Tear Jerker / Vocaloid

Did these Vocaloid artists create some tragically sad songs or what?!

Prepare the Kleenexes, you will need them!

Some song series, such as Evillious Chronicles and Kagerou Project, have their own pages.

Tearjerker pages are Spoilers Off. As such, all spoilers are unmarked. Read at your own risk.

---

• Given that it's a song about the pain of separation, "Time Machine" by 40mP using Hatsune Miku is automatically this.
  • The PV featured in Project Diva F makes it even worse, as it features the POV character getting on a train and leaving the helplessly crying performer behind.
• Most if not all of Okame-P's songs are known for being REALLY sad, but none more than "you're not alone"., English lyrics here. It seems to be about regret for past sins, realizing there's nothing you can do and wishing someone you scorned well for the future.
• Nekobolo's "Jishou Mushoku", or "Self-Inflicted Achromatic". The lyrics describe being on the edge of losing a heavy fight with depression, feeling like if you died nobody would care. The simply-drawn PV depicts the stick figure hanging himself and not knowing where he fits in with the world. It may hit close to home for some.
  • Hanatan's cover is even more emotional, with her delicate, yet powerful handling of the lyrics. It's simply beautiful. This link also has English lyrics in the description.
  • Jubyphonic has an English cover, and her rendition of it starts off as nothing short of utterly devastating, but is wonderfully uplifting in the final verse.
• "If" by Muryoku-P. This tear-jerking ballad describes the thoughts of a terminally ill or wounded patient who is told they have until the morning to live. It's a raw, heart-wrenching rendition of the thoughts someone would have in this position. Not to mention, the way the final line cuts off a syllable early as Luka dies passes on right in front of the listener, just delivers a huge blow to the metaphorical solar plexus.
  • And like any good Vocarock tear-jerker, Hanatan breaks our hearts all over again with a haunting cover.
• "Kokoro". The song is sad enough, but combining it with the video pushes it way past the "jerker" phase.
  • If you want more tears to flow go listen to the answer song "Goodbye, Thank You", or Jun-P's "Kokoro・Kiseki". A Perspective Flip focusing on the scientist who built Rin, both songs capture the loneliness the scientist feels as he works on her but is never able to complete her before his death.
  • If you think Len's or Rin's version of Kokoro is a Tear Jerker on its own, don't even think about listening to the combined songs especially with the video.
    • Or the video of the manga version.
  • "Kokoro" now has a drama reading of the manga. Special credits to Mio, who did the professor's, computer's and robot's voice.
• hinayukki's Time Forgotten One, sung by Kaito. It's about a statue doomed to spend his entire life waiting for his long-dead friends.
• At first, Reboot seems to be a relatively cheerful and relaxed song about a group of three friends going through their childhood together. Then one of them gets hit by a truck trying to retrieve a charm that flew off one of the girl's backpacks... The rest of the PV is absolutely heartwrenching.
• Gensou Uta (using Gumi), a Illusionary Song, a rather ambiguous song with a proper dose of sadness.
• The Guinea Pigs and The Mercenary Gumi and her friends are the guinea pigs of a group of scientists... While it has a happy tune and even a happy ending, it's just heartbreaking to see their lives as experiments...
  "Surely, like in this picture book,
  God will one day take us out of here!"
  I could only smile gently at that
  "We aren't considered humans, so that's impossible"
  • The Thief and The Guardsman The sequel sheds some light on the Mercenary, who saved the girls, and what became of them.
• "Recycle Bin" and the sequel, "Salvage".
  • "Prisoner" and "Paper Plane" are another two that break hearts as if they were fragile china. The highest-rated comment on "Paper Plane" is currently "3:20 total break down," which references when Len starts singing.
• "soundless voice" tells the story of Len and a dying Rin, he tries his best to keep her alive but the condition she has worsens and she tragically dies, right when he was about to say he loves her... yeah, you might want to get the Kleenexes for this one.
  • Its answer song "proof of life" isn't much better, Rin tries to convince herself that everything would be alright and kept on singing. Even with Len comforting her she still couldn't deny the fact that her time would be up. In the end she died, with her last words being "thank you".
    Rin: I don't want to sing this type of tragic song right now.
