History DownerEnding / AnimeandManga

* By the end of ''SpaceRunawayIdeon'', over half of the cast has been killed with many of the surviving protagonists expressing a rather bleak pessimism about their fates. Eventually, the series ends when the anime's title robot is destroyed along with the surviving cast members. One of "KillEmAll" [[YoshiyukiTomino Tomino]]'s more notorious endings.

* ''DeathNote'': Light Yagami is finally found out as the murderous Kira as he is finally OutGambitted, goes into VillainousBreakdown mode and tries to use what's left of his note to kill Near and the SPK members, only for Matsuda, his biggest fan among the SPK, to go completely ballistic and shoot him multiple times, only to be stopped short of actually killing him. He escapes the warehouse mortally wounded and returns home defeated, and Ryuk puts the final nail in Light's coffin by making good on his promise to Light in the very first episode and writing Light's name in his Death Note.

* ''DeathNote'': It's very much a [[YourMileageMayVary mileage]] question, though. On one hand, Light is - by orders of magnitude - the worst serial killer the human race has ever known and has [[KarmicDeath fully earned his fate]]. On the other, as the ending poignantly reminds us, he started off as brilliant and judgmental but otherwise normal, and he and everybody around him would have been spared unthinkable grief if only Ryuk hadn't dropped a notebook somewhere out of boredom.

* The ''{{Berserk}}'' anime ends with Griffith, who is completely fucked up from a year of being put to the torture before being rescued by Guts and the Band of the Hawk, and who has pretty much lost everything worth living for, using his Crimson Behelit to call forth the Godhand on the day of the Eclipse, resulting in Guts and all of his friends being transported to Hell. There, the Godhand, the {{Big Bad}}s of the setting, reveal the true nature of demons and persuade Griffith to sacrifice the Hawks in exchange for becoming their fifth member. Griffith accepts their DealWithTheDevil, everyone gets marked with the Brand of Sacrifice, and from there, it all goes to hell as everyone is picked off one by one by a whole mess of [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel things out of pure nightmare]] until only Guts and his love interest Casca are left. Then Guts' left arm gets caught in a demon's jaws as he tries to save Casca from the demons, and as he tries to free himself, Griffith is reborn as a demonic god known as Femto, who proceeds to fly down and start having his way with Casca. Guts is forced to chisel off his arm with what's left of his sword in order to save her, but is dogpiled by more monsters and is forced to watch Femto rape Casca right in front of him as his right eye gets clawed out. The manga continues the story after this, but the anime ends there. Never watch the last episode of ''Berserk'' if you're feeling depressed.

* The ''{{Berserk}}'' anime ends with Griffith, who is completely fucked up from a year of being put to the torture before being rescued by Guts and the Band of the Hawk, and who has pretty much lost everything worth living for, using his Crimson Behelit to call forth the Godhand on the day of the Eclipse, resulting in Guts and all of his friends being transported to Hell. There, the Godhand, the {{Big Bad}}s of the setting, reveal the true nature of demons and persuade Griffith to sacrifice the Hawks in exchange for becoming their fifth member. The Griffith accepts their DealWithTheDevil, everyone gets marked with the Brand of Sacrifice, and from there, it all goes to hell as everyone is picked off one by one by a whole mess of [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel things out of pure nightmare]] until only Guts and his love interest Casca are left. Then Guts' left arm gets caught in a demon's jaws as he tries to save Casca from the demons, and as he tries to free himself, Griffith is reborn as a demonic god known as Femto, who proceeds to fly down and start having his way with Casca. Guts is forced to chisel off his arm with what's left of his sword in order to save her, but is dogpiled by more monsters as he tries to kill Femto and is forced to watch him rape Casca right in front of him as his right eye gets clawed out. The manga continues the story after this, but the anime ends there. Never watch the last episode of ''Berserk'' if you're feeling depressed.

** As for Violence Jack. It turns out the main hero is Devilman Reborn, the main bad guy is created to TORTURE SATAN, created by Satan himself, and it ends with Satan and Devilman getting ready for round 2.

