Downer Ending / Anime & Manga

WARNING: As an Ending Trope, every example is a spoiler. Read at your own risk!

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• 91 Days ends about as tragically as one would expect a revenge story about the mafia to. Angelo’s plot to destroy the Vanetti family comes to fruition, and both Vincent and his son Nero helplessly watch as everything they’ve worked for crumbles before their eyes and their entire family is wiped out by the Galassias. Angelo, when confronted, admits that he hoped avenging his family’s deaths would give him a new purpose in life, but it didn’t. Angelo and Nero, having destroyed each other’s lives and lost everything, take one last drive to the beach, where Nero puts Angelo out of his misery with a shot to the back of the head. Or maybe he didn’t?
• .hack//AI Buster, the novel and canonically first installment of the .hack// series, ends with Lycoris deleting herself and reincarnating as poisonous scenery. Nirvana-Flowers, to be exact. Yes, they are poisonous, but also beautiful. Also, they have a deeper meaning: Nirvana flowers are said to guide the living into the realm of death.
• One of the notable examples is Absolute Boyfriend. Towards the end, Night begins to grow sleepier and sleepier. The problems developed by him exceeding his abilities eventually causes his machinery to stop working, resulting in his "death".
• The ending of 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 All There in the Manual, hence strictly speaking it's a Bittersweet Ending 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.
• In Akumetsu, all of the Shou clones die, having failed in their mission to rid Japan of corruption and evil. The Prime Minister's reforms also fail, which resulted in him becoming homeless.
• Aldnoah.Zero:
  • The final episode of the first season ends with Saazbaum surviving and having killed Asseylum. Slaine shoots Nao in the head at the very last minute.
  • The second season makes this a lot happier when Inaho and Asselyum turn out to have survived and Saazbaum is killed a few episodes in. Of course, Slaine then becomes the new Big Bad and is more effective than Saazbaum, leading to a Bittersweet Ending for the series as both sides of the war are decimated before Slaine is stopped and locked up forever while Inaho and Asseylum can't be with each other, their love being sacrificed to maintain a lie for political peace.
• At the end of Angel Cop, nearly all the main and secondary characters are dead, Japan's government doesn't change at all despite our heroes' efforts, and the country's headed toward a complete economic collapse. Raiden had to activate a bomb within his cyborg body to take out Lucifer—said bomb being activated by having Angel shoot him in the head. While Angel survives, her character development is implied to be undone after being forced to kill Raiden, the only person she genuinely cared about. In the end, the only victory is Taki escaping his custody and killing Maisaka and Nogawa with a helicopter bomb.
• The Animatrix: "Matriculated": The re-programmed machine destroys the machines that attack the base. But all the rebels die before then, and when he tries to plug the consciousness of one of the last remaining rebels into virtual reality, she rejects him and chooses to die instead, leaving the machine all by itself.
• In Apollo's Song by Osamu Tezuka, this is the theme of the entire book: a dim hope being cruelly and suddenly snatched away. Shogo is cursed to fall in love but meet a tragic end forever. This also applies to the overall plot — Shogo is psychotic but receiving treatment when the book starts. By the end he's pronounced cured but soon dies with Hiromi and is left to his eternal punishment
• As the Gods Will: Part I ends with both leads, Takahata Shun and Amaya Takeru, failing to kill the Big Bad of their arc, and falling to their demise.
• Any given arc of Attack on Titan is going to end with a pile of bodies, at least one failed military objective, and people questioning the worth of it all. Save perhaps for one little item that might promise a better future.
  • The final chapter of the series ends with Eren successfully causing The End of the World as We Know It and using the Rumbling to wipe out approximately 80% of humanity, save the Eldians. In both the anime and manga, he claims he never wanted this, and was carrying out a Thanatos Gambit to secure peace for what remained of the world after his death, while also proclaiming his love for Mikasa and explaining how he had to push her away to protect her. However, exclusively in the anime, he admits that plan was largely a cover for his genocidal rage against the rest of the world. In the end, Eren managed to achieve his goals and secure a future for his race, but at the cost of the lives of himself, most of his species, and almost everyone he cared about.
  • As if there wasn't enough controversy regarding the ending's bitterness, an epilogue chapter shows that the entirety of the series was All for Nothing as Eldia is bombed to dust by the survivors and a lone child is shown entering the World Tree, implying the entire Cycle of Revenge is set to begin anew.
• Subverted in Bagi, the Monster of Mighty Nature. The protagonist blames the all-but-feral Bagi for his mother's death. After taking a few levels in badass, he hunts her down, investigating the tales of a monster indiscriminately killing villagers. It wasn't her handiwork, but she's nevertheless a Person of Mass Destruction, capable of taking out several squads of soldiers with her super-speed and mind control powers. They fight, but she hesitates right before striking, giving him just enough time to stab her. He descends into a Heroic BSoD. But it turns out that she was Not Quite Dead and is shown roaming the desert in the end credits.
• Yoshida Akimi's hard-boiled shoujo manga Banana Fish is famous for being a Tear Jerker. When the manga came close to its end the author was flooded with fan mail that begged her not to kill off Ash, the main character. Unfortunately she did, but provided readers with several one-shot prequels and a bittersweet sequel only months after the series ended. (All of these can be found in Banana Fish - Another Story.)
• Basilisk. Gennosuke and Oboro are reunited at the end, but they commit suicide and ALL of their friends are dead.
• Battle Royale ends on an even more depressing note than the original book. Shuya and Noriko are the only ones to survive the game and flee to America, the memories of the game haunting them for years to come. And Shuya implies that their relationship eventually became strained because of those memories and him never actually saying "I love you" to her. Meanwhile, the horrendous game has not stopped, so another class will be chosen to participate in six months.
• 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 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 Bads 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 Deal with the Devil, 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 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, only to be dogpiled by more monsters and is forced to watch as Femto rapes Casca right in front of him as his right eye is 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.
• Black Butler:
  • The anime has quite the downer ending where we see Sebastian rowing a boat with Ciel laying inside of it in a bed of white roses, just like in the second ending animation. However, we see Ciel isn't dead yet, and around him in the water are the Cinematic Records of his memories up to that point. When they reach their destination, Ciel sits on a bench (the same one as in the final shot of the opening theme) and looks at Sebastian, ready for what's to come. Sebastian tells him he'll make his death as quick and painless as he can, but Ciel retorts, saying he wants him to make it as painful as possible. Sebastian agrees and we see him gently caress Ciel's face, removing his eyepatch in the process. The last few shots we get are of Ciel's 'normal' eye wide in what looks likes an almost sorrowful expression as he stares at the demon. Sebastian leans down, and our final shot is of his lips curling into a smile before it cuts off to the credits. where Maylene, Bard, and Finny have to kill Pluto. We also don't know what happened to the three afterwards, although we're left with the knowledge of "when I left they were still breathing".
  • And there's the ending of "Black Butler II", which is arguably either a sequel to the first series or an Alternate Continuity all of its own, where the wish of a dying enemy turns Ciel into a demon in his own right, which means that Sebastian can never claim his soul. So Sebastian doesn't get what he wants, is now forced to serve Ciel (if you believe he doesn't enjoy serving Ciel), and Ciel, who is arguably a Death Seeker, will have to live with his pain and the emptiness of his revenge forever.