  • For the Grand Finale of the soundless voice series we get "endless wedge". In the years after Rin's death, Len remembers the days he used to spent with Rin, how she gave him happiness, and how she smiled for him. While he's happy he was able to spend the time he had with her, he's sad he can't have a future with her. In lonely nights, Len remembered Rin's helpless voice, crying. After singing Rin's song "I do not want to sing a sad song" (the lyrics from "proof of life"), he remembered her voice, it was still there. The song ends with him saying that he will always love Rin. D'aww!
• By the White Windowsill shows how Kaito can turn on that faucet in your eyes when he wants to.
• Love is War. It's basically Unrequited Love: The Song.
  • The infamous PANDORA remix drives the stake even deeper.
• Reflect by Miku, about a boy who believes he's too unworthy of anyone's attention.
• Cactus and Mirage. The title sounds amusing, up until the main plotline kicks in.
• Meiko's The Thought To Tell is one of her few examples of this. She's been reborn as a girl, but still retains the love for a girl who was her art student and has been reborn as her best friend. Her friend also remembers fragments of their past life. Do they get together? Nope, girl gets hitched to a guy that looked like who Meiko was in her past life, and poor Meiko attends the wedding to wish them well.
  • The second part to the story, Cradle Of Destiny, just makes it worse. Maybe. It takes place a while after the wedding, the scene alternating between the girl crying alone in her room and Meiko on a cliff in the rain reflecting on their past and present lives, ending with Meiko collapsing to her knees screaming. The scene then switches to the girl being pulled along by her daughter, who happens to look like Meiko, to show her a painting she made that would seem to imply that she is Meiko. While the girl is looking at her daughter's painting, she runs off and is picked up by someone who looks like Meiko, but goes completely unnoticed much like the man Meiko was did when comforting her. With the vague ending and the husband's absence from everything except the flashbacks, this does leave the ending able to be interpreted in a happier light however.
• cosMo:
  • The Star Girl and The Illusionary Paradise saga... Not all the songs sound depressing yet given the context you can't deny the tragedy behind each song... Special mention goes to "Runaway Boy and Lost Girl" and "Reincarnated Girl and Reincarnated Boy".
  • "Disappearance of Hatsune Miku", which is a happy, cheery song in a major key...about Miku suffering while being uninstalled. Or getting a virus. Or being unable to sing well anymore. Or losing all her memory.
    • The song in itself is super depressing, but the official videos don't help at all. This one shows Miku lost in a labyrinthine version of the computer's internal system, trying desperately to find her way out to stop her owner from deleting her. Various scenes show her breaking down in tears when she sees musical notes disintegrating, and towards the end, after flashbacks of her times with the other Vocaloids, she tearfully smiles and accepts her fate.
    • This one is a montage of Miku living out her last moments with her creator, all done in a minimalist, monochrome, painterly, yet cutesy art style. If that wasn't depressing enough, this one really hammers it home with the sad and slightly Nightmare Fuel-ish imagery: tear-stained, decomposing music scores, Miku discarded like a toy among piles of said scores, her motifs vanishing, the progressing countdown to her deletion, which eventually leaves Miku staring depressingly at her owner through the screen as she turns black and fades.
    • This cleverly-made PV shows an MMD Miku not only singing, but also signing the entire song. It's impressive, but also very depressing when you consider that she's signing the song because the parts where she's singing too fast can't be understood. In her own words, she's "sacrificing sound quality so that she can communicate". If her voice can't speak, at least her hands can.
    • For everyone who thought that the original was bad, try Teto's version. There are a few lyrical changes, but they make all the difference.
    • Gackpo's slow version is just as sad. Unlike most other versions of the song, Gackpo sounds so...accepting of his impending death.
• Jin:
  • Jin's "Imagination Forest" covers a shy girl who's afraid of venturing out of her large and lonely home because of the death of her mother. However, the tears turn happy because she finally made a friend, and as we learn in her home series, she's about to make many more.
  • "Ayano's Theory of Happiness" takes the pain of Transparent Answer and multiplies it by about a hundred. For anybody who's listened to other songs in the Kagerou Project and know a bit about the characters, it will be an absolute heartbreaker, but even without knowing anything about the project, it's still a very sweet, sorrowful song.
  • "Summertime Record", which is the final song of the original run of Kagerou Project, is this as well, being a very melancholic song of someone remembering the past happy and horrible days, wishing to meet everyone again, but realizing that they have to say goodbye.
• mothy, well known for his heartbreaking content in the Evillious Chronicles and the Story of Evil sub series, has some sad songs outside of it:
  • Rin's "Flames of Yellow Phosphorous" is not happy. Another tipoff about this song? 1, the first few pictures are Rin burnt at the stake, 2, it's based off The Little Match Girl.