** This Troper would't call it a downer ending, rather a ''BittersweetEnding''. True that they had give up their dreams and school, but look on the bright side: they are married and living happily together with their kid. Also in the last chapter, Suzuka, (after getting married) finally admits that she is in love with Yamato. Before that she hadn't said it out loud before.

* ''{{Berserk}}'' ends with the hero and all his friends being transported to Hell, where the {{Big Bad}}s reveal the true nature of demons and persuade the hero's best friend, who the hero and his other friends recently rescued and who is completely fucked up from a year of being put to the torture, to sacrifice his friends in exchange for becoming one of their number. The best friend accepts their DealWithTheDevil and from there, it all goes to hell as everyone is picked off one by one by a whole mess of [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel things out of pure nightmare]] until only the hero and his love interest are left. Then the hero's arm gets caught in a demon's jaws and he's forced to chisel it off with a broken sword in order to save his love interest, only to get dogpiled by monsters and lose his right eye as he's forced to watch as the love interest is raped by his former best friend, who has become a demonic god. The manga continues the story after this, but the anime ends there. Never watch the last episode of ''Berserk'' if you're feeling depressed.

* ''{{Air}}'' undoubtedly qualifies, the final episodes follow Misuzu's excruciating battle to remain cheerful through bouts of extreme pain, ending with her death in the arms of Haruko. For those who paid ''close'' attention to the mythology of the Anime '''and''' the Game, there is still hope: The curse of Kannabi No Mikoto, Misuzu's first previous life, can be broken if one earns true love and happiness, which she does through Yukito and Haruko. So although she may have died breaking the curse, her next life will be free of it, and free to pursue happiness - ''if'' she has a next life, that is. It's AllThereInTheManual, hence strictly speaking it's a BittersweetEnding with an uplifting and hopeful note - [[GainaxEnding if it were not for the fact that the anime's ending is still rather ambiguous, even with the manual in hand]]. And of course, for poor grieving Haruko it all doesn't make one shred of a difference.
* By the end of ''SpaceRunawayIdeon'', over half of the cast has been killed with many of the surviving protagonists expressing a rather bleak pessimism about their fates. Eventually, the series ends when the anime's title robot is destroyed along with the surviving cast members.

* And then there's the legendary battle of ''Windaria'' which opens brightly in a city saving upbeat vignette with a young handsome farmer as Hero. An epically crafted collision of Romeo and Juliet with Hamlet, by the time it is done the technological mountain kingdom has brutally massacred their brave but less developed lowland neighbors; the once-saved city (and its helpless populace) is undone and under a thousand feet of water; in a desperate doomed attempt to end the carnage the beautiful Princess reminds us she is Chekov's Pickpocket and kills her beloved Prince with his own gun before turning it on herself in one of the most powerful, heart rending and tear-jerking moments ever put to film; our Hero - after betraying EVERYBODY - comes home to find out that his innocent loving wife is now a ghost who only stayed to see him one last time ... and to cap it off, in the story's closing heartbeats last, when he - having become such a weak, selfish low life he's one of the few folks who actually deserves to die - can sacrifice his life to join his wife in the afterlife, he doesn't even have the guts to do so.

** To be fair to Fran, for the second episode mentioned as example, the result might be unintentional due to Fran being a [[GeniusDitz Genius Ditz]] - in reality,in many insect species(including praying mantis) female insects eat their male counterparts during copulation/mating, and Fran seemed only dimly aware of this(at most she knew that it would lead to some sort of transformation).

* Despite the fact that the mood in the ''SchoolDays'' anime starts very happy and then gradually goes downhill, the ending is still a big shock when the pregnant Sekai kills the male protagonist Makoto with a knife, then gets slaughtered brutally by her rival Kotonoha, who slices her open with a hacksaw to see if she's really pregnant. Kotonoha then carries Makoto's ''severed head'' around on her sailing trip. Brrrr! "Nice boat", indeed.
** Likely the only positive thing about this ending is that Makoto, here a dimwitted and lecherous scumbag who uses the girls around him for his own pleasure, gets what he deserves.

