like me though haha
Per recommendation, I will be starting out that anime pretty soon. Seeing this post makes me even more hype for it now 
I’ve recently finished this series and I can totally agree with this statement. FLY HIGH! MAKE IT! INTO THE NEW WORLD THAT I SEEK!
I guess I get where you’re coming from but… I only liked that story a bit better than the other one. Sure, the other one was very cliche, and the resolution seemed a bit rushed, but it was also very real.
I should get started on the sequel!
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Glad to see Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 is popping up fairly frequently here. I don’t hear much about it, so it’s good to see it get some well deserved recognition.
If we’re going to put Toradora! on this list, then I’ll go ahead and add A Lull in the Sea (or Nagi no Asukara), since that one hit me a lot harder. Same with 5 Centimeters per Second: if it’s on the list, then I’m adding The Garden of Words. I wouldn’t really label any of these four as tearjerkers per se, but they do manage to turn on the waterworks at times.
Other two, surely?
I could never get far through melodies. Ended up dropping it after a few years iirc.
It was too Jdrama-ey an anime for me. There was some tension every single episode and it never really had moments of relief from what I remember.
Yeah, it’s pretty high-emotion the whole way through. I had to wait for it to be over so I could marathon it, since there was no way waiting a whole week between episodes was going to work. Though I did have to take a break every few episodes to breath.
Well damn. Most of my go to titles have already been mentioned: TotaDora!, Ef a Tale of Memories, AnoHana, Your Lie in April.
I guess I still have two titles I can contribute with: Elfen Lied (once you get past the VERY bloody exterior) and Ef a Tale of Melodies (I still don’t understand why people over look Melodies).
For me it’s K-On at the end of the 2nd season, Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai at some point (been a while), Tamayura at certain parts for certain reasons, and kinda AnoHana which was already mentioned
There were a few others that were supposed to be feelsy but didn’t quite manage to do it for me, but I still liked and enjoyed them, these mainly being Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso/Your Lie in April, Toradora, and I think Shinsekai yori and Shiki are dramas too?
And then there’re shows like Plastic Memories where I’m just like “…eh”^^
I’m sure I forgot some, but those are the ones I could think of without looking at my list
I will always suggest Full Moon o Sagashite when it comes to these threads, it’s such a beautiful show. The only downside is having to push through the many ‘filler’-type episodes in the middle and even then, these at the very least work to establish an atmosphere of happiness and help make the climax more impactful.
So, I just finished Now and Then, Here and There, and bloody hell, that was one sad experience.
I recommend it to everyone, it was made by the same person who made **Grave of the Firefly ** and is without a doubt one of the saddest yet amazing things I have watched in my entire life.
Here is a quick introduction with slight spoilers" A young man named Shyu meets a girl named LaLaRu on his way back from a kendo tournament he lost and decides to talk to her because of a promise he made to himself. After a couple of minutes of conversation, a bizarre shock happens revealing two dragon-like machine that try to abduct the girl. After trying to fight them off, the boy is teleported with the abducters and LaLaRu in a vessel on a strange planet. The planet he landed on is in a constant war state because of a mad man named king Hando, who abduct childrens from villages to enthrall them and force them into his army. he promise them freedom when the war is over, but burns their village without them knowing they have nothing to return to. He also forces the women to reproduce with his soldiers to increase his numbers. Shyu is forced to join the army, but decides to fight back in order to save the mysterious LaLa Ru from Hando and to free the children who are his slaves. it is a devastating show, so do not expect a happy ending. However, it is worth your time, especially since it is only 13 episodes.
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One of the classics~ The OP is a bit too much of an ED though 
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Looks like a lot of the shows that I would mention have already been mentioned so I guess I’ll recommend Someone’s Gaze or Dareka no Manazashi which is a short made by the same team who gave us 5 Cm Per Second and The Garden of Words.
I think the reason why a lot overlook Melodies is because it deals with a rather questionable subject matter which understandably turned a lot of people off.
Now that I finished the series yesterday, I second that…SOMEDAY SO I BELIEVE!!!
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Watching that was one of the most powerful 5-10 minutes I could get from any show. I also highly recommend it.
Having just finished Melodies, I have two answers to that:
a) It had much less emotional impact than memories
b) I must say, it suffered from a very convenient plot device that immediately shifted one of the stories
If you like Anohana, you should also watch “The Anthem Of The Heart” which is a movie that the Anohana team worked on. I’m not sure how sad it is, but the Anohana team worked on it so I’m expecting good feels.
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Me and @Kaze watched that in a cinema in Japan and I gotta say, it didn’t have as much emotional impact as AnoHana, so you shouldn’t go in there expecting to cry like a baby. Instead it had a very meaningful and realistic story of the struggles of youth and their inner psyches
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I’m a very emotional person when it comes to anime, so I’ve cried during a lot. To date I’ve cried during 58 different anime series and about 20-30 anime movies and shorts. Barring some of the ones already mentioned, these are some of the ones that have left me crying pretty hard.
