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I have cried on a commuter train in Tokyo because of an anime. Twice, if we are being precise, and one of those times I had to pretend my allergies were acting up in February. So when I put together a list of tearjerkers, I am not working from a ranking site or a reddit thread. I am working from a mental catalogue of every show that has ambushed me in a public place.
These ten are the ones I keep coming back to. Some are famous enough that you have probably scrolled past them a dozen times. Others barely register outside Japan, which is exactly why I wanted them here. Every entry below includes where it actually streams in the US right now, because there is nothing worse than being ready to cry and discovering the show is region-locked.
The 10 Picks at a Glance
| Title | Format | Length | MBTI | Why it hurts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Violet Evergarden | Anime series | 13 episodes | ISFJ | A soldier learns what 'I love you' means |
| Your Name. | Anime film | 107 min | ENFP | Two strangers keep waking up as each other |
| My Hero Academia | Anime series | Long-running (7 seasons) | ENFJ | The kid with no power refuses to quit |
| In This Corner of the World | Anime film | 129 min | ISFJ | Ordinary life, in Hiroshima, in 1944 |
| Ranking of Kings | Anime series | 23 episodes | INTP | A deaf prince nobody believes in |
| Gurren Lagann | Anime series | 27 episodes | ENTP | A drill that ends up piercing the heavens |
| Demon Slayer: Entertainment District Arc | Anime series | 11 episodes | ENFJ | The most beautiful fight in modern anime |
| A Place Further than the Universe | Anime series | 13 episodes | ENFP | Four girls talk their way to Antarctica |
| Look Back | Anime film | 58 min | INFP | Two girls who draw manga together |
| Angel Beats! | Anime series | 13 episodes | ENFP | Teenagers at war with God, in the afterlife |
Formats vary a lot here. If you only have one evening, start with the films. If you want the kind of grief that builds over weeks, go with a series.
1. Violet Evergarden
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime series | Drama, Fantasy | 13 episodes | Tearjerker, Deeply moving |
Violet was raised as a weapon. When the war ends she is left with prosthetic hands, no idea how to exist as a civilian, and one unresolved question: what did her commanding officer mean when he told her he loved her. She takes a job ghostwriting letters for strangers, which turns out to be the slowest and most painful way possible to find the answer.
Each episode brings a new client with something they cannot say out loud. Violet writes it down for them. Slowly, she starts to recognise the feelings she is transcribing.
Why It Wrecks You
Episode 10 is the one people warn you about, and the warning does not help. You will know exactly where it is going within four minutes, and you will cry anyway. That is the trick this show pulls off: it is not built on twists, it is built on the physical weight of a letter. Someone sat down, chose words, and sent them into the future.
In Japan we still have a formal letter-writing culture that feels almost archaic now, and this show understands why it persists. Kyoto Animation animates paper and ink like they matter, because here they do. I finished it and immediately wrote to my grandmother. First letter in nine years.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Not available |
| Netflix | Streaming |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Not available |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
Also available to buy on Amazon Video and the Apple TV Store.
Read the full review: Violet Evergarden (full review)
2. Your Name.
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime film | Romance, Fantasy | 107 min | Tearjerker, Exciting |
A high school boy in Tokyo and a girl in a rural mountain town start swapping bodies at random. They leave each other notes, argue about how the other is ruining their reputation, and gradually build the strangest long-distance relationship in cinema.
Then the swapping stops. Trying to explain why would spoil the film, so I will only say that the second half is a different movie from the first, and the shift is the entire point.
Why It Wrecks You
Here is where I have to be honest: I gave this a 7 out of 10 in my full review, and I stand by that. The three-year gap is under-explained, the supporting cast barely exists, and the version of Shinkai who made shorter, lonelier films about people who never reunite is somewhat buried under blockbuster gloss.
And I still cannot get through the staircase scene. Whatever reservations I have collapse the moment two people are searching for a name they have already forgotten. The Japanese concept of musubi, the idea that time and human connection are literally braided together, gives the ending a logic that has nothing to do with romance genre conventions. It grieves for something everyone has felt: the certainty that you have forgotten someone important.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Not available |
| Netflix | Not available |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Not available |
| HBO Max | Streaming |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
Widely available to rent or buy on Amazon Video, Apple TV, Google Play, YouTube and Fandango at Home.
Read the full review: Your Name. (full review)
3. My Hero Academia
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime series | Action, Fantasy | Long-running (7 seasons) | Exciting, Tearjerker |
In a world where eighty percent of people are born with superpowers, Izuku Midoriya is part of the useless minority. He still wants to be a hero. The story begins when the greatest hero alive notices that this powerless kid ran toward danger while everyone with powers stood still.
What follows is a school story, a tournament arc, and eventually a full-scale war. The scale grows, but the question never changes: what is a hero actually for?