  • Quite a few of the manga arcs have had downer endings too. The Jack the Ripper arc ends with Madam Red dying. The Circus arc has all the first tier members die except Snake. And let's not forget all the children Ciel had burned alive when he set Baron Kelvin's estate on fire, although his reasoning was that the children would never be themselves and remain in such a traumatized state that killing them was probably the best option.
  • The circus arc in particular was a major downer ending, as nearly everyone involved except Baron Kelvin and the doctor were sympathetic characters, and turned out to have done Kelvin's bidding and died for ''nothing''.
• Black Lagoon:
  • The Hansel and Gretel Arc. It's not entirely their fault that they're psychopathic murderers but it's explicitly stated that all they will do is kill people, so they both are killed. The same can be said about the final Yakuza arc. Lampshaded by Benny. "Stories like this don't have happy endings."
  • The Yakuza arc isn't much better. Rock earns Balalaika's respect, but he fails in his attempt to save Yukio (due to Yukio committing jigai after Ginji is killed) and nearly gets Revy killed.
• The final chapter of the horror manga Emerging makes it very clear that the virus that ravaged Tokyo may be mutating - possibly to an airborne strain, which would not only be much more contagious, but also be unaffected by the vaccine serum. Cue a scene where Ooshima and Misaki unknowingly walk right past someone with the trademark Incurable Cough of Death as 'disease particles' float around.
• Blood-C ended with the whole town massacred and Fumito along with Yuka escaping which left Saya, thirsty for revenge after all the hell she had been through. Its sequel movie gave a bittersweet one with Fumito finally dead but Saya walks into an aimless journey after learning Fumito's true intentions.
• Bokurano. Starting as a game, the children soon realize that everything is more serious than it seems when the adult who introduced them to said game disappears and the first child who had piloted dies. The anime, however, manages to pull a Bittersweet Ending of sorts off.
• The first episodes of Chrono Crusade suggested a more-or-less lighthearted comedy/action series, if with a few shocking parts. It ended with most of the cast either dead or mentally scarred for life (including Rosette, although if Chrono died as well she gets to be Together in Death with him) and the Great Depression just around the corner. Azmaria's fate might have been enough to push it towards bittersweet, but Remington is metaphorically kicked between the legs when he sees that Aion may have survived, and even if he is dead for good his influence lives on, and is on his way to try and assassinate the Pope. End series. However, this is not the case in the manga version; while still hardly completely happy, it certainly wasn't as unbearably bleak as the anime. Most notably, Aion had the good graces to be confirmed dead, and all of the main cast members survived (although Rosette still died much younger than she deserved, leaving Chrono to live on without her. So not completely happy.)
• Claudine: The story ends with Claude committing suicide after finding out his lover left him for his oldest brother.
• Code Geass:
  • The first season finale. The protagonist, Lelouch, has just been forced to kill his beloved half-sister because his own Magical Eye went haywire and drove her Ax-Crazy, going on a rampage killing all the Japanese people she can see just when the series was about to make a brighter turn (the Japanese were about to have equal rights with their conquerors, and Lelouch was about to ally himself with the cause). As he leads his forces into battle with The Empire, he finds out that an agent of the Emperor has kidnapped his younger sister, the person for whom he's doing all this. In the process of going to rescue her, he loses his army and C.C., his closest ally, his trusted bodyguard Kallen has her faith in him badly shaken, and to cap it all off he ends up in an almost surely fatal Mexican standoff with his former best friend Suzaku, who now despises and wants to kill Lelouch because said half-sister was his girlfriend. It all ends with the two friends leveling their guns at one another.
  • The second season makes it even more of a downer by showing what happened immediately afterward: Suzaku beats Lelouch senseless, Kallen runs away rather than doing anything to help, and Lelouch is dragged before the Emperor, who laughs in his face before giving him Fake Memories via Mind Rape, all in order to lure C.C. out. He spends an entire year living under these altered memories until C.C. returns and undoes the damage. And then during the second half of the new season, let's just say things get even worse to the point one wonders if things may or may not have ended favorably enough for the characters, despite certain positive aspects.
• Corpse Party: Tortured Souls: the original ending has five survivors, but in the OVA adaptation, only Naomi and Ayumi survive. And one of them turns insane by the final scene.
• Cowboy Bebop:
  • The ending to the episode "Hard Luck Woman". Faye Valentine, a woman who has amnesia about who she is or where she is from, finds out where she came from. Before she leaves, she tells Ed that there's, "There's no place better than a place you belong". She finally arrives and runs, while flashbacks show an over-eager Faye during her teens/childhood running in the same street. Faye gets to the place in her flashbacks, and in real life, and sees her entire house demolished. She just begins to draw a line into the sand to demonstrate where her bed was and look up at the sunset... close to tears.
  • While it can also be seen as a Bittersweet Ending, there's also "The Real Folk Blues (Part 2)", in which Vicious violently takes over the leadership of the Red Dragon, Spike reunites with his long-lost love Julia only to lose her to the Red Dragon's men, and then decides to leave the Bebop to pursue a final one-man assault on his old syndicate, an assault that ends with Spike and Vicious both falling in the final showdown.^note However, it's still ambiguous as to whether Spike really died. He lived at least long enough to walk down the steps from where Vicious' body is to where the guards were before falling over. And let's keep in mind, he has fallen from a cathedral and lived and the creator isn't saying one way or another.
• The original ending to Cyborg 009 was this, as it ended with 009 and 002 perishing in space while the rest of the cyborgs look on in despair. Complaints from fans led Ishinomori to continue the series and retconning the two's deaths to simply being injured, although this led to a different kind of Downer Ending as Ishinomori passed away before the manga was completed (it was eventually finished by his son and two of his assistants).
• The ending of Side:Despair in Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School it even warns you at the beginning "this is a tale of hope that ends in despair". In short, The Tragedy has begun: Chisa and Class 77-B were turned into Junko lackeys through the Brainwashing Despair Video, Chiaki is brutally tortured to death, and Ryota is a broken, guilt-ridden wreck. Since it's just a Prequel, this is certainly expected, as Izuru becomes The Starscream, plotting behind Junko's back out of anger for what she did to Chiaki, setting up the events of Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair.
• Deep Love:
  • Ayu no Monogatari ends with a broke and anorexic Ayu dying from AIDS in the city streets.
  • In the sidestory Pao no Monogatari, which is told from Ayu's dog Pao's perspective, he dies alongside Ayu at the end. Just before passing on, he remembers all of the people who had loved and cared for him throughout his abusive life.
• Diabolo ends with the main character, Ren, killing his evil best friend and cousin, then committing Suicide by Cop. There are only two characters left standing by the last page, and they're side characters: a prostitute and a guy with six months to live.
• Dissolving Classroom: While Yuuma and Chizumi are implied to have been killed by the animated liquid remains of their victims, thus sending their souls to hell, thousands (if not millions) of people are implied to have been killed by watching the news feed of the press conference and hearing Yuuma's deadly apologies.
• A Dog of Flanders (1975): Nello and Patrasche die while Alois desperately searches for them, and by the time her father has swore to atone for how he treated them it's too late. Because the original book was popular there, Japanese audiences sent letters to World Masterpiece Theater begging them to spare the boy and the dog. They didn't.
• In Doubt, when you finally think everything is over, Hajime is hung by another Wolf, and Yuu picks up Mitsuki's cellphone, which ends up in Mitsuki getting into her Wolf mentality again and killing Yuu. Obviously, Rei gets away with all of this.