* The end of ''JoJosBizarreAdventure'' Part 1, where Jonathan dies to save his wife and unborn child, taking his adoptive brother turned villain, Dio, down to the bottom of the sea with him.

* ''[=~Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade~=]'' ends with the protagonist being forced to shoot his love interest in order for her to remain a bargaining chip in the Wolf Brigade's schemes against the police. The last line after the event? "And then the Wolf ate up Little Red Riding Hood".

* In ''{{Akumetsu}}'', all of Shou clones die. They failed in their mission to rid Japan of corruption and evil. The Prime Minister's reforms also fail, which resulted in him becoming homeless.
* The [[spoiler:Whitebeard War/Marineford]] arc of ''OnePiece'' ends with [[spoiler:Ace and Whitebeard]] dead the probable BigBad more powerful, the arguably hero antagonist/well intentioned extremist marines crippled, Luffy horribly wounded and in a heroic BSOD, hundreds of vicious criminals set free and all of Luffy's allies almost certainly far worse off than before the war started. [[spoiler:Such as Jinbei being injured even worse than Luffy and Hancock being known to have been fighting indiscriminately.]]

* A rule of {{Hentai}} is that if it isn't a romance or comedy, it will be depressing to the viewers. The following is spoilered due to squick. [[SchmuckBait You have been warned.]] [[spoiler:InyouchuuTheAnimation has the heroine and her friends captured by the Lord of Nightmares. Her friend and love interest try to save everyone but is captured and beaten to a pulp. The heroine offers her body to the Lord of Nightmares, to save her friend and give him an opening to kill the villain. At the end of the episode, the love interest finally recovers and charges the Lord of Nightmares using ThePowerOfLove to fuel him... only to be killed and reduced to green ash/gunk. The heroine says that she had given herself up shortly after offering her body him, because her friend would not get up to save her. The anime ends with her saying she barely remembers his face, as the flames finally die down.]] Whether or not this is worse then the manga is up for debate.

* Another infamous is Osamu Tezuka's ''Jungle Taitei'', known to the rest of the world as ''{{Kimba The White Lion}}''. Remember in the original anime about the fun adventures of Leo and Lyra? In the end of the manga and the 1997 movie adaptation, Lyra dies of a plague and Leo sacrifices himself to save his human companion in the middle of a blizzard. HUGELY subverted in the anime sequel ''Leo the Lion'' to the original anime.

* The MazingerZ retelling ''ShinMazingerShougekiZHen'' ends with one [[spoiler: Even though Kouji kills Dr. Hell and saves the day, it turned out to be a XanatosGambit by Baron Ashura, ensuring the Mikene Empire will rise and the series ends with Mazinger-Z defeated, the God Scrander destroyed!]]

* ''{{Witchblade}}'' features the Witchblade breaking down and slowly destroying Masane's body (which it doesn't do in the [[AdaptationDecay Original version]]), and when she finally dies, her daughter's only indication that she died is a tiny shell made from Masane's remains.

* ''[[DotHack .hack//AI Buster]]'', the novel and canonically first installment of the ''.hack//'' series, ends with Lycoris deleting herself and reincarnating as poisonous scenery.

* [[http://www.mangatoshokan.com/read/Little-Red-Riding-Hood-and-the-Kind-Wolf/locate+Bittertrap/1 This adaption]] of {{LittleRedRidingHood}} manages to make you uncomfortable while not containing a single word. The cute drawing-style only helps its cause to leave you with a bitter aftertaste.

* {{Katanagatari}} ends up with the entire named cast, save about five characters, dead, the ornate ThanatosGambit driving the plot having proved [[WhatASenselessWasteOfHumanLife completely futile,]] and the hero WalkingTheEarth.

* {{Katanagatari}} ends up with the entire named cast, save about five characters, dead, the ornate ThanatosGambit driving the plot having proved [[WhatASenselessWasteOfHumanLifecompletely futile,]] and the hero WanderingTheEarth.

* ''HyakkaRyouran'' while a lighthearted series throughout the first eleven episodes, the final episode has [[spoiler: ''BOTH'' Moe!Jubei and Badass!Jubei perform a HeroicSacrifice by sending the resident {{Yandere}} Gisen up to the atmosphere to disintegrate. Unfortunately, Gisen goes on to state that within a thousand years later, she will be resurrected to do this all over again.]]