  • "Kept Waiting for a Response", What Could Have Been the finale to Story of Evil. And a touchingly beautiful finale it is.
  If my wish really does come true
  If my sins have really been forgiven
  I want the response to my letter
  And will keep waiting for it
• SasakureP can come up with some downright tragic songs:
  • "Campanella", a slow, sweet song based off the equally Tear Jerker novel Night on the Galactic Railroad'', during which Gumi invokes this trope, first with her attempts to express her feelings to her friend Campanella, even blasting off into space to search for him...but she knows he's dead. What makes it worse is that throughout the video, you see some flashbacks of her life with Campanella. Near the end, when the Wham Line finally hits, you see an image of a young Gumi watching a crowd of people holding a small box; meaning that she was actually there AT HIS FUNERAL. Tears increased tenfold.
  • Doomsday series:
    • *Hello, Planet is extremely depressing, despite the upbeat tone.
    • "The Week End is Coming!" set in the same universe as * Hello, Planet, shortly before the world ends, that has the same theme of trying to reach someone with your feelings too late.
    • "*Sayonara, World's End" is a much more melancholy retelling of *"Hello, Planet." as the robot begins to break down. Even the cover art of the album that features this song isn't immune, as it simply shows the robot as she actually is: rather than a chipper teenage girl, it's a decrepit, rusting little robot. Goodbye... goodbye...
  • Another song with similar post-apocalyptic robots and lonely rockets motifs is the (sadly untranslated) Summer Rocket.
• "Can't I Even Dream?" by Fumi using Hatsune Miku. Miku begs for her "prince" to save her from her despair, but whether or not they will come is unknown.
• "Dolls" using Kagamine Rin. Rin is a doll who is left behind after her master is killed. She sings alone and hopes to go to where he has gone. She eventually falls apart and finds him in Heaven, claiming "I can smile now."
• Red Swamp Bottom. Miku is singing about being tortured in hell. To understand why anyone would nearly cry over it, see the rest of the Dark Woods Forest series and try not be at least sad over it.
  • Hell, Dark Woods Circus is mostly horror, but it's pretty tear-jerking by itself. For some people. Especially 2:30 onward. "It's fun!"
    • Especially if you know the context: To quote one Youtuber's comment, "I can only tell you that things like this has happened, and still does. Children are kidnapped, and deformed into freaks. For example, they could crush their bones so they grew together wrong, slice things off and more, and the children were also used for sexual services. And if they said no, or tried to escape, they got acid pour in their faces. That's what the flowers in the vid stands for." Now try watching that ending montage without crying.
• Are you a dog lover? Listen to Laika, which tells the story of the first animal in space. Laika the dog knows that she is going to be involved in something very important. She wants her trainers to be proud of her, and is determined to do her best. As the big day gets closer, she notices that everyone is being nicer to her for some reason. She is put inside a rocket, and sent up into space. It's scary, but she resolves to endure it, and thinks of how everyone will praise her when she gets home...and that's where the song ends. In real life, Nikita Khrushchev, Premier of the Soviet Union, ordered that the satellite Sputnik 2 be designed, built and launched with Laika aboard in less than a month, which meant the scientists working on it only had time to build a satellite that was capable of going to space, but not coming back.
  • The shot of the rising thermometer is even sadder if you are aware that Laika died less than four hours after launch (even though she was supposed to survive for seven days in orbit) because the satellite did not separate properly when it was taking off, causing the inner cabin to overheat.
• Depression of the Young Literati. The title tells it all, doesn't it? It's contagious. As with Hello, How Are You, don't be surprised if it strikes a few chords. In particular, consider that a common code for suicide is in fact, "going away".
• The Hedgehog's Love is about leaving someone to keep from hurting them, and convincing oneself that this really is for the best and will make them happy.
• When Gumi really wants to be with someone, things never seem to go her way... like in ''Aitai'', ''Sorry To You'' and ''Please, Don't Have Laid Down Your Life''
• In Ogre and Maid, a blind woman gets lost in a forest and is saved by a terrifying ogre. Not realising that he's an ogre, she becomes his very first friend and makes him believe that humans aren't really that bad. But when he tries to visit her, the villagers run him off and threaten to kill him if he ever comes back. He gives up and goes back to being alone forever, and she patiently waits for him to return until the day she dies.