• Eureka Seven - While the anime has an almost impossibly happy ending, the manga ends with Dominic and Eureka both dead. While Renton believes that Eureka may still be alive, the rest of the characters assure that the Coralians are completely wiped out.
• 5 Centimeters per Second had the two lead characters meeting by chance in school and quickly falling in love with each other. However, since their parents' jobs require them to move a lot, they quickly lose contact with each other (the anime is set in the 1990s, where cell phones and e-mail are not as widespread as today). Both characters basically never see each other again, which causes a great deal of emotional pain to both of them. The film ends with a Tear Jerker montage of how they both move on with their lives. What makes it even worse is when the film teases the audience by having the two leads pass each other on a railroad crossing, but neither recognizes the other until it is too late, and a passing train separates them. By the time the train passes, the female lead is gone.
• The manga series Fluffy Fluffy Cinnamoroll from Sanrio has quite a bit of these though it's usually Played for Laughs on the characters Butt-Monkey moments due to the how comical the series is which adds some bittersweetness to it (particularly funny for the readers but not for the in-universe characters), in the final chapter has the Cinnamoangels sell a bunch of cds of a group called "The Caramels" but they forgot to save a copy for themselves (the thing they worked so hard to earn money for) which causes Azuki, Mocha and even Chiffon to start bawling like babies.
• Franken Fran stars apprentice Mad Scientist Fran (who looks like a cross between Sally Ragdoll and Terra) who can perform miracle surgeries, but seems to be unheeding of the consequences. Of course, this being a Little Shop of Horrors-style manga, a downer ending is all but guaranteed. For instance, Fran's emergency surgery on a girl who just rejected a homely boy saves her life, teaches her humility and the power of love, restores her body, brings the two of them closer, and suddenly transforms her into a giant praying mantis who eats her boyfriend the first moment they're alone. To the girl's credit, she did seem to like him for who he is and not how he'd taste. It's also a Cruel Twist Ending, as well.
• Fukushuu Kyoushutsu: Many of the class are dead, the ones who survive have been through varying degrees of mental or physical trauma. The protagonist, Ayana, ends up in a coma after falling from a fourth store window, and the Big Good died in the middle of her own plan. The Man Behind the Man, Yamase, gets away scot free for starting the whole mess after Ren, the only person left to know the truth, is unable to harm him due to their friendship. Just to boot, months later it's revealed that after the entire case was made public, a surge of minor-on-minor violent crimes and revenge stories happened across Japan.
• The Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) anime has a Villain Episode that features Lust, who is contemplating her existence. 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 an awful sickness. The man and her reconnect, and she gradually 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. Lust's response is to kill the man, who is revealed to have the disease. This is immediately followed up by everyone else in the village screaming in agony as the disease kills them. To top things off, his fiance shows up and sees his corpse, and dies from the disease as well. Lust's response makes it even more chilling, showing that even the villain has given up on her objectives and will to live.
• Futari wa Pretty Cure had a Downer Ending in theory, but by the time it aired, it was already well known to even the most oblivious viewer that the Oddly Named Sequel starting next week would have to start by waking Mepple, Mipple, and Porun back up.
• Pretty Cure All Stars DX 3, what with all the Cures losing their powers and their Weasel Mascot companions. When there was a series that was just starting at the moment. Probably no surprise why they threw in the extra few minutes after the credits.
• There are no happy endings in Ghost in the Shell. The conspiracies are stopped and life goes on, but the whole thing will get covered up and most of the villains go free. Not much left to do than count the losses and cleaning up the mess.
• Gilgamesh, itself an extremely dark and depressing show with overtones of hopelessness, has one of the most spiteful Shoot the Shaggy Dog Downer Endings ever. Kiyoko, having already lost everyone and everything she cared about, having been forced into debt, despair, and work as a call-girl by the very Countess supposedly trying to "save the world" whilst ruining the lives around her, and who in lonely desperation turned to a member of the opposing Gilgamesh who then impregnated her, dies after mutating into a birthing cocoon for the hybrid lifeform. In the climactic final battles against the twisted Enkidu, his cohorts, and the Gilgamesh forces, it's revealed that they're essentially unstoppable and un-killable. This leads to the deaths of nearly everyone in the cast not already dead at this point. In the end, it's revealed that the TeaR organism responsible for the first near-apocalypse and which has instigated the horrible events of the story is actually a living manifestation of the Countess's own petty, dark, hateful, jealous, twisted heart, and that she's directly responsible for everything without realising it, despite ostensibly and ironically trying to fix it. Upon this revelation, she accepts the death of Humanity and allows TeaR to wipe out all life on Earth. To add insult to injury, in the odd, meta-void left behind, TeaR is then killed by the Gilgamesh spawn from the husk of what was left of Kiyoko, meaning that TeaR won't go on to recreate the planet in its image and it's all gone for good.
• Go Nagai seems to be fond of this. Half of his series have a Downer Ending (and the other half a Bittersweet Ending):
  • One of the most famous downer endings of classic manga belongs to Devilman; Akira is driven to complete despair after losing everything and everyone he loved, especially Miki, who gets savagely dismembered by a psychotic mob of humans). And then, his best friend Ryo reveals himself to be Satan, who has orchestrated the series' events to wipe out humanity and populate the Earth with demons. Years later, humanity has been driven extinct, and the final battle between Akira's army of Devilmen and Satan's army of demons ends with Akira dying after being sliced in half by Satan, who himself dies when God destroys what remains of the planet.
  • DEVILMAN crybaby has the same ending, except with Ryo/Satan becoming heartbroken upon realizing Akira is dead, and God, who set the whole thing up, wiping out the earth entirely. There is a Hope Spot in the very last scene of the series that shows Earth remade, albeit now with two moons.
  • Devilman Lady has a similar ending, and in fact ends with a lead-in into Violence Jack.
  • As for the sequel series, Violence Jack; it was, if anything, even nastier. It turns out that the title character is Devilman/Akira reborn, the main bad guy is one-half of Zenon created by Satan/Ryo to punish himself, and it ends with Satan and Devilman getting ready for Round 2.
  • The original Mazinger Z ended with Kouji killing Dr. Hell. However, the Mykene Empire -that had been awaiting for one of their enemies destroying the other- struck immediately, razing to rubble several major cities — New York, London, Paris, Moscow and Tokyo— bringing down the Photon Power Research Institute, destroying Diana-A, Boss Borot and Mazinger-Z itself. Kouji almost died, and he was saved by Tetsuya Tesurugi pulling off a Big Damn Heroes moment with Great Mazinger. The series ended with the humanity on the brink of being wiped out as several characters told Mazinger-Z was now useless. And later, in Great Mazinger, Dr. Hell returned, showing Kouji's efforts and struggle had been all for nothing. It was even worse in several retellings of the series.
  • In Shin Mazinger even though Kouji kills Dr. Hell and saves the day, it turned out to be a Batman Gambit by Baron Ashura, ensuring the Mikene Empire will rise and the series ends with Mazinger-Z defeated, the God Scrander destroyed!
  • In Shin Mazinger Zero, the characters are locked in a "Groundhog Day" Loop where Mazinger-Z has became a demon/Eldritch Abomination and destroyed the world. It has happened 2,977 times so far...
  • The original Getter Robo anime and manga ends with Musashi's death. However, in the manga, the remains of the Dinosaur Empire escape, save for Emperor Gore, who's murdered by Burai and his Hundred Demon Army, with Ryouma and Hayato vowing to continue the fight in the new Getter Robo G.