Why It Wrecks You
I know. Seven seasons is a real ask, and shonen battle anime is not where most people expect to find catharsis. Skip to the bottom of the list if long-running series are not your thing.
But this show earns its emotional payoffs through sheer accumulated time. When a character finally says the words their mentor said to them a hundred episodes ago, it lands because you were there for all hundred. Japanese fans talk about the 'Plus Ultra' moments the way sports fans talk about specific games, remembering exactly where they were. The Deku versus Todoroki fight made me put down my phone in a way almost nothing does anymore.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Streaming |
| Netflix | Streaming |
| Hulu | Streaming |
| Amazon Prime Video | Not available |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
One of the easiest titles on this list to find. Also purchasable on Amazon Video, Apple TV and Google Play.
4. In This Corner of the World
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime film | War, Drama | 129 min | Tearjerker, Deeply moving |
Suzu is a daydreamer who likes to draw. At eighteen she is married off to a man she barely knows and moves to the naval town of Kure, just outside Hiroshima. She learns to cook with rationed ingredients, gets scolded by her sister-in-law, gets lost on the way home, and keeps sketching.
The year is 1944. The film never lets you forget what is coming, and never once makes it the point.
Why It Wrecks You
This one hits differently if you grew up in Japan, and I want to be upfront about that. Every Japanese child learns the dates. What no textbook conveys is that people were still complaining about dinner and being embarrassed in front of their in-laws the week before everything ended.
That is the film's entire strategy. It spends two hours making you care about a woman's small daily competence, her workarounds, her handwriting, the way she frames a landscape. So when loss arrives, it is not abstract history. It is her hand. Japanese audiences kept this in theatres for over a year through word of mouth alone, and I have never heard a room stay so quiet through the credits.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Streaming |
| Netflix | Not available |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Streaming |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
5. Ranking of Kings
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime series | Fantasy, Adventure | 23 episodes | Tearjerker, Exciting |
Bojji is the eldest son of a giant king. He is small, deaf, cannot speak, and cannot lift a sword. His entire kingdom treats his claim to the throne as a joke. His only friend is a shadow creature who can understand him.
The art style looks like a children's picture book. Give it three episodes.
Why It Wrecks You
How many stories about an underestimated hero have you seen? Now: how many where the hero never gets stronger in the way you expect? Bojji does not unlock hidden power. He gets faster at running away, better at reading intent, and impossible to discourage. His strength is that he keeps deciding people are worth trusting after they have proven they are not.
The show weaponises its own cuteness. Every time the visuals lull you into thinking this is gentle, it puts a character through something genuinely cruel. And then it does the thing almost nothing else does: it lets the villains be understood without being excused. I did not expect a storybook to make me sit in silence at 2 AM.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Streaming |
| Netflix | Not available |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Not available |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
Also available to buy on Amazon Video, Apple TV and Google Play.
6. Gurren Lagann
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime series | Sci-Fi, Action | 27 episodes | Exciting, Tearjerker |
Simon digs holes underground because that is what his village does. His self-declared big brother Kamina insists there is a sky above them, which nobody has ever seen. They find a face-shaped robot, punch through the ceiling of the world, and things escalate from there.
By the final episodes the scale is so absurd that describing it sounds like a joke. It is not a joke. That is the plan.
Why It Wrecks You
This is not a mecha show. It is a story about grief disguised as the loudest cartoon ever produced. Somewhere around episode 8, this series does something so brutal that Japanese fans still reference it as a turning point in how anime handles loss, and the entire rest of the show is about who you become when the person who believed in you is gone.
It shouts. Constantly. If sincerity that unembarrassed makes you itch, you will bounce off it in twenty minutes. But if you let it work, the last three episodes are the closest anime gets to a eulogy that is also a celebration. I have rewatched the ending more times than I will admit in writing.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Streaming |
| Netflix | Streaming |
| Hulu | Streaming |
| Amazon Prime Video | Not available |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
7. Demon Slayer: Entertainment District Arc
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime series | Action, Fantasy | 11 episodes | Exciting, Tearjerker |
Tanjiro and his companions go undercover in Yoshiwara, the walled pleasure district of old Tokyo, alongside a flamboyant former assassin. Somewhere behind the lantern light, an Upper Rank demon has been picking off victims for decades.
The arc is short and the second half is essentially one continuous battle.
Why It Wrecks You
Ufotable animates fire like it is a character with opinions. The night sky over the district, the red silk, the way a blade catches lamplight: it is the most gorgeous thing on this list by a wide margin, and I would recommend it on spectacle alone.