• LOLA's English 'cover' of Double Lariat is an ode to The Un-Favourite's desperate attempts to get someone to love her, set to perky guitar riffs. It's not the most polished Vocaloid song you'll ever hear, but that just makes it even sadder.
• "Why Don't You Call Me Yet?" is about the singer wanting the person she is in love with to call her, while being too afraid that he has forgotten who she is to call him herself. In the end of one of the PVs, Rin kneels on the floor, looking as if she has given up hope as the song ends. After a moment of silence, her phone goes off, to her disbelief. She answers it with a cheerful greeting, only for a final shot of her crying tears of joy to show up, leaving the viewer to assume that the man she loves has indeed called her.
  • There is also a fanmade pv that has Len playing the guy who has yet to call her back. It is eventually revealed that the reason why he missed their date was that he was at the doctor, finding out that the surgery he had to get to remove a brain tumor could potentially kill him or turn him into a brain-dead vegetable. He then avoids calling her because he's thinking of breaking off the relationship so that she won't be too hurt if he dies. The end of the video is Rin getting a call from Len when he's in the hospital after his surgery.
• "Hello How Are You" is a song about insecurity. Warning: This one has a high probability of hitting close to home.
• "Secret Crush" using Rin is about a girl that loves a boy and cannot ever tell him how she feels because he may be involved with another woman.
• "Mukashi Mukashi No Kyou No Boku", or "Once Upon A Me" is more of a happy tears kind of song, but it might hit too close to home.
• "69" using Rin and Len. Rin is some form of doll that has lived for 69 years and is beginning to break down and die. Len realizes she is going to be gone soon and tells her that she's still beautiful even though she's falling apart and they both express their love for one another as the song goes on. Rin has an I Want My Beloved to Be Happy moment as she dies, thanking him for caring about her and telling him that even though she's gone, she wants him to continue to be happy and love again. The end of the PV implies that Len is about to suffer the same fate, so she won't be without him for too long.
• Alluring Secret~White Vow, Miku's response song to Alluring Secret~Black Vow, is utterly heartbreaking. "I can take this black dress off someday..."
  • Alluring Secret~Black Vow is no rainbow and unicorns either. It's about an angel (Rin) getting lost on Earth and meeting a human girl (Miku). Rin falls in love instantly but as relationships between angels and humans are forbidden and Miku is engaged to an unknown human man anyway, Miku cannot return the feeling, so Rin decides to trade her wings... for the body of a human boy (Len). Miku meets the boy (whether she realizes it's Rin is unknown) and they start a relationship, with Miku even breaking off the engagement to be engaged to Len/Rin. However, another angel (Kaito) is not happy with this turn of events so he shoots Miku. Len/Rin arrives as Miku is dying, and uses the remainder of her power to heal Miku. It works, Miku is saved and can take one look at Rin crying happy tears before Rin disappears, leaving behind a single black feather.
• Eight Hundred using Hatsune Miku talks about 6.5 billion dreams coming true and World Peace... Until you fully listen to the song...
• A Clingy Boy Sticking for 15 Years is about a person who writes poems to the one they like for 15 years. Still awaiting a response, they keep writing even after sustaining severe retrograde amnesia, remembering nothing but her love for their muse. Upon the fifteenth year, the writer's memories come flooding back and they tearfully remember that their muse has been dead for 15 years. All the writing up to that point was just desperate coping.
  • Ditto for VY2's cover by the same artist, now with a PV.
• "The Beast." using Hatsune Miku. It tells the story of a girl who trades away her mortality for a beautiful, ageless body. Make sure you have tissues handy.
• Child of "Destiny" using Gumi and Miku... It draws inspiration from Momotaro's fairytale, and it's beautiful and tragic.
• Uta-P's "Imitator", using Len. The whole thing is somewhat depressing but the fact that he won't give up hope clinches it as a Tear Jerker.
• "Alice" by FULLKAWA P. Hatsune Miku. And then there's the English version and acoustic cover version...Tearjerker, ENE's version. The previously mentioned English dub.
• Caoin, by Luka. The word 'caoin' is Old Irish for 'lament', so you should know what to expect.
• +REVERSE and -ERROR by niki using Lily. In "+REVERSE", Lily realizes she's fading away, and says, "Even in the flow of time, it seems I can't go against it...When I first realized it by being loved..." In "-ERROR", Lily is still dying, and she realizes this, too. She says goodbye to her friends and master...and eventually gets mad because it feels like her master doesn't care. It ends with her saying, "But I still want to breath...Just like the end of the dream I showed you, even works are stuck, ERROR."