• Given that it involved Time Travel one would suspect the manga Golden Days by Takao Shigeru to have one of these. It does, and by the time Mitsuya returns to his time every single person (excluding his grandfather) he met in the past is dead — which is all the more sad, since there was a possibility they would still be alive. (He only went about 70 years back in time.)
• Given that it's about war orphans starving to death in 1945 Japan, Grave of the Fireflies has not just a downer ending, but a Downer Beginning and a downer middle. There's ironically a ray of sunshine in the ending in that the two ghosts are reunited in the afterlife (albeit refusing to move on to the next life), but overall, the whole thing is the downer of downers. To make matters worse, the story is semi-autobiographical. The story was based on the feelings of guilt the writer had that he survived while his sister died. He remarks that there were many times he found food and ate it without bringing any back for her and wishes that he had died. No wonder he killed off his Author Avatar.
• Gundam:
  • Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket. At the end, Al's friend Bernie attempted to fight and destroy the Federation's latest mobile suit, the Gundam NT-1, or risk having the peaceful space colony nuked. Except that he was himself using a damaged grunt unit. And the pilot of NT-1 was Chris, Al's neighbor who's attracted to Bernie (the feeling is mutual). The two dueled until Bernie was killed and Chris gravely injured. In front of Al. After Al found out the nuke carrier had been stopped and rushed to tell Bernie. And then Chris asked Al about his "brother" Bernie. What drives it further down is the series' last scene: Al is attending a school assembly after the war ends, where his friends, who have no idea what he has seen and been through, continue gushing about war and mobile suits. When Al finally breaks down and starts crying, one of his friends tries to cheer him up, stating: "Don't worry, there will be another war!" thinking Al is saddened over the cool battles being over. Al is alone in understanding that mobile suits are war machines piloted by other people, who if not for the war might as well be friends. What makes this line even worse is that his friend is right; there will be more wars in the future and they will be just as terrible—if not worse.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory - Gato and Delaz are killed, but Operation Stardust ultimately succeeds. Kou loses his girlfriend (who sided with Gato), and is court-martialed 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. The good guys have effectively lost, and moreover their Pyrrhic Victory sets the stage for an even bloodier conflict and all their attempts to help just sets the stage for a worse organization.
  • Zeta Gundam. The Titans have been defeated, but with the exception of Kamille, Fa, and the crew of the Argama, everyone else is dead or missing in action. Axis Zeon emerges as the strongest power after the war, and while Kamille succeeds in killing Scirocco, he got his brain fried as a result. It takes until the end of Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ for all this to be resolved.
  • The final episode of the First Generation in Gundam AGE. Despite spearheading a successful operation against the Ambat fortress, Grodek gets sentenced to prison for committing treason and the Earth Federation covers up the evidence of his findings about Vagan. Also, the Earth Federation reveals genocidal motivations by renaming the first battles against Vagan as the War of Bat Extermination. Back in the Diva, Millais, Woolf, and Adams all get a Heroic BSoD from finding out that the UE were humans all along and Emily overhears Flit grieving over his inability to save Yurin. Most importantly, Lord Ezelcant's forces are shown preparing for the next step of the war against Earth Federation.
  • In the novel, Hathaway's Flash, Mafty Navilles Erin (aka Hathaway Noa) is captured in the end and was sentenced to death by Bright Noa, who had no idea it was his own son he was executing. And moments before he's executed, the ghost of Quess Paraya appears to him, tells him she never loved him, and tells him that his struggle, started by her death that made Mafty go against the Federation, was all fruitless and his reason for starting it a lie.
• Gungrave: Grave makes peace with Harry... after both have been shot full of holes by Millennion foot soldiers despite being ordered to stop thanks to Mika. The show ends with Grave and Harry killing each other right before Mika arrives to find them dead and cries while finding it in her to smile at her friend's fate. Oh and the song that plays? It's called "Happy Ending."
• The Gyaru is Curious About the Otaku has the gyaru main character notice that her otaku classmate Yamasaki is drawing a Yuri Genre manga in class, with the main characters based on the two of them and that she's popular for a high schooler. The main character asks Yamasaki about it, but Yamasaki assumes the main character is planning on spreading rumors about her (based on the main character calling it "creepy"), and the main character gets offended. The two of them never speak again until graduation, and Yamasaki stops drawing in class. Years later, after Yamasaki gets serialized, the main character sends her a DM asking her about the manga she worked on in class, but Yamasaki has no interest in continuing it. While Yamasaki had been attracted to the main character, she's gotten over her feelings, leaving the main character to suffer the pain of her unrequited love.
• Often referred to as one of Yoshiyuki "Kill 'Em All" Tomino's happier endings, the ending of Heavy Metal L-Gaim isn't an upper to any significant degree, even if everyone kind of screws themselves over in reality. Sure, all the heroes live, but the villain succeeds in his plan to kill the main character's family off by causing irreparable brain damage to the hero's little sister, and in a bit of a stupid move on his part, he goes to live alone with her on some planet away from everyone else in the team. Meanwhile, neither Love Interest gets the nod, the best friend and the fairy sidekick may think they are dying of radiation poisoning and leave the group to wander alone somewhere, and even a former villain doesn't get to be with the one he loves.
• A rule of Hentai is that if it's not a romance or comedy, it will nine times out of ten be depressing to the viewers.
  • Inyouchuu The Animation 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 The Power of Love 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 to 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 than the manga is up for debate.
  • On the topic of hentai and downer endings, one that's strange even for hentai downer endings (the typical hentai downer ending has the Big Bad being victorious and leaving the protagonists as his/her sex toys), the Lilith series Shion deserves mention. After apparently settling down for a fun, carefree life in freedom with her new boyfriend (and his other lover), in the closing minutes of the last episode, the eponymous heroine is killed by her old boss, with the implication that he would go on to kill the others as well. Subverted if you watch the series "bonus clip," which implies that they all get better. Or remains straight if you factor in the lyrics and dialog at that part, and that video's title. (NSFW)
• Hoshino, Close Your Eyes is a niche series with an infamous ending that many believe was the author lashing out at the publisher out of spite after being denied an anime adaptation. The main character Kobayakawa is a socially awkward loner who gradually learns to come out of his shell and make friends. In the end, he suddenly becomes His Own Worst Enemy and rejects his crush after her Love Confession on the grounds that he doesn't feel that he's good enough for her. His friends encourage him to stop being an idiot but he reinforces his decision by cutting contact with everyone. In the end, after he's burned bridges with all the friends he made over the past year they all go on to lead happy, successful lives while he goes back to being the asocial Loser Protagonist he was at the start.
  • The extra chapter steers this into a Happy Ending, through Big Damn Reunion.
• Ibitsu: Kazuki, the main character, is dead after a long time being tortured by the Lolita (being kept in his room and being fed trash), and well after she has already killed his parents, sister, and friends. When the police figure out he's dead, he's blamed for all the deaths and Lolita is shown selecting her next victim.
• Isabelle of Paris: Paris is burned to rubble, Victor is shot, Jean is shot, Irma commits suicide, Andréa dies attempting (and failing) to kill Thiers, Jules is executed, Geneviève is shot and her baby dies with her, Jeanne and the other Parisian commoners die avenging Geneviève, Gaston is crushed to death while mourning over Geneviève's death, but refuses to leave the building, and Thiers faces no repurcussions for his actions. The anime's final scene is of Isabelle staring at the ruins that used to be her home, having an Imagine Spot of the green and vibrant place it used to be, and she says this, before it Fades to Black.