** Oh, speaking of the first anime, there's also ''the show's finale''. [[spoiler: Ed? TrappedInAnotherWorld, Al? Restored but de-aged and MindWiped]]. TheMovie then proceeds to [[spoiler: kill almost every new character, and trap Al with Ed on Earth]].

* ''{{Air}}'' undoubtedly qualifies, the final episodes follow Misuzu's excruciating battle to remain cheerful through bouts of extreme pain, ending with her death in the arms of Haruko. For those who paid ''close'' attention to the mythology of the Anime '''and''' the Game, there is still hope: The curse of Kannabi No Mikoto, Misuzu's first previous life, can be broken if one earns true love and happiness, which she does through Yukito and Haruko. So although she may have died breaking the curse, her next life will be free of it, and free to pursue happiness - ''if'' she has a next life, that is. It's AllThereInTheManual, hence strictly speaking it's a BittersweetEnding with an uplifting and hopeful note - if it were not for the fact that the anime's ending is still rather ambiguous, even with the manual in hand. And of course, for poor grieving Haruko it all doesn't make one shred of a difference.

** This Troper would't call it a downer ending, rather a ''BittersweetEnding''. True that they had give up their dreams and school, but look on the bright side: they are [[Spoiler:married and living happily together with their kid]]

** ''HyakkaRyouran'' while a lighthearted series throughout the first eleven episodes, the final episode has [[spoiler: ''BOTH'' Moe!Jubei and Badass!Jubei perform a HeroicSacrifice by sending the resident {{Yandere}} Gisen up to the atmosphere to disintegrate. Unfortunately, Gisen goes on to state that within a thousand years later, she will be resurrected to do this all over again.]]

** Oh, speaking of the first anime, there's also ''the show's finale''. [[spoiler: Ed? TrappedInAnotherWorld, Al? Restored but de-aged and MindWiped]]. TheMovie then proceeds to [[spoiler: kill almost every new character, and trap Al with Ed on Earth]].

** Oh, and Spike dies.

** The only good thing about R2's ending is that Lelouch accomplishes his goal and the world does become peaceful. Still a downer because in order for this to happen, Lelouch must be killed by Suzaku, who must forever don the mask of Zero. Not to mention that all of this was started because Lelouch [[DespairEventHorizon felt he had no recourse]] following Nunnally's apparent demise and the betrayal of the Black Knights. Even worse is that without said events, Lelouch would have never enacted such a destructive and suicidal plan for world peace. Lest we forget, the plan had him doing some legitimately horrible things, such as [[SlaveMooks geassing his soldiers en masse into complete obedience]] and making them into FacelessGoons and [[WeHaveReserves using them as meat shields]], [[InferredHolocaust having Mt. Fuji blown up, which evidently causes much destruction over Japan and depletes most of the remaining Sakuradite reserves, and having many assassinations carried out]]. Before you say [[CaptainObvious "well, duh!"]], consider that he could just as easily be more useful to the world alive than dead, to that end taking a more stable, reliable, and less bloody path to peace if he were to be a benevolent leader or political figure, if not return as Zero, rather than a quick fix of a gamble based on the premise that [[YouFailLogicForever people will stop hating each other if given one person to hate above all else, neverminding the fact that there were already two good candidates for the job, Charles and Schneizel]]. To top it all off [[KarmaHoudini the two responsible for said betrayal that incited Lelouch to take his final downward spiral, Ohgi and Villetta, receive the happiest ending]], both HappilyMarried and as the centerpiece of the group wedding photo, and Ohgi is made Prime Minister of Japan in spite of his lack of competence. Not to mention the one-woman SpannerInTheWorks that Villetta was. [[CrapsackWorld Not very life affirming]], is it?

