All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
Works with their own pages:
Individual examples:
- In the end of Volume 1 of Barefoot Gen, after growing to know and love the Nakaoka family, the Atom Bomb drops on their hometown of Hiroshima and Gen and his mom Kimie watch in horror as they are unable to save the rest of their family who are pinned down under the rubble of their burning house. After they are rescued Kimie gives birth to a baby girl and as Gen holds her up in the air he breaks down crying knowing his father and siblings will never know her.
- The Eclipse in Berserk. The abridged series put it quite nicely when it said, "but it's like the only time in the history of anime that the demons win. Every other show ends with the Ancient Hero of Bullshit showing up at the last minute, wielding the legendary Sword of Deus ex Machina and slicing the hell out of us. Well not this time! This time, WE WIN! Griffith turns evil. Everyone gets raped or eaten or killed. Fuck you. THE END!"
- Danganronpa 3 Future Arc:
- A lot of watchers were completely distraught at the end of Episode 2, when Aoi Asahina, one of the survivors of the first game and having built up a sizeable fanbase beforehand, was out and out murdered. This was to the point a lot of watchers decided to quit, citing Too Bleak, Stopped Caring. Enough that in the next episode, it turns out that Aoi didn't die, she just got stabbed by a toy knife and the blood was made of tomato ketchup. As a result, the relief of her survival eclipsed what would've become the next Shocking Moment: the one who actually died was an Ensemble Dark Horse: Great Gozu.
- Afterwards, the writers seems to kill off more fan favorite characters with as of Episode 5, Miaya being the robotic avatar of Monaca Towa, Tengan being murdered by Munakuta, and Seiko ended up becoming the third murder victim of the attacker.
- Dragon Ball:
- Dragon Ball: Krillin's death. It wasn't the first time a character was killed, but he was the first major character to get killed in the whole series, and marked the series' turn for the darker. For the first time in the series, Anyone Can Die, and even Goku seemed to be in over his head.
- The very beginning of Dragon Ball Z. In order: Goku has a son. Goku has a brother. Goku is an alien. Goku dies. The latter two are the most shocking — there had never been any prior explanation for why Goku originally had a tail and how he could transform into a giant ape, and it was never imagined that there might be others out there like him. And even though this is a series where Death Is Cheap, no one expected Goku to die.
- Later on, there was also Goku's transformation into a Super Saiyan for the first time. Though it's iconic now, at the time most audiences were as shocked as Frieza was by what happened, as they'd never seen a Saiyan transformation of that sort before. Making it further unnerving was the sheer amount of Tranquil Fury Goku radiated after the fact, and how suddenly he was able to make Frieza, who had up to this point been dishing out a Curb-Stomp Battle, look like an utter fool.
- Frieza coming to Earth wasn't shocking in light of the fact that he managed to survive Namek's explosion. The real shocking moment was that he would be stopped not by Goku, Vegeta, or Piccolo, but by some guy that no one had ever seen before — and yet was somehow able to go Super Saiyan. No one knew who he was, no one knew where he had come from, no one knew how he could kill FRIEZA, of all people, and no one had any idea what he was there for.
- In Giant Robo: The Animation after growing to love the Experts of Justice nearly all of them are killed by the end of the series. The absolute heartbreaker of the casualties is Ginrei whose death is absolutely one of the biggest Tearjerkers in the OVA.
- In High School D×D, Issei loses Asia in Volume 6 when she gets teleported to the void, though Ise didn't know it at that time. He then ate Shalba with the use of his Juggernaut Drive and was howling in despair at the sky.
- Koihime†Musou has a cross-media version. It is a more lighthearted rendition from the original Visual Novel although it hints that these are events that occur before the outbreak of war following the fall of the Han Dynasty. Plenty of lines in the show can trigger a Player Punch in the people who played the games since they know what is coming. Kayuu keeps saying that she will live a long life? spoiler: Nope! She dies in every scenario. Shuyuu and Sonsaku's loving relationship? The latter will be murdered and the former will go mad, starting a civil war that almost undoes all that they have accomplished as lord and vassal.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion:
- Rei Ayanami's death. Made all the more horrible by the fact that she finally realized she cared about someone about three seconds before it happened.
- The scene where Shinji is forced to kill Kaworu.
- During the virtual reality filler arc in Yu-Gi-Oh!, the heroes are fighting their way through a horde of Duel Monsters when the Fairy Companion throws herself into the path of an oncoming attack on Yugi. He can only hold her and watch as she smiles weakly and dies, driving him to tears and a frustrated cry of "I've had enough!" before Yami steps in and starts getting dangerous.
- Pokémon the Series: Diamond and Pearl has Dawn failing to even pass the first round of her Pokémon Contest appeals, twice in a row, and her getting very depressed over it. Similar to the Love Live! Sunshine!! example, this averted Plot Armor hard, even more so since her predecessor May had never lost the first round at any point.
- Robotech had a massive one for the cartoon-watching youths of the '80s when Roy Fokker died of his wounds incurred in the episode "Goodbye, Big Brother" note . This was quite simply the first time in possibly two decades that an onscreen death of a living creature had been shown in televised animation aimed at children in the United States (remember this was in 1985, when Never Say "Die" was still in full effect)