  Isabelle: "I...live."
• 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."
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: The end of Phantom Blood, where Jonathan dies to save his wife and unborn child, taking his adoptive-brother-turned-villain, Dio Brando, down to the bottom of the sea with him. In the context of just Part 1, this is more of a Bittersweet Ending; however, of course, in Stardust Crusaders, Dio is revealed to have survived and stolen Jonathan's body.
• Another infamous one 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. Super extremely subverted in the anime sequel Leo the Lion to the original anime.
• At the end of the anime's first season, Kaiji bets four of his fingers and all of the money he got in the E-card game in one final gamble. He loses.
• Katanagatari ends up with almost the entire named cast (save about five characters) dead, the ornate Thanatos Gambit driving the plot having proved completely futile, and the hero Walking the Earth having lost the only person he ever loved.
• Kite (1998) manages to pull this off with the came-out-of-nowhere murder of Oburi while Sawa patiently awaits him at his apartment for their Happily Ever After.
• Le Chevalier d'Eon ends with the main character, D'eon, being the only major character left alive and as an old man, reflecting how due to The French Revolution, he lost faith in his country and lost everyone he ever cared about. In a sense, D'eon, even loses his sense of identity as in the first episode, his dead sister Lia, possessed him to some degree, and their identities merge throughout the show, to the point that at the end, he is no longer sure if he is D'eon or Lia, and spends a lot of time dresssed as Lia and pretending/sometimes believing he is her. In addition, the show slowly kills off almost all the characters throughout the story, but leaves a few alive before the epilogue. The epilogue is a Deadly Distant Finale, showing how the survivors all ended up being killed, which D'eon comes to terms with in the final scene, as much as he can.
• The Little Mermaid: The prince realizes his mistake just after it's too late, and Fritz tearfully chases the bubbles that were Marina. The only consolation is that Marina gets a soul and goes to Heaven.
• A wordless manga adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood 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.
• L/R Licensed by Royalty ended with at least one, if not both, of the main characters pointlessly dying within the literal last minute of the show.
• Lupin III: Happens sometimes. We're not counting just when the gang fails to get anything from their heist; that happens often. Some stories have one character that the audience felt deeply about being killed off for the ending. Lupin III: Island of Assassins stands out as probably being the codifier for the fan opinion that if Lupin's wearing a black shirt under a red Jacket, people are going to die.
• The anime adaptation of Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story ends like this, with Iroha losing Ui for good when she has to destroy her witch body in order to stop Alina, with Lil'Kyubey (the container of her soul) joining Touka and Nemu in their kamikaze attack, the Doppel System being destroyed with the deaths of Ui, Touka and Nemu, forcing the girls to go back to hunting for Grief Seeds, Kuroe rejecting Iroha’s help and choosing to witch out and Madoka (and presumably Mami, Kyoko and Sayaka) died offscreen, forcing Homura to travel back in time. The only real upside is that Kaede and the other girls are cured from Doppel Syndrome, but even then, that's only because Momoko and Mifuyu performed a Heroic Sacrifice to save them.
• The first season of Magic Knight Rayearth ends with the protagonists discovering they were being manipulated for almost the entire series, essentially assisting the suicide of the very person they thought they were meant to rescue and being sent home, traumatized.
• Magical Princess Minky Momo: Classic magical girl anime from the 1980s, Minky Momo, has a sudden swerve at the midpoint with Momo, the main character, and princess of the Land of Dreams... being run over by a truck. She dies rather anticlimactically. However, she is reborn as a human, but by then, the plot's actually over, with the final stretch of episodes only existing in the baby Momo's dreams. This left so much of an impact on the franchise itself that the 1991 sequel series referenced it every once in a while, usually playing it for laughs.
  • Later parodied in the very first episode of Excel♡Saga.
• Master of Martial Hearts: The Platonic heart doesn't exist, the losers of the tournament go insane and sold off as Sex Slaves. Turns out, Aya's entire life has been an utter lie. Her childhood friend Natsume, love interest Haruki, and newest friend Miko all want her dead. The entire tournament was set up by them for revenge on what her parents did to their families. Aya's mother saves her, kills Natsume, Haruki, and Miko. She stays behind in the burning building to to atone for Aya's sins, which kills Aya's Mother and the insane losers of the tournament. Aya then kills Natsume's mother, who was responsible for Natume and Miko's decision to hold the tournament. On the upside, this did finally end the Cycle of Hatred that was running rampant in their families. Though Aya now has no friends or family.
• The Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X OVA: The Day of Sigma. Dr. Cain dies, Abel City is destroyed, X and Zero are in bad conditions and the Mavericks and Sigma are taking over the world.
• Memories.
  • In Magnetic Rose, Heinz escapes the station with his life, but he's stuck in space after getting yanked out by the Corona's analyzer, his fate uncertain. Ivanov and Aoshima likely died when the space station's magnetic field absorbed the Corona and the other ships of the graveyard into its mass, transforming the station into a giant rose. Miguel got the worst fate out of the whole crew; he's still alive, but he's been brainwashed by the insane A.I. posing as Eva into becoming her new "Carlo". With no real food on the station, he'll someday starve to death and join the other victims Heinz saw when he got sucked out. Once that happens, the cycle will start again, with "Eva" luring more people to her home to continue her escapist fantasy.
  • In Stink Bomb, just when it seems that the Japanese and U.S. military have finally found a way to stop Nobuo by trapping and freezing him in a tunnel, by some miracle, he survives by climbing into one of the U.S. space suits. After the military unknowingly brings him to their headquarters in Tokyo, Nobuo shows himself after giving his suitcase to Director Nirasaki and kills everyone when he tries to leave his suit after thinking they can't hear him. It's unclear what happens after that, as the episode ends there, but it can't be good for Japan or the U.S. now that some of their military leaders are dead.
  • Cannon Fodder is not chocolates and roses, either: our glimpse into a single day in the life of the city is all the more depressive knowing that there is no change coming. People will live and die shooting cannons all day, every day, with no end in sight.
• Metamorphosis: The story ends with Saki dead from a drug overdose after being beaten up, horribly violated, and robbed by some of her former classmates, the culmination of a long process of personal degradation and descent into drug addiction and prostitution. Any hope of her surviving is revealed to be an Imagine Spot, and her unborn baby dies with her.
• MW. Father Garai foiled Michio Yuki from gassing the entire world with the titular chemical weapon by sacrificing his life of taking it down with him to the ocean, the latter gets gunned down by one of his hostages, Shunsuke Ban still doesn't recover from his last attack, and Michio, impersonating his older lookalike brother, escapes punishment and is free to do whatever he wants.
• Monster Rancher:
  • "The Ruin's Secret" ends with an attempted slave revolt failing. Pixie captures and enslaves most of the heroes, save for Genki and Mocchi — mainly because she sent those two over a cliff.
  • "Undine's Lake" has Undine slam the Heel-Face Door on herself, flinging herself into the flames and burning alive in front of a horrified Golem and the rest of his friends. All because she believes she can't redeem herself for what she's done without dying.
  • "Melcarba" sees the titular robot be brought down by a lightning strike, with the Searchers reflecting on how the technology that was used to create it could have been used for better ends than creating berserker war machines.