* In the FullMetalAlchemist the VillainEpisode features [[EvilIsSexy Lust]], who is contemplating about humanity. A man from her past shows up and it's revealed that she does have a heart of gold - she taught the man to save an entire village from a ...[[{{Understatement}} really]] [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel awful sickness]]. The man and her reconnect, as she draws too close to him. Eventually, the man asks Lust to run away with him, explaining he fell in love with her years before and his fiance doesn't matter to him. [[TearJerker Lust's response is to kill the man, which infects every townsperson with a horrible disease. To top things off, his fiance shows up and sees his dead body, and catches the disease too.]] Lusts' response makes it even more chilling, showing that even the Villian has given up on her objectives and will to live. {{DownerEnding}}'s for all!

* CharsCounterattack - Widely regarded as a BittersweetEnding, some consider its ending a quasi-downer ending as well. Yes, Amuro initiated the miracle that saved Earth from the Axis crash, planned by his bitter enemy, [[MagnificentBastard CharAznable]], but he also died in process. Remember the other characters other than Bright Noa all suffered a horrible death, too. Not to mention that [[HumansAreBastards the humans would still continue to destroy each other until they are dead extinct.]]
* Gundam 0083 Stardust Memory - Gato and Delaz are killed, but ultimately The Bad Guy Wins. Kou lost his beloved HotScientist, and is courtmartialed for stealing the GP-03 after the GP-01's destruction, though released later. Captain Synapse commits suicide in order to take responsibility for the above. The Titans, who most of the Albion crew join, are formed, and we all know how well that turned out. This is Gundam, after all.

** The only good thing about R2's ending is that Lelouch accomplishes his goal and the world does become peaceful. Still a downer because in order for this to happen, Lelouch must be killed by Suzaku, who must forever don the mask of Zero. Not to mention that all of this was started because Lelouch [[DespairEventHorizon felt he had no recourse]] following Nunnally's apparent demise and the betrayal of the Black Knights. Even worse is that without said events, Lelouch would have never enacted such a destructive and suicidal plan for world peace. Lest we forget, the plan had him doing some legitimately horrible things, such as [[SlaveMooks geassing his soldiers en masse into complete obedience]] and making them into FacelessGoons and [[WeHaveReserves using them as meat shields]], [[InferredHolocaust having Mt. Fuji blown up, which evidently causes much destruction over Japan and depletes most of the remaining Sakuradite reserves, and having many assassinations carried out. Before you say [[CaptainObvious "well, duh!"]], consider that he could just as easily be more useful to the world alive than dead, to that end taking a more stable, reliable, and less bloody path to peace if he were to be a benevolent leader or political figure, if not return as Zero, rather than a quick fix of a gamble based on the premise that [[YouFailLogicForever people will stop hating each other if given one person to hate above all else, neverminding the fact that there were already two good candidates for the job, Charles and Schneizel]]. To top it all off [[KarmaHoudini the two responsible for said betrayal that incited Lelouch to take his final downward spiral, Ohgi and Villetta, receive the happiest ending]], both HappilyMarried and as the centerpiece of the group wedding photo, and Ohgi is made Prime Minister of Japan in spite of his lack of competence. Not to mention the one-woman SpannerInTheWorks that Villetta was. [[CrapsackWorld Not very life affirming]], is it?

** The only good thing about R2's ending is that Lelouch accomplishes his goal and the world does become peaceful. Still a downer because in order for this to happen, Lelouch must be killed by Suzaku, who must forever don the mask of Zero.

[[folder:Anime & Manga]]

* In the FullMetalAlchemist the VillainEpisode features [[EvilIsSexy Lust]], who is contemplating about humanity. A man from her past shows up and it's revealed that she does have a heart of gold - she taught the man to save an entire village from a ...[[{{Understatement}} really]] [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel awful sickness]]. The man and her reconnect, as she draws too close to him. Eventually, the man asks Lust to run away with him, explaining he fell in love with her years before and his fiance doesn't matter to him. [[TearJerker Lust's response is to kill the man, which infects every townsperson with a horrible disease. To top things off, his fiance shows up and sees his dead body, and catches the disease too.]] Lusts' response makes it even more chilling, showing that even the Villian has given up on her objectives and will to live. {{DownerEnding}}'s for all!
[[/folder]]