  • When heard as a standalone song and depending on the translation, -ERROR could easily be interpreted as the Vocaloid in question (be Lily or the one singing a cover) malfunctioning and dying à la "The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku", with the added gut punch than when she or they tries to say goodbye, their last words get garbled up due to said malfunction, leaving only an "error" message instead. And I Must Scream played for tragedy.
    Have they reached you?
    Even though my final words are lined up in my singing voice
    The colors blur...
  • And then there's this vflower's cover. She not only sounds as if she's in pain, it truly does sound like she's crying.
• Gallows Bell. This one cover is especially nice.
• Eraser sounds so happy, until you find the lyrics. "I want to delete for the all / Since I can't smile / I want to delete for the world / I suppose I'll just walk while crying."
  • The video also alternates images of Gumi on the roof with images of her falling and lying on the ground, which is a pretty strong clue to what the song's actually about even if you can't understand the lyrics.
• From Y to Y. Its melancholy tune and pace just gives a hint of what kind of Break-Up Song it is. Then try listening to this well made English dub version.
• Meltdown by Rin, despite its energetic and happy-ish beat, has a rather depressing meaning. It's vaguely about her future self feeling remorse for her past actions, and she strangles her young self (her past). She can't take it anymore as the timer ticks down to her "meltdown" when she jumps into a nuclear reactor. Well, at least there's the more positive interpretation of Rin forgiving herself...
• "Rolling Girl". There are a myriad of interpretations for it, but most of them are depressing.
  • This version, in which a fan blended five different renditions of the song together into a chorus, is possibly even more depressing, especially during the refrain.
• "A Certain Prostitute's Love" is depressing overall, but the ending still hits hard.
• Toumei Elegy/Transparent Elegy is a depressing song on its own, but the PV made here expands on the story. It is about two girls who are in love with one another, but refused to admit it. When they got into an argument, the green-haired girl lost her ribbon and went to grab it. She then promptly falls to her death, right in front of her crush. The entire song is about the complex feelings between the two after death. After the ghost of the green-haired girl returns to confront the yellow-haired girl about their mixed feelings, the yellow-haired girl refuses to listen despite being screamed at via megaphone. A saddening montage is then shown of the girls chatting to one another, the events of what led to the green-haired girl's death, and a full memorial, with a flower later shown on the girl's desk. The yellow-haired girl is prepared to commit suicide, green-haired girl comes up and embraces her, both forgive one another, get over the guilt of never getting to tell one another's feelings, and ends bittersweetly with yellow-haired girl being implied to get closure via throwing her own neck scarf. The fact that this is set to an intense, but upbeat sounding music does not help.
  • Rachie and Ill.bell's cover hurts even more. They both manage to convey in singing and rapping how deeply the girls are hurting. The emotions conveyed is arguably even more distressing.
• Hatsune Miku's rendition of "Cirno's Perfect Math Class" greatly contrasts with the original.
• Gumi's "Mermaid" shows off the heart breaking nature of the original fairytale all with a happy tune.
• Miku and Mikuo's "Hikari/Light". Basically think a cross between Kokoro and The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku. Yeah, it's just like that.
• This version of Pierrot. The kind clown who did all he could to try and make the girl he cared for happy presumably dies, though there is a happier interpretation: His saying that the "lying Pierrot has now vanished" may only refer to the side of him that lied all the time and wore the mask. The last picture in the PV suggests that he may still be alive and happy with his friend.
  • This PV of Pierrot, which actually remains true to the song's lyrics, unlike the above (although beautifully animated) PV. There's something about the comforting words of a child making the pierrot shed his facade that hits one every time.
• The Dark Reprise of Koisuru VOC@LOID (VOC@LOID in love); Kataomoi VOC@LOID (VOC@LOID in one-sided love)...
• Little Traveler can do this to you, especially if you love The Little Prince.
• There's this song, Somewhere, people are dying. The refrain has lines along of "Somewhere, people are dying / And it's of no concern to me / But I'm still sad". The person also apologizes to God for being born, not being dead, merely living and being happy.
• Elsetetra -The Silver Witch-, sung by Luka as the lonely titular witch.