The tears come from somewhere else entirely. The final confrontation flashes back to how the demons became demons, and the show asks you to hold grief and disgust in the same hand. Two siblings who failed each other in the worst way possible, walking somewhere together. Japanese viewers were writing about that ending for weeks.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Streaming |
| Netflix | Streaming |
| Hulu | Streaming |
| Amazon Prime Video | Not available |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
Also purchasable on Amazon Video, Apple TV, Google Play and Fandango at Home.
8. A Place Further than the Universe
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime series | Drama, Adventure | 13 episodes | Tearjerker, Exciting |
Mari wants to do something with her high school years and never does. Shirase has been saving money to reach Antarctica since her mother disappeared on an expedition there. Two more girls join for reasons of their own, and somehow this ridiculous plan starts becoming logistics.
It is a show about the distance between wanting to go somewhere and buying the ticket.
Why It Wrecks You
Look, I know I sound like I am gushing about everything on this list. But this is the one I recommend most often, and it is the one people thank me for later.
It did not hit me during the episode. It hit me the next morning, on the way to work, thinking about a laptop. That is all I will say. There is a scene involving unopened email that regularly tops 'anime that made me cry' polls worldwide, and it works because the twelve episodes before it are patient, funny and completely unsentimental. Thirteen episodes, no filler, no wasted scene. If you only take one recommendation from this page, take this one.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Streaming |
| Netflix | Not available |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Not available |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
9. Look Back
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime film | Drama | 58 min | Tearjerker, Deeply moving |
Fujino is the class cartoonist, confident and a little smug, until a reclusive classmate named Kyomoto submits work that is obviously better. What begins as jealousy turns into the most important creative partnership of both their lives.
It runs fifty-eight minutes. Based on the one-shot by Tatsuki Fujimoto, the author of Chainsaw Man, and adapted with almost no changes.
Why It Wrecks You
I was not planning to cry at this one. I had read the original manga when it went viral in Japan, I knew every beat, and I went in mostly curious about the adaptation.
Then there is a sequence of a girl running home in the rain, arms flailing, drawn with such specific joy that it made my chest hurt. That is the film. It is about why people keep making things when making things costs so much and pays back so little, and it does not resolve that question so much as sit inside it. Fifty-eight minutes is nothing. Watch it tonight.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Not available |
| Netflix | Not available |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Streaming |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
10. Angel Beats!
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime series | Fantasy, Drama | 13 episodes | Tearjerker, Bittersweet |
Yuzuru wakes up in a high school he has never attended, holding a weapon, being told he is dead. A girl explains that this place is a waiting room for teenagers who died with unfinished business, and that the resistance movement is fighting to avoid moving on.
For the first several episodes it is mostly a comedy about a rock band and increasingly stupid battle plans.
Why It Wrecks You
Remember what I said about the show being mostly gags? Yeah. Every single joke is load-bearing. Around episode 10 the series starts explaining why each of these kids is stuck here, and the running bits you laughed at turn out to be coping mechanisms with very specific shapes.
It is messy. Thirteen episodes is not enough room for a cast this size, and several characters get resolutions they have not earned. I do not care. The last two episodes are about accepting a life that was too short and unfair, and saying thank you anyway. Fifteen years on, Japanese fans still argue about the final scene, which tells you it landed.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Streaming |
| Netflix | Not available |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Not available |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
US Streaming Comparison at a Glance
| Title | Crunchyroll | Netflix | Hulu | Amazon Prime Video | HBO Max | Disney+ | Apple TV+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Violet Evergarden | ✕ | ◎ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Your Name. | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ◎ | ✕ | ✕ |
| My Hero Academia | ◎ | ◎ | ◎ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| In This Corner of the World | ◎ | ✕ | ✕ | ◎ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Ranking of Kings | ◎ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Gurren Lagann | ◎ | ◎ | ◎ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Demon Slayer: Entertainment District Arc | ◎ | ◎ | ◎ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| A Place Further than the Universe | ◎ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Look Back | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ◎ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Angel Beats! | ◎ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
◎ = included with subscription, △ = rent or buy, ✕ = not currently available. Crunchyroll carries the most titles on this list, which surprises nobody. Verified July 25, 2026 — availability shifts constantly, so check the service before you commit an evening to it.
Final Thoughts
Looking at this list, the pattern is obvious to me now: almost none of these shows are sad because something tragic happens. They are sad because someone finally understands something they should have understood years earlier. Violet learning what a phrase means. Fujino picking up a pen again. That gap between knowing and feeling is where anime does its best work.
If you are new to this and want the shortest path to being emotionally destroyed, watch Look Back tonight. Fifty-eight minutes. No commitment. If you have more time, Violet Evergarden earns every tear it asks for over thirteen episodes, and I have never met anyone who regretted finishing it.
One last piece of advice from someone who learned the hard way: do not watch these on a train.
Streaming information was verified in July 2026 and reflects US availability at that time. Services change their catalogues frequently, so please check the official site before subscribing.