In terms of series:
Cross Game - It’s a fantastic sports drama that serves as a character study. It arguably has my favorite pilot episode in anime. If you’re interested in watching it, just watch the first episode, and you’'ll know if you want to continue.
Non Non Biyori - This show isn’t really known for being sad, but there were a couple of episodes that just broke my heart.
Aria - This is the ultimate feel good anime and my second favorite anime behind Little Busters!. This series isn’t particularly sad, I mean there are a couple of sad episodes, but I mostly cried out of happiness and amazement of the beauty of the show. The atmosphere is so soothing and each episode delivers its own message incredibly well. The ending of the series is my personal favorite in anime and one of the most emotional things I’ve ever witnessed.
K-On! - After a few dozen episodes with the girls, I found myself torn apart as graduation neared and it made me realize how close to the end I was. Despite most people thinking it’s a show about nothing, I believe it to have plenty of substance. Paying attention to how the girls are characterized and developed through a lot of subtleties really helps one grow attached to them by the end. I know a lot of people that have given this show a re-watch or gone into the second season with this in mind and gone from hating the show to loving it. The movie had me in tears as well.
Isshuukan Friends - This really tugged at my heart stings. I think the show is best described by this description I found on Reddit.
Each week, you walk out your back door. There’s a big, shady lawn and in the middle, a pit of pillows. They’re always warm from the sun. They’re always clean, and they smell of vanilla. Once a week, you’re allowed to go out and jump into this pit of pillows, and each week it’s just as glorious as the last.
But every time, just as you jump, there’s the worry in the back of your mind that one of these weeks, there will be rocks and sharp metal under a single layer of pillows.
While Legend of the Galactic Heroes did make me cry my eyes out a couple of times, I definitely wouldn’t recommend it as a tear-jerker. I was several dozen episodes of space politics and war in before it managed to make me shed tears.
In terms of movies:
When Marnie Was There - This is my second favorite movie (behind the K-On! movie) as well as my favorite standalone film of all time. It’s Ghibli’s magical realism in the form of a coming of age story about a girl learning to decrease the distance between her and others while learning from and about this mysterious girls she meets one day. If you pay attention, you can actually figure out the big mystery surrounding Marnie before they explain it to you, but it still hit me really hard when they got around to it.
It’s been a while since I watched them, so I can’t say much, but Wolf Children, The Wind Rises, and Millennium Actress hit me pretty hard as well.
In terms of shorts:
Dareka no Manazashi - I watch a lot of anime shorts, and this is easily my favorite. It’s about growing up and how your relationship with your family can change once doing so.
Anemone - I was pretty indifferent about this short until the very end. It’s about depression, and I found the ending to be incredibly uplifting.
Omoi no Kakera - A short dedicated to the 3/11 Tohoku earthquake. It’s about a girl as she remembers her mother who was killed in the earthquake
Blossom - Another short dedicated to the Tohoku earthquake about remembering those affected by it but without a character of focus this time.
Mahou Tsukai Jiji - A story about a man who hates his office job remembers how his grandfather used to play with him and uses that as inspiration to pursue his real passion.
Seeing this topic, aside from the popularly-known-to-bring-people-to-tears anime, I’d like to bring up:
One Piece
It is just your generic long-running Shonen tale adventure of a free spirited, passionate young boy, and it’s ridiculously long. While I haven’t gotten beyond the Fishman Island arc for a long time already, I just remember it having a number of tearjerking scenes directly proportional to its number of cours. Yes, that many. It makes going through its 4th OP (Bon Voyage) and 14th OP (Fight Together) really painful. ;u;
Meanwhile, Code Geass, while not really focusing on the drama, has its fair share of sad moments as well. (S1 spoilers) It was certainly a bad idea to have Euphemia as my favorite character. :(((
Strongly seconding White Album 2 and Toradora recommendations. White Album 2 in particular is especially fantastic and strongly centers on conflict driven by character flaws, which is my favorite variety of conflict.
I’d honestly also recommend Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo. I don’t think it necessarily qualifies as a tearjerker, but it does have its moments and one of the most enjoyable casts I’ve ever experienced to boot.
YESSS ! Episode 20 and over hit me like a ton of bricks. Sakurasou is such a great slice-of-life anime.
ERASED is also a good tearjerking anime. It’s like a very dark and serious anime. But ERASED is in the top 10 for MAL too so yeah. The feels are too real.
This one doesn’t fit into the normal “tear jerker nakige-based anime” genre as the others, but Watamote is by far one of the saddest, if not THE saddest, anime I have ever watched. It’s ostensibly a comedy, and it was pretty funny, but it made me feel bad for poor Tomoko. And unlike Key stories which usually have a happy ending, this one didn’t. Tomoko is the same lonely girl she was in the beginning.
