Saddest Anime Movies

Summary

• Anime movies offer some of the greatest stories due to undivided attention on animation, stories, and characters.
• Some anime movies are standalone, touching the audience’s heartstrings with sad stories and bittersweet romances.
• Popular anime films like Your Name and A Silent Voice feature compelling narratives that explore love, friendship, and redemption.

People often disregard anime movies as mere cartoons, but it’s in these movies that some of the greatest stories take place. When the studio isn’t worried about casting issues, creating realistic-looking CGI, directing actors, and all the other things that are involved with producing a live-action film, all the effort goes towards creating the best animation, stories, and characters.

Some anime movies fall within the universe of their anime TV shows, essentially acting as an extension of their plots, or are a feature-length condensing of a multi-episode arc. But there are plenty of standalone movies that go straight for the audience’s heartstrings, touching them in ways few other shows and films could with their sad stories.

Updated on January 13th, 2025, by David Heath: Sometimes, people need a good sad story to get their feelings out. There’s something about a bittersweet romance or a harsh tragedy that can make someone feel alive, albeit at the cost of turning them into an emotional wreck. However, if they’re not done right, they can end up moving people into tears of laughter instead of sadness.

Luckily, there are still plenty of anime movies out there that tell effective sad stories. This is why this list has been updated with a few more of the saddest anime movies out there, from brief bittersweet romances to lengthy features that make the most of their runtimes to rend the viewers’ heartstrings.

10

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya

Bringing Out the Sadness in a Classic Folk Tale

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is essentially a retelling of one of Japan’s oldest folk tales, ‘The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter’. It follows the tale faithfully too, as the bamboo cutter cuts open one bamboo stalk to reveal an infant no bigger than his thumb. Choosing to raise the child as his daughter, who he names Kaguya, he’s rewarded for his benevolence by discovering a gold nugget with each stalk he cuts, becoming rich in the process.

The movie expands on the tale by showing the cutter get conceited as he gets richer, and overprotective of Kaguya as she grows up and gains more suitors. They go to their utmost lengths to win her favor, even dying in the process, which shocks her deeply. All she wanted was to live an ordinary mortal life, living simply in the village. But that path is lost to her, and as she regains memories of her past life, her mortal father soon begins to regret what he let wealth do to him.

9

Hotarubi no Mori e

Love, But Don’t Touch

• Director: Takahiro Omori.
• Studio: Brain’s Base.
• Runtime: 44 Minutes.
• DVD/Blu-Ray only.

Hotarubi no Mori e (‘Into the Fireflies’ Forest’) goes into the same folklorish territory as Princess Kaguya, only with a more unique story. It sees a young girl called Hotaru who gets lost in the forest on her way to her grandfather’s place. There she meets Gin, a human-like figure in a fox mask who’s actually a spirit. If he’s touched by a human, he’ll disappear forever, so he keeps his distance from Hotaru as he helps her find her way out.

Yet they continue to meet every summer and grow closer together as Hotaru grows up. Their feelings grow stronger, yet they cannot touch each other, or Gin will essentially die. They find ways around their different issues, but their love has an uncertain future, as couples can only go on so long without physical contact. It’s a brief but bittersweet love story that’s bound to make the heartache.

8

Your Name

A Romance That Transcends Time and Space

Your Name is arguably the most popular modern anime film to this date. It showcases the beautiful story of two high school students, Mitsuha and Taki. Mitsuha Miyamizu, a high school girl, yearns to live the life of a boy in the bustling city of Tokyo. Meanwhile, in the city, Taki Tachibana lives a busy life as a high school student while juggling his part-time job and hopes for a future in architecture.

One day, Mitsuha awakens to find herself living her dream life in Tokyo but in Taki’s body. Elsewhere, Taki finds himself living Mitsuha’s life in the humble countryside. In pursuit of an answer to this strange phenomenon, they begin to search for one another. Things only get more complicated from there, as the two make dramatic impacts on each other’s lives through their choices, and the phenomenon ends up going beyond body-swapping.

7

The Garden Of Words

A Tale of Love, Literature, and Shoemaking

Intriguingly enough, The Garden of Words takes place in the same universe as Your Name. Both of its leads make cameo appearances in the film, though teacher Yukari’s role stands out more as she brings up the metaphor that reveals its time-shifting shenanigans. But The Garden of Words keeps strange phenomena out of its plot in favor of poetical metaphors, as high school student Takao meets Yukari one rainy day in the gardens of Shinjuku Gyoen.

The two regularly come across each other in the park, forming a connection over Takao’s dreams of becoming a shoemaker, while Yukari bids farewell with a tanka poem. Their friendship grows into something more as Takao learns more about the poem she recited, and he makes a set of shoes in her size. But Yukari’s past and their 12-year age gap provide complications no amount of poetry could help overcome.

