"Thanks goodness! Thanks goodness... thanks goodness.."
Despite being a show for children, Ojamajo Doremi has its serious shifts in tone and subject matter that gives it a bigger emotional heft than most slice-of-life fantasy comedies.- In episode 7, when Pop wets herself, her miserable, embarrassed wails can make you sad, too, if you've ever had an "accident".
- Casting a spell to bring someone back to life automatically kills the caster upon success.
- In episode 18, Nanako is afraid to get close to animals because her dog Lulu was hit by a car and died under her care. When she finally decides to open her heart to one of the class bunnies (also named Lulu), it escapes and is nearly killed by a cat. Hazuki feels so bad about this she performs healing magic to ensure the rabbit lives, ignoring the pleads of Doremi and Aiko not to. Nor a moment later in the episode, Hazuki will have her magic taken away for ten days for breaking the Witch World's law, which prevents the use of forbidden magics.
- Anything dealing with Aiko's parents will leave a huge impression on you, especially in the episodes when she tries to rekindle their marriage. When you get to the real cause of why Aiko's parents divorced, it'll break your heart again and again to see Aiko's attempts fail each time and hope that they'll have a happy ending together. Fortunately, they do, but not without the trouble getting Aiko's grandfather's approval.
- Dokkan Episode 38 is laced with this. It is when Aiko really starts making headway in getting her parents back together. We also learn why Aiko's mother refuses to move to Misora: She is taking care of Aiko's grandfather (the same one she was afraid of until the Motto movie) out of guilt for letting her own mother die alone. Made all the worse when Aiko attempts to use forbidden magic to secure it; only the timely arrival of Doremi and Co. stops the attempt.
- The episode "Aiko's number one happiest day", from the episodes leading up to the series finale, shows Aiko and her mother doing their bests to take care of aforementioned grandfather who is very rude and standoffish towards Aiko especially mostly due to pride. After Aiko admits to him how terrified she has been of him due to seeing her grandfather slap her mom and yell at her at a very young age, he eases up... and when both Aiko's parents and Aiko herself begs him for permission, he allows the parents to get together, which is what Aiko wanted (and which leaves every person involved in tears). But it means they will move back to Osaka. The episode ends with Doremi and Aiko dancing on the roof of the hospital to say goodbye.
- Dokkan Episode 38 is laced with this. It is when Aiko really starts making headway in getting her parents back together. We also learn why Aiko's mother refuses to move to Misora: She is taking care of Aiko's grandfather (the same one she was afraid of until the Motto movie) out of guilt for letting her own mother die alone. Made all the worse when Aiko attempts to use forbidden magic to secure it; only the timely arrival of Doremi and Co. stops the attempt.
- Episode 30 of the first season goes into Yamauchi's story, and how he misses his late grandfather so much that he even gets upset when his ghost seems visible to anyone but him. When the two briefly reunite (thanks to the Magical Stage) they happily complete the bamboo horse that his grandfather never got to finish for him. As the ghost departs, Yamauchi tearfully begs him not to go, but his grandfather kindly assures him that he will always be with him in spirit.
- The first Non-Serial Movie and episode 40 of Sharp, both of which double as a Heartwarming Moment, where Doremi and Pop put aside their differences and start getting along better.
- Momoko's backstory in episode 2 of Motto. It gets even worse when she gets stuck in a Lotus-Eater Machine near the end of Motto.
- In episode 32 of Motto, Momoko tries really hard to take care of Hana, having been the only girl who Hana hasn't bonded with very well. Just when things seem to be going well, Hana gets sick and the girls react very harshly to Momoko's lack of responsibility to the point where Aiko tells her not to go near Hana again. Luckily, they apologize and not only does Hana get better, but she warms up to Momoko.
- Several scenes from the second movie are heartbreaking, the story of Zenjuro who tried to help people and got beheaded for it, his lover Mayuri killing herself in grief, her mother bawling her eyes over her body, Aiko remembering when her grandfather hit her mother at the cementery due to trauma when she saw Doremi's grandfather and running away in tears. Doremi assuming the role of Mayuri to help what she thought was Zenjuro's ghost.
- Just when Aiko finally warms up to Doremi's grandfather at the end of the movie, he mentions that he's getting old and dying, leaving everyone, including the audience, in tears.
- The Big Bad's backstory. Just... everything about it. The part when you see her own son die in front of her eyes, and also when some of her grandchildren come to the funeral late by two weeks because of an accident, it almost makes you want to forgive her for all the crap she put Doremi and her friends through in the previous seasons.
- The fact that Roy and everyone else spent the rest of their lives regretting their decision to leave her is also depressing when the last of what the audience sees of Roy's life is him tearfully clinging onto the tapestry Majo Tourbillon made.
- Episode 40 of Dokkan is downright melancholy, detailing Doremi's interactions with a witch named Mirai, who's settled in the human world but can never fully connect to it, not when most everyone she meets grows old long before she will. It gets even more depressing when you realize that Doremi may fall under the same fate, and is now conflicted between keeping her witch life or staying as a human.