  • "Tiger's Battle with Destiny" ends with Tiger howling over the lost disc of his younger brother, having been forced to stab him through the chest in order to save himself and his friends.
  • "Goodbye, Baku": Baku fends off the Chariot who's been hunting the heroes, but is fatally wounded in the process, and limps back home to curl up and die in the ruins of his home, in front of a picture of his long-dead owner.
  • "Magic Stone Mayhem" sees Lilim successfully stealing the Magic Stone, and the only reason Genki and the rest of the Searchers aren't killed by her firing squad of Gangsters is because a dying Captain Weed manages to kill their leader before succumbing to his wounds.
  • The second season ends with five of the protagonists sacrificing themselves to revive the Phoenix. During the final battle, Genki gets flung off the back of his dragon mount and seemingly falls to his death in front of Holly, getting transported back to Earth in shock. While a Lighter and Softer third season was produced, it wasn't aired everywhere.
• My Hero Academia: The Paranormal Liberation War Arc, a climactic battle between the heroes and the alliance of the League of Villains and the Meta Liberation Army, ends this way. The battle results in massive property damage, the deaths of more than a few heroes (including Crust and Midnight) and countless civilian casualties. Although some notable members of the League are arrested, Shigaraki, now fully under the control of All For One, escapes with many of his allies. As a result of the disastrous outcome of the battle, and Dabi publicizing Endeavor's abuse of his family and Hawks killing Twice, public faith in heroes has been devastated. As if that's not enough, All For One breaks out of Tartarus, unleashing the most dangerous criminals in the process. In mere hours, six more high security prisons are broken and criminals are running amok across the nation. In one week, dozens of Pro-Heroes resign due to the mayhem. The arc ends with Izuku abruptly dropping out of U.A High, leaving his mother and friends, as he and All Might venture into the chaos. They are accompanied by Endeavour, Hawks, and Best Jeanist, but most of the responsibility of the mission is on Izuku.
• The ending of the Six Tailed Beast arc in Naruto. The arc's Big Bad has been defeated, Hotaru saved and Utakata the six-tailed Jinchuriki has finally realized the truths of master-and-student and is ready to take on Hotaru as his student. Seems like a happy ending, right? Well, despite all the development he got through the whole arc, those who read the manga knew from the start that Ukataka was going to be captured by the Akatsuki, which the end promptly showed.
• Nobara no Julie begins at the end of 1918, when the main character's parents are mistakenly shot by a plane, forcing her to move to Vienna to live with her extended family. The series ends by saying that Julie has assimilated into Vienna and has become a "true Viennese child". Which would be great, except we know what comes next in this time period....
• The story of the manga Not Simple ends with the protagonist Ian committing suicide in a subway bathroom after he learns that the woman he has been waiting three years to reunite with, the only person apart from his deceased sister who has ever made him happy, has died in the time since he last saw her. This turns out to be a mistake, however, as the young woman that gave him the news thought that Ian was looking for her aunt, when he had actually been looking for her mother. However, due to the Anachronic Order of the story, this could technically be considered a downer beginning.
• One Piece has the Sabaody Archipelago Arc, which sees the Straw Hats handed their first, unambiguous loss of the series; while they succeed in getting Camie away from the slavers and World Nobles that were after her, the Straw Hats receive a brutal Curb-Stomp Battle at the hands of Kizaru and the Pacifistas before they are teleported away, one by one, by Bartholomew Kuma. Luffy is left helpless to stop the assault on his friends and can only sob in impotent rage before Kuma teleports him away. Things only get worse for Luffy from here.
• Phantom of Inferno: In literally the last minute of the show, Reiji is apparently shot by a disguised assassin in a passing hay wagon, and Ein is last seen laying face-up on the ground next to a poisonous plant that's missing a leaf. Their fate is left ambiguous.
• Pokémon Adventures:
  • The ending of the FRLG arc involves preventing a giant airship from crashing into Vermillion City, Silver coming in terms with his father, everybody happily talking about meeting up with their other friends and getting turned into stone statues. Thankfully, the next arc seeks to correct this.
  • At the end of the BW arc, Ghetsis uses Colress's Beheeyem to throw Black at Reshiram, having him also get sealed in the Light Stone for 2 years along with Reshiram. Just like with the FRLG protagonists, he gets freed later in the Black 2 and White 2 arc.
• Pom Poko ends with one of the three Transformation Masters dying, another one going insane and forming a Buddist Dance Cult, before proceeding to turn his 'male parts' into a treasure ship, and sailing away (with some of the tanuki who couldn't transform) to reach Nirvana, not realising that they're sailing to their deaths. Meanwhile, Gonta and another group of tanuki have one final attack against the humans which results in them all getting killed. In an act of desperation, the rest of the tanuki stage one final performance - of how their home used to be, before appealing to the humans. Although they are slightly successful it is too late, thus forcing the tanuki to do what the kitsunes did: blend into society, abandoning those who couldn't transform. The film tries to end on a happy note by having all the tanuki meet up, rejoicing, but it doesn't really work, and there isn't enough happy to make it a Bittersweet Ending.
• The ending of episode 9 of Popotan: Konami is revealed to have died, sending Mai back into the depression she's been trying to avoid throughout the series. Most sad endings in Popotan are at least bittersweet. Ain't anything sweet about this one.
• Despite being a comedy, Prison School ends with a pretty devastating one. Kiyoshi spends the entire series trying to get with Chiyo, the kind-hearted younger sister of the Absurdly Powerful Student Council President, and risks getting beaten or expelled at every turn for her. The final arc of the manga revolves around his Love Confession to her, but Hana tries to sabotage it in order to keep Kiyoshi for herself. She ends up succeeding after revealing that Kiyoshi was still wearing her panties, and as a result Chiyo is shown to end up becoming a bitter man-hater like her sister and it's heavily implied that boys at the school will continue to suffer with her as President.
• The ending of Romeo × Juliet. They both die at the end. You know it's coming, but you'll still cry, especially since it's not even suicide, for the most part!
• The Sad Tale of the Principal Post: The comic ends with the father dying under the principal post of the house, showing his withered corpse still there. It's never found out how he got there.
• Surprisingly, or not, as the case may be, the manga version of the final battle against Chaos in Sailor Moon, in which the main character has the choice of either destroying Chaos utterly and the Cauldron with it, thus dooming the universe to a slow extinction, if a new Cauldron doesn't pop up somewhere else, meaning a new powerful enemy appearing causing hundreds of billions of beings to be killed in the ensuing fight, or just 'momentarily' delaying the ultimate evil's return resulting in a massive battle...in which hundreds of billions of people will die anyway, but might end up being reborn because the Cauldron is still there. Guess which option she chooses? Also, the implication in the manga that Usagi will become Sailor Cosmos at some point in the future, and that only she is truly immortal...everyone else she knows will eventually be gone, with only herself to keep Chaos at bay for what looks like the rest of time.
• Saikano has one of the most depressing finales ever: despite Chise's efforts, the world ends and the only survivor is apparently Shuuji. Chise herself becomes a tiny ball of light and the viewer is left with the impression that hope is utterly lost for good. Whereas in the manga Chise turns into a spaceship and she and Shuuji leave the lifeless earth and head into space (assuming Shuuji isn't hallucinating or hasn't gone mad because everyone he knows is dead).