6

A Silent Voice

Making Up for the Past to Create a Better Future

A Silent Voice comes with a quiet but powerful message about redemption, peppered with beautiful visuals and a wonderful soundtrack, which would be reason enough for any anime lover to watch the film. Yet it starts off harshly, as elementary school student Shouya decides to overcome his boredom by picking on Shouko, the new deaf transfer student. He and the rest of the class bully her, but when the faculty gets involved, his classmates turn on him and single him out as her sole tormenter.

Eventually, it gets so bad that Shouko is transferred out, and Shouya spends the rest of his school days treated as a pariah. Now an adult, Shouya considers committing suicide but decides to make amends with Shouko beforehand. What starts out as a bitter tale of bullying becomes a heartwarming story about Shouya’s honest efforts to redeem himself and overcome the shadows of his past. It’s touching without being sickly sweet and makes Shouya’s path of redemption fit his misdeeds.

5

5 Centimeters Per Second

How Love Doesn’t Always Endure

Makoto Shinkai likes his tearjerking tales, and 5 Centimeters per Second is no exception, as it shows what happens when a couple cling onto their love for as long as possible, even when it has no future. Takaki and Akari are childhood friends who spent nearly all their time together as kids. But due to circumstances beyond their control, they end up drifting apart, despite their promises to keep in touch with each other.

Takaki clings to the past, unable to move on past Akari as he tries in vain to somehow reconnect with her. But all it does is cost him opportunities and friendships in the present. The most bitter pill to swallow in life is that some relationships aren’t meant to last. They’re like the cherry blossoms Takaki and Akari hoped to see together again: beautiful when they bloom, but they only last for so long before they drop off.

4

Millennium Actress

The Lengths People Go to For Love

The impact brief love affairs can have also played a big part in Millennium Actress. First, it’s about a filmmaker called Genya and his cameraman Kyoji, who seek to interview the reclusive actress Chiyoko Fujiwara about her career for a documentary about the defunct Ginei film studios. But as they (literally) get absorbed by her story, they learn of her early life, where she befriended an artist-turned-political dissident during World War 2. When he leaves for Manchuria, she vows to meet with him again someday.

Years later, when she learns Ginei is scouting for actresses for a film set in Manchuria, she opts for the part, starting her career just so she can see what happened to her artist friend. The events of her life are told through a combination of flashbacks and her film roles, as Genya and Kyoji get swept up in the action. As exciting as it is, it comes to a bittersweet conclusion, as it shows how people can affect each other’s lives, even if they become nothing but a memory over time.

3

I Want to Eat Your Pancreas

Living With Dying

Despite its strange title, I Want to Eat Your Pancreas serves as a compelling reminder that love can be bittersweet and often doesn’t follow a conventional narrative. The film follows Haruki, an avid reader who’s deeply detached from the world he resides in. His story begins when he stumbles across a handwritten book, titled “Living with Dying.” He soon identifies it as a secret diary belonging to his classmate, Sakura Yamauchi, who’s secretly been living with a fatal pancreatic disease.

She hasn’t got long to live but wants to spend that time living her life as normally as possible. Haruki initially shows no sympathy, which ironically makes him more appealing to Sakura, as she can spend time with him without being reminded of her condition. Over time, her infectious optimism wins him over, and the two spend as much time as possible with each other. It shows how strong friendships can often find people, and that spending even a brief time with someone can leave a lasting impact.

2

Colorful

A Not-So-Permanent Solution to a Temporary Problem

• Director: Keiichi Hara.
• Studio: Ascension.
• Runtime: 127 Minutes.
• DVD/Blu-Ray only.

Despite the title, Colorful starts off grim and heavy. It’s about a dejected soul who is given another chance at life, even though they don’t want it. Placed in the body of Makoto, a teenager who committed suicide, he has 6 months to figure out what his greatest sin and mistake in his old life was, while figuring out why Makoto originally wanted to end his life in the first place.

Between his workaholic father, cheating mother, and bitter brother, he’s got plenty of reasons at home. But he also soon learns there are ways around them, and that life can get better. It just has to be lived long enough to get there. It’s a movie with a harsh beginning that gets better over time. Except the spirit still has that 6-month time limit, and he still needs to discover that ‘sin’ of his, which threatens to upend what could be a happy ending.

1

Grave Of The Fireflies

How Actions at Any Age Can Have Dire Consequences

Some movies really aim for the heartstrings with the intent of pulling on them as hard as possible, with Grave of the Fireflies being one of the more powerful examples. Some would say cynically so, as some critics accused director Isao Takahata of using the story to finger-wag at 1980s Japanese youth. But according to Takahata, the story of two siblings surviving on their own was made more to dispel the notion that older generations were “more noble”.

If Seita was more noble, he would’ve handled living with his mean aunt for his sister Setsuko’s sake instead of trying to forage in the countryside. Instead, Seita learns the hard way that actions have consequences. If that wasn’t enough, it’s also loosely based on writer Akiyuki Nosaka’s experiences during the end of World War 2. Far from being a feature-length lecture at Gen X’rs, the movie is about how their elders are just as fallible, if not more so, in the face of adversity.