• In the otherwise scare-filled song, Kaito Ga Uninstall, we have a tear jerker when Kaito is about to kill Rin and Len. If you pause at just the right moment, you can see Len shielding Rin with his own body to protect her.
• Sorry to You - It's absolutely adorable with Gumi's charm, but there's a sniffle-inducing ending.
• "Let's Kiss, Hiding In A Car", a beautifully melancholy song by Kaito.
• The fan-created PV for Kagerou Daze. It more clearly illustrates what is happening in the song, and really hammers home just how tragic the whole situation is.
• Last Stage is a hopeful song about never giving up, but its alternate ending, Last Battle is a very depressing song about going on by yourself and running away.
• Hikari no Kakera, much like Rainbow Girl, Disappearance, and My Honey in the Tragic Dimension, is another song about the master-Vocaloid relationship, and gets the same results.
• First, listen to Just Be Friends. Then, watch the PV. Then, read the lyrics.
• Karakuri Pierrot by Miku. It's about Miku being stood up by the guy she loves, and how even though to him she is just a clown, she's content for him to continue manipulating her.
• The Heap Princess and Apostrophe "What do you call it when there's not a soul to love you? No one will love me; I'm all alone." This is one heart-wrenching song because it's about a girl left behind from a war between machines and humans. She thought she was the only person alive until she met a kind robot. "Don't look at me you'll make me cry so many tears", the reason why she says this is because the gentle robot reminds her of someone she used to love [possibly her brother] who died. The robot gets into a fight with other robots because the drones that were left over had killed the girl and the robot still wants to protect her even if it means dying, too. "No one has ever doomed with no one to love them. And for you...I was the one who loved you."
• "Cinderella ~another story~" is pretty touching as well. It puts a tragic twist to the classic fairytale in that Cinderella (Rin) has been transformed into a white cat for not returning from the ball at midnight, rendering her forever separated with the prince (Len). This is sung as they both remember the instant they had together, fully aware of this fact.
• oFFENCe. The whole song is about Miku's regret and guilt after she killed her lover in a fit of jealous rage- describing how she still feels his presence and how she can never forget the moment she murdered him. And to top it off, the final verse implies she kills herself too.
  In the first Spring... I met you with an innocent smile on your face,
  In the first Summer... You held me tightly in your arms,
  In the first Autumn... We swore to "stay together forever"
  In the first Winter... Even though... We promised....
  But in the third Summer... You stopped laughing,
  And in the third Autumn... You no longer held me in your arms,
  In the third Winter...you "belonged to someone else",
  So in the fourth Spring... I... I killed you...
• Transparent Answer, from the same creator as Kagerou Daze.
  The smile of you, who flew out of this window and died,
  I won't ever forget it
  Not even tomorrow.
• Dear Mother by Miku. "Thank you, mother...thank you, mother...I finally understand...please watch over me now...for I am now a mother too."
• Even CUL gets into the action with I'm Such an Idiot based on a certain character from Puella Magi Madoka Magica. You don't have to have watched the anime to be driven to tears, however. Especially as CUL's voicebank was made with the voice of said certain character's voice actor.
• Time-Warped After Chopping My Stag Beetle has a funny title and is, at least two-thirds of the way, a random-sounding, amusing, song. Then, the Tear Jerker hits when Gumi meets her future self. She tells Gumi that, from now on, she'll have regrets and get hurt, but...
  But if, for each of these,
  You waste your life looking back,
  One day, it will give you a terrible fever.
  I want to just let things go.
  So, return as if you never came,
  And I'll surely be happy.
• HEAVEN can have you in tears from the get-go, because the first scene is the man's death. Simply put, the song is about a couple who have been together since high school and the woman realizes that she's slowly losing her vision. However, it doesn't put a rift in their relationship, and the man still proposes to her. The woman's vision can be cured with an operation, but sadly, once her vision is cured she learns her lover is dead.
• Miku's Glow, a clear example of how painful Growing Up Sucks can be. Then watch this version by Glutamine - if his emotional singing doesn't get to you, the PV will.
• "Wrinkle." You just know it's coming, but still the tears pour.
• "Answer" can make a person switch from perfectly fine, to a blubbering mess of tears.
• "Requiem of the Endless World." Len fights to find Rin, only to get there just too late, finding her already dead. Ends up being a Defied Trope as they both survive and seal the dragon away forever in which it's a different Tearjerker.
• Kudryavka. Sung from the POV of Kudryavka, alias Laika, it's the sweet, uncomprehending tone that gets you.