• Midway through Saiyuki Gaiden already has Kenren and Tenpou being dead, but the whole story concludes with Konzen being crushed to death by the Earth's entrance gate so he could allow Goku to escape from Heaven. Konzeon Bosatsu then finds Goku at the entrance, traumatized from Konzen's death, seals his memories before imprisoning him for 500 years.
• Samurai Girls while a lighthearted series throughout the first eleven episodes, the final episode has BOTH Moe!Jubei and Badass!Jubei perform a Heroic Sacrifice 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.
• The end of episode 12 "The Pizza Cats Are Only Human" in Samurai Pizza Cats ends with the Pizza Cats being defeated and Speedy collapsing, and episode 36 "Bad Bird Uncaged" ends with Speedy being defeated by Bad Bird. It is even worse in the original version, where Bad Bird appears to kill Speedy as he is lying on the ground defenceless.
• Satou Kashi no Dangan wa Uchinukenai is something between this and a Bittersweet Ending. But it's hard to feel anything but depression when the abused Deuteragonist is murdered by her father and her only friend finds her body in the woods.
• Despite the fact that the mood in School Days starts very happy and then gradually goes downhill, the ending is still a big shocker when the allegedly pregnant Sekai knifes the male protagonist Makoto to death, 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. Likely the only positive thing about this ending is that Makoto, who in the anime is a dimwitted and lecherous scumbag who uses the girls around him for his own pleasure, got what he deserved (and then some).
• Shadow Star, the anime, had No Ending. In the manga, however... Every character got their own little downer ending, for one thing, but it all culminated when everyone in the entire world dies except for Shiina and Mamiko, both of whom are pregnant. The briefest glimmer of hope is given in the final pages, which show Shiina's daughter and Mamiko's son, in an Adam and Eve Plot.
• The manga Shigurui has several Downer Endings to various arcs within the story:
  • Gonzaemon was in love with a young woman, but due to Kogan's prodding that he abandon whatever was "holding him back" so that he may become a great swordsman. He slaughtered her.
  • Gennosuke is shown to be in love with Mie, but his childhood trauma combined with loyalty towards her father prevents him from expressing his feelings. While he is skeptical, he does not step in when Kogan attempts to persuade Irako into impregnating his daughter in front of the other samurai.
  • Mie misinterprets Irako's refusal as charity and after Kogan's death, the school is thrown into disarray and loses all money and support. The new successor Gennosuke and Mei struggle to regain their pride by having Gennosuke defeat Irako in battle. Upon Irako's death, instead of embracing the comfortable life she has come to know with Gennosuke, she slits her throat and leaves him alone once again.
• Shiki: The villagers hunt down all the Shiki in the village, despite a few who weren't truly bad in the first place and were only being strong-armed into attacking their loved ones and friends. And while the villagers were acting out of self defense, its obvious nothing will be the same when everything's over. Yuuki dies fighting Tatsumi, blowing them both up. And just when it seems the villagers have won, their village mysteriously catches on fire and burns to the ground. Even the Big Bad Sunako doesn't get away scot-free with her convictions shattered and on the verge of despair. The OAV clarifies the mysterious fire as an intentional act of arson by a badly disturbed local woman. Then there's the Shiki who are still in the cities. Whose jobs were to gather people to feed the ones in the village. It's never mentioned if they were ever in the village when both sides were fighting.
• Someday's Dreamers II: Sora ends with protagonist Sora returning to her hometown and succumbing to her heart condition. This is especially egregious since she seemed to be mostly fine for the largest part of the series.
• By the end of Space Runaway Ideon, over half of the cast has been killed with many of the surviving protagonists expressing a rather bleak pessimism about their fates. It gets even worse in Be Invoked, where the anime's title robot is destroyed along with the remaining cast members. One of Kill 'Em All Tomino's most notorious endings.
• An incredibly depressing ending to what was just another Super Robot series, Space Warrior Baldios: the hero Marin and his allies can only watch as the Big Bad, Zeo Gattler, unleashes his "Final Weapon" which triggers a cataclysmic series of gigantic tsunamis that ravage the surface of the earth. The last shot of the series is a freeze-frame of a tsunami wave, with the word "End" appearing next to it. This ending was made partially because the series was supposed to run one more season and they had to cut it off somewhere. The ending is famous enough to be the downer end screen on the 44th scenarios of Super Robot Wars Z.
• Author and illustrator Takashi Yanase seemed to have been a big fan of this trope, mostly in the anime adaptations of his stand-alone works.
  • The ending of his adaptation of Ringing Bell (or Chirin's Bell, as it's known in Japanese) is the story of a lamb who is out to avenge the death of his mother, who was killed by a wolf. After realizing he can't kill the wolf in the state he's currently in, he offers to become the wolf's apprentice. After many years of training Chirin is now an adult, very rugged and disfigured with many battle scars, and the wolf decides to bring him to the farm where he grew up to kill a sheep and bring it back to him. Once he kills the guard dogs, he makes his way into the barn, chooses a sheep and charges - but he realizes that he can't bring himself to do it, because she has a lamb with her. He leaves, but the wolf confronts him. Chirin stabs the wolf with his misshapen horns, and the wolf congratulates him on succeeding with his goal before dying. Chirin decides to go back to live on the farm, but the other sheep are afraid of him. He realizes that without the wolf he no longer serves a purpose, as the sheep won't accept him and the wolf he has grown to love as a father figure is dead, so he goes back to the mountains where the wolf lived, during a blizzard. He is never heard from again and is presumed to have died; but he, or at least his ghost, was rumored to have visited the valley, as the sheep heard the ringing of a little bell that was never removed from his neck.
  • The Gentle Lion/The Kindly Lion ends with an escaped lion (Buru-Buru) and his mother (Muku-muku the dog) being killed by an army. However, both the short and book ends on an ambiguous note where it's hinted that Buru-buru and Muku-muku survived being shot and implied that both "went running all the way to the end of the world". Both versions even show the lion and dog flying off to the moon.
• In what is probably the second darkest ending of any Studio Ghibli movie, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya ends like this: celestial beings from the Moon, who Kaguya belongs to, return to get her, and they're led by what looks like the Buddha himself. Her father's men put up resistance and are easily overwhelmed. Kaguya protests to the Moon People that she wants to stay on Earth but has a celestial robe of forgetfulness placed on her anyway. In a Hope Spot, she briefly appears to remember her life on Earth, and then is taken back to the Moon while her adoptive parents sob. Roll credits.
• In episode 20a of Tamagotchi, everyone is making good progress getting the Tama-Cherry Blossom to bloom by doing fun activities until Mametchi starts to perform his rendition of "Every Lovely". His singing is so terrible that it makes the blossoms on the tree all fall off simultaneously. The episode ends there with everyone else shocked at the fallen blossoms while Mametchi is still moving along with his song, unaware of what his singing has done.
• Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee has a Bittersweet Ending in both its manga and anime adaptations, but some storylines don't end nearly as happily.
  • Episode 15 of the anime sees Lag and Sylvette in a carriage with Bonny and Moss, a couple that is fleeing from a gang of Wild West-style outlaws. They claim that it's because the leader of the gang wants Bonny's hand in marriage, but it's actually because Bonny and Moss stole some spirit amber and plan to sell it. It's eventually revealed that Bonny doesn't love Moss, but was actually planning on using the money to reunite with her actual lover Clyde, who'd left for Akatsuki. Bonny runs off, enraged at her failure, and while Moss thanks Lag for helping him see the truth, he's clearly heartbroken.