- Episode 6 of Na-i-sho, where we finally get to learn Hazuki's maid's past. First Love? Great! Dates to ballet theatres? Awesome! Then we learn that said First Love enlisted in the army for the second Sino-Japanese War and was never heard from again; when Hazuki desperately looks for him, she learns that he was already dead, killing any chances of her reuniting him with Baaya.
- The entire twelfth episode from Na-i-sho is a big Tear Jerker. To drive Non's death home, she was one of the few ordinary people to ever find out the existence of witches without transforming one into a frog in the process. Upon meeting Doremi (whom she didn't know was a witch-in-training yet), she had a feeling she could actually talk to her about it. Much later, Doremi decides to give her a taste of what it's like and even goes so far as to offer her to join if she gets well. The problem being that not only is Non's disease extremely bad, but none of the Ojamajos would be able to cure it without killing themself in the process, meaning that they just have to hope for the best. Later in the episode, Doremi goes to visit her only to find her fighting for her life as the disease hits terminal. After a shout to do her best fighting, she leaves since she can't take watching it. Even later, Non's mother comes to reveal that Doremi's words were enough to help Non fight off the disease, but only for a few minutes, leaving Non-chan dead. Afterwords, Doremi decides to fulfill Non-chan's other dream for her, being alive and well playing in the snow with her mother. The whole thing was so unbearably sad, especially since Both Doremi and Non really seemed to want to be together, especially part of the magical misadventures with her.
- Every ending of each season (except for Motto, which ended on a good note).
- In the first season, after working so hard to become witches, Doremi and the girls were forced to give up their apprenticeship for committing forbidden magic to save Onpu.
- In Sharp, Doremi and the girls manage to save Hana from the Big Bad, but at the cost of their own lives, as they are put to sleep for a milennia. Upon realizing this, Hana begins crying and manages to wake them all up with her first word: "Mama." You might think it ends there, but again, Doremi and the girls have to sacrifice their witch abilities to make sure Hana grows properly, so since they're no longer witches, they can't see her. The kicker? At the end of the episode, Doremi and the girls are reminded of Hana when a customer walks into their shop with a baby and cry so much that they have to close the shop.
- Everything about the Dokkan series finale. In fact, everything in the last 5-10 episodes of Dokkan slowly builds up and leads to a load of tears. First off, all the girls have been drifting apart to pursue their own personal goals, and one by one they start leaving Doremi by applying to different middle schools or moving away. Each girl has their own episode (save for Onpu, who'd had an earlier episode about the trajectory she wants to take with her acting career) about their decisions to move on with their lives while worrying about how their friendship with each other will still survive. The biggest part of this is that when given to stay as witches or humans, everyone except Hana chooses the latter, meaning that they can't see Hana anymore. When Doremi is hit hard with a huge Heroic BSoD in the final episode, you'll feel it yourself, as all of these gradual changes are finally cemented in the Grand Finale, when the Theme Song finally plays.
- Seeing Reiko broken by a Jerkass Gold Digger isn't easy. Seeing that again after realizing that this happens in real life makes it all the more heart wrenching.
- If you are a war refugee or a victim of war that lost your family, one of Hazuki's songs, "Mimi wo Sumashite
" will make you cry for its lyrics. - Episode 25 of Motto puts Doremi through the wringer before it’s revealed that it was her Birthday Episode. First, she catches the majority of the girls (Except Onpu) happily working at the Maho-Dou (even though Majo Rika had told Doremi to take the day off) and happily talking about her bad qualities and saying that things are much smoother without her around, causing her to run off in tears (afterwhich, Hazuki and the others agree that it wouldn’t be the same without her). This, along with her catching her family together (they had lied by saying they were at different appointments) and her classmates avoiding her causes her to come to the conclusion that everyone had gotten fed up with her clumsiness and no longer want her around, leaving the poor girl just trudging along in tears and even trying to run away from her friends when they come looking for her. While it’s ultimately explained that everyone was trying to prepare a Surprise Party for her, it really shows just insecure Doremi is as she’s afraid of being abandoned due to her clumsy nature.
- In Motto, we are introduced to Kayoko Nagato, a very timid girl who is afraid to come to school (even throwing up whenever she tries), despite the teachers’ pleas for her to come. Over the course of the series, Doremi befriends her, and she makes progress in overcoming her fear, such as staying in the nurse’s office in the school rather than actually coming to class. In episode 45, we finally get the whole story: Kayako was a very slow worker and wasn’t good grades at the time she had dropped out, which really wasn’t helped by the fact her previous teacher had graphed out everyone’s grades and used them to rank the groups, resulting in Kayako’s group always ending up last. Her slow performance and low grades gradually turned everyone against her, finally coming to a head when Kayako overhearing her group mates wishing they would just switch groups already just to get away from her. When she started to believe that the others hated her, she tried to go to her Only Friend, Rinno, to ask him if that was true, only for him to coldly brush her off, telling her to not rely on him so much. These two instances, along with the pressure her old teacher and her parents were putting on her finally caused the poor girl to drop out, and even then, she was left with severe guilt (over supposedly causing trouble to everyone just by being at school) and anxiety. Thankfully, thanks to Seki and Yuki making everyone listen to Kayako’s problems, her parents and former classmates realize just how much they had hurt her, apologize and give her their full support, ending with Kayako’s classmates cheering her on when she finally enters her classroom.