• Night Walker is a rather eerie example of a dead man who drags himself out of his grave to be with the love of his life, not remembering anything other than that he loves her. Over the course of the song he remembers more about her, such as her name... and the fact that she killed him. Despite that, he still drags himself to her door not out of revenge, but because he still loves her.
• Luka's The Drawing Book and Mary. It is based on the horror adventure game Ib, and is sung from the point of view of Mary, focusing on how lonely she really is. Be warned, there are heavy spoilers for the game it is based on.
• Mathematics sung by Hatsune Miku. It's a gloomy ambient song about a depressed girl, who tries to understand whether her feelings and thoughts are true or not.
• The End sung by Yuzuki Yukari. It's extremely dark and depressing, despite of upbeat melody. It doesn't help the fact, that ending of this song is quite emotionally whiplashing:
  In any case, if I weren't there,
  nothing in the world would change.
  Goodbye. It was boring.
  I said "thanks" and I hung myself.
• As weird as it is, the ending to this video will make you feel really sorry for Shiteyanyo, of all...um, people.
• "Lie", sung by Megurine Luka. While you're at it, see the response song "I (Love)", sung by GUMI.
  • This cover of Lie is especially heartbreaking as the singer's emotions get to her roughly in the middle of the first chorus and she's practically crying for the rest of the song. The rest of the song, especially the more emotional parts, are made even more tragic because of this
• "Clockworker -Recollective Music Box-" A sort of response to Luka's Recollective Music Box by Kiyoteru Hiyama. Even if you don't know the translation and the meaning of the lyrics, that's just painful to hear. And when you do know... Well, it's even worse, then.
• Interviewer by Luka. Like Hello, How Are You?, it might hit some people a bit too close to home. This English Cover of the song is also just as depressing as the original, if not more.
• An Idiot's Drug can be quite saddening, especially at the end.
  I'm tired out this self-comforting, but only an idiot's drug, which lacks womb as if was half-dried, seems to be beneficial.
  Excessive self-consciousness flew out, while desperation died.
  Someday I'll wake up and float this sinking,
  however now it's too late for that, so one more cup, please.
• Our Let-it-be is absolutely soul-crushing. The English version is equally as depressing.
• Seasonal Feathers is as utterly soul-crushing as it is beautiful. To go into details, it starts with a Happily Married couple, who live and work until one summer, the husband (Len) gets sick. They are of course too poor to afford the medicine so the wife (Rin) keeps on weaving tapestries and other things to sell because "I will not let your life fall like those maple leaves", hurting and almost ruining her fingers even as he still calls them beautiful. Then we find out why she has been mentioning feathers all the song as she is about to use the last of them- she was a crane turned into a human before they met. The worst part is? We never do find out if she managed to finish/get the medicine in time.
• Iroha's "Sigh", sung by Rin, is about a girl who cannot stop sighing.... until her 'angel' appears, that is. But the worst of it is when we learn why she was sighing and why he was there in the first place— 1: to unlock her memories of his early death so she can be subconsciously relieved of the burden he inadvertently placed on her, and 2: those weren't sighs, those were breaths to warm up the angel's cold and dying hands when he was in the hospital.
• HoneyWorks:
  • "Your Sky is Sorrowful". You can see the ending coming even from a mile away, especially with the monologue at the beginning by the boy's now-grown-up little brother. But it still hits HARD. Especially when you realize that the boy is a kamikaze pilot and has no chance of surviving the song.
  • "Goodbye to Our Mutual Unrequited Love" Tells the story of a graduating boy saying goodbye to his town and to his secret crush.
  • "A Teacher, Detained" featuring flower. The Tear Jerker elements take a bit of time to sink in, but once you grasp the backstory and meaning of the lyrics it's a real gut punch. If you know the full context, it's even sadder.
• "Steel Bird" follows the same vein as a song about war. The ending can be quite heartbreaking....
  The Steel Bird was released, his wings flying towards the eternal sky
  The dead young warrior, unknown of, still becomes a bird and flies across the sky
  Fly! Even through distant journeys, the wingless bird sings far away
  Flutter the silver wings on your back, feelings disappearing into the morning sun's sky
• Oliver's "The Umbrella Salesman". You will feel horrible for the title character.
• This music video for Kaito's cover of Donut Hole hits hard. Especially if you weren't expecting anything different from the normal song. It also wins a prize for managing to make Senbonzakura even sadder.