  • The end of the first season of the anime. Lag finally encounters Gauche(his friend and the Letter Bee who delivered him to Cambel Litus) again, only to realize that he's lost his heart and forgotten who he is, resulting in him becoming a letter-stealing Marauder named Noir, an encounter that ends with Gauche shooting him with his Shindan and leaving him there. Worse, it's later revealed that Gauche's memory loss is permanent, and he will never return to the way he was before. Meanwhile, Sylvette fights with "Roda", a mysterious young woman who has the same name as Gauche's old dingo, resulting in Roda easily defeating her and mocking her for being a failure as a dingo. The incident severely shakes Niche's confidence and leads her to take a 10-Minute Retirement.
• Texhnolyze, while maintaining an extremely dark and depressing atmosphere throughout the show, still manages to pull off one of the saddest Downer Endings imaginable.
• The Tokkô manga ends with Ranmaru monologuing that the world ended two years after the end of the story.
• Tokyo Babylon. So, The Hero's Love Interest turns out to be a sociopath, kills The Hero's sister, cripples his grandmother and then walks away like nothing happened. Nice.
• Tokyo Ghoul warns the audience from the very first chapter that it will be a tragedy. It keeps this promise with a particularly sudden and bleak ending, softened only when a sequel was announced. The Anteiku staff has been destroyed by the CCG, with Touka and Nishiki forced to abandon their human identities and leave behind loved ones. Yoshimura has been captured by his daughter Eto/the Owl and Aogiri Tree, and will be used as the new donor for Dr. Kanou's experiments. Juuzou and Kuroiwa have both been maimed, and are left mourning for Shinohara, who has been declared Brain Dead. Hide is declared Missing, with the possibility that Kaneki ate him while suffering from Sanity Slippage. Kaneki, Amon, Takizawa, Koma, and Irimi are all believed to have been killed during the battle, with their ultimate fates left ambiguous. Tsukiyama has been left in an Angst Coma after failing to save Kaneki. Aogiri has kidnapped several Investigators for Dr. Kanou's experiments, and have come out on top after seeing both sides they oppose destroy each other. And the ones getting the last laugh (besides Eto and Aogiri) are the mysterious Pierrot, a group of Ghoul pranksters that have been manipulating the events of the series all along. Their members include two of Kaneki's most trusted allies, Uta and Itori, who laugh over Kaneki's apparent demise, and Souta/Furuta, the eventual Final Boss of the sequel.
• The Transformers: Armada episode "Credulous". Sideways turns out to have been a Double Agent who chooses this point to declare for the Decepticons, Hotshot gets beaten and severely damaged, and Starscream gets the Star Saber.
• A very old example is Triton Of the Sea , When the title character spends the entire series avenging his family, who were annihilated 5000 years ago by the bloodthirsty Poseidon family, only to find out from after defeating the Big Bad that it was the Triton family who were the bloodthirsty ones and he proved it by committing genocide, thus causing a Heroic BSoD. THE END. It should be noted that this is the first series written and directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino, and was considered a kid's show at the time.
• Tsukihime has these in about half of its routes, especially in the True Ends.
  • Arcueid, continually losing her power, in the end leaves her lover behind and goes back to eternal sleep in her castle, forever dreaming of her times spent with him.
  • Akiha's route ends with the protagonist killing himself to restore her sanity, though it is hinted in the fandisc sequel that he might still be alive. Her normal ending simply has her spending the rest of her life as a mindless bloodsucker.
  • Hisui's ends with her sister Kohaku, the mastermind behind most of the game's events, killing herself in guilt and to let Hisui live in peace. Akiha also dies. This is a really bittersweet ending since you still get the girl and it gives an incredible feeling of life continuing.
  • The Epilogue, taking place after any (or all) of the routes, has the protagonist once again meeting the woman who taught him to value life. He thanks her for all she had done; during their talk, it is revealed that the protagonist will only have a few years left to live, less if he continues to use his Mystic Eyes.
• Junji Ito's Uzumaki. Everybody succumbs to the curse of the spiral, Everybody. And it'll keep happening, again and again...
• Gyo: The protagonists survives and likely joins the group working on a vaccine for the germs later on, but his girlfriend and uncle were both infected by the germs and the girlfriend was killed by a mob of the infected, while the uncle carried off his attractive assistant to parts unknown. Not to mention Japan has been devastated and the infected are still on the march as well as having spread outside of Japan. Arguably not as bleak as Uzumaki, as there was at least a faint light of hope in the vaccine the students were working on.
• Weiß Kreuz Gluhen ends with Sena and his long-lost mother both dead, Omi having sacrificed what was left of his innocence in order to fully establish himself as the head of the morally dubious Takatori family, Ken in prison, Yoji amnesiac and lacking most of his personality, and Aya apparently bleeding to death on a city sidewalk from a gut wound while the many pedestrians walking past take no notice.
• 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, when he - having become such a weak, selfish lowlife that 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. The Macekre English dub completely changes the nature of the ending. It also adds a Framing Device that wasn't present in the original. The voiceover narration is of the Hero retelling his memoirs as an old man. The opening suggests that he has recently passed away and his children are now reading his story. His last words in the story indicate that he was eventually forgiven in the end and allowed to join with the Tree of Life. Meaning that he made peace with himself at the end of his life.
• Witchblade features the Witchblade breaking down and slowly destroying Masane's body (which it doesn't do in the original version), and when she finally dies, her daughter's only indication that she died is a tiny shell made from Masane's remains.
• X/1999. Almost the entire named cast is dead or assumed so, either in mutual takedowns or as suicidal charges against the Big Bad, and Tokyo is largely destroyed AND flooded. The sole survivor is the protagonist, but even he loses his two best friends, one of whom arbitrarily does a Face–Heel Turn the literal instant the protagonist chooses to join the heroes to protect the two of them. The villains don't get to celebrate this new ally for long, because the Face Heel Turn-ed friend eventually chooses to screw the rules and decides to kill them all.
• Your Lie in April: Kaori ends up dying from complications during the high-risk surgery and Kousei receives a letter from Kaori posthumously via her parents, thanking him for introducing her to music, for bringing color to her world and Kaori admits that it wasn't Watari she loved but Kousei. Tsubaki tries to comfort Kousei by reasserting her feelings for him and determination to never abandon him, but it doesn't have much effect and there's no signs that he will reciprocate her feelings any time soon. The next shot is Kousei lamenting on the idea of spring; the season when he meet Kaori for the first time, has come, but this time without the presence of Kaori.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, in season 3. Judai, after grieving over the loss of Johan, who sacrificed himself to bring Duel Academy to Earth, decides to save him, and his friends tag along, much to Judai's dismay, who tells them not to help him for their own safety. It hurts like a bitch when Judai duels Brron, who has captured all of his friends, except Sho, who escaped. Brron played these cards that forced Judai's friends to emote to death. Manjyome was pissed at Judai, Tyranno Kenzan blamed him, and Asuka and her brother Fubuki were like, in somber sadness, "Why, Judai?: '("Despite the torment Judai goes through, he beats Brron. But Sho comes and doubts that he and Judai should be friends any longer, leaving the latter alone and heavily riddled with guilt over the loss of his friends, leading to his transformation into the Supreme King.
  • The dub of GX was halted after Season 3. Consequentially, the American version concludes with several people dead or missing, and Syrus losing his best friend and older brother forever.

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