• Loneliness featuring Hatsune Miku. It's Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• Elsa-Maria, a Yandere song from the point of view of the stalked guy's girlfriend. She has no idea why the guy vanished shortly after she became pregnant, and when she meets the Yandere she just gives up.
• "Everlasting Night", the "True enD" to "The Lost Libretto" series, ends with Miku pulling a Heroic Sacrifice to save everyone else from the "Groundhog Day" Loop. When they realize what she's about to do, everyone rushes in to try and stop her. They're too late.
  • It's even worse when you remember that in the first song ("Bad End Night") they were willing to kill her to break the "Groundhog Day" Loop, but in this one, we see that they've grown so fond of her that they'd rather continue the "Groundhog Day" Loop than kill her, which in the end becomes useless as she overheard them and decides to do it herself. She smiles while crying. Before doing the deed she even has a flashback of the manor's residents.
• Miku sings a very sad song in "As I'm Not Human", in which she laments that she will never bear children because she's an android. The lyrics itself are full of innuendo, but this only makes it even more of a tearjerker because sex has become something meaningless due to her impossibility of experiencing true human sensations.
• "The Music Wizard of Oz", despite being adorable and silly, has some sad moments; particular examples include Scarecrow Kaito lamenting the fact that everyone laughs at him for not being smart enough (one of his lyrics is even borderline Heroic Self-Deprecation^note "It's time for the stupid clown's circus/where everyone points and laughs") and Witch Meiko singing about her feelings of loneliness.
• The song "Goodbye", by VocaCircus, sung by Miku is a very sad song about a person who thinks her life is worthless and is contemplating suicide. The PV makes it even sadder because at the moment she's jumping to her death, you can see her face of regret. Though, it's implied at the end she still survives.
• Kikuo:
  • "You're a Useless Child" may hit home for people who were abused by their parents. Told in the perspective of the mother, her son grows up his whole life while she grasps him tightly through the usage of crushing verbal abuse, making him feel more and more worthless. She tells him that she will take care of him and that only by staying with her will he ever have any chance in life. Growing up to believe this, he stays even though he feels depressed about it. This continues on and on, with the abuse getting worse and worse until he finally commits suicide, feeling that he has no purpose in life. Only after he kills himself does the mother realize what she has done wrong, and the lyrics change from "You're a useless child" to "I'm a useless child". Even worse, a common fan theory regarding the song is that the mother was abused as a child by her own parents, and treats her son horribly because it's the only way she understands how to show "love".
  • "I'm Sorry I'm Sorry" is not only Nightmare Fuel and Nausea Fuel, but it is incredibly sad as well. The cannibalism described in the song that the father does to his daughter is a clear metaphor for rape/sexual abuse. She is found by a man who pities her promises to take care of her, and she, having fallen in love with him, runs away. But when he doesn't treat her the same way her father did, when he doesn't sexually abuse her, what her father has taught her is love her whole life, she runs back to her father, where she is presumably raped to death by her father and his friends. The amount of blaming the victim does to themselves, (hence the title "I'm Sorry, I'm Sorry") is expressed all too well in this song.
    • Depending of how you choose to interpret what was really happening outside of the girl's point of view or even how old she's supposed to be, it's even worse: The "Big Brother" whom she ran away with was not some Dogged Nice Guy like the girl thought he was, or even a Manipulative Bastard stringing her along with promises of love, but rather a legitimately good-hearted man (whether he was a teacher, a social services worker or even just a horrified bystander) who was just trying his best to show her actual kindness and give her a normal life, maybe even gaining her custody, but by that point she had been so mentally warped by her monster of a father that she just ran away back to her abusive home. Cue the Downer Ending.
  • "Hikari yo/O light" includes a slightly unnerving PV, but the lyrics and general ambience of the song are both quite sad. Possible interpretations are depression or a person in a coma.
    • Hanatan's cover is powerful and conveys more desperation than Miku's more calm voice.
  • "Don't Look At Me in That Way," much like many of Kikuo's songs, is rather surreal and ambiguous in its meaning, but we can still make out that it's from the perspective of a child trying to console their parents over their death. The sound of bombs falling in the background does not help...
  • "Tengoku he Ikuo"/"Let's Go To Heaven" by Kikuo is a very bittersweet song about a couple who commit suicide together so they can be happy in the afterlife. The lyrics describe the body disappearing, as well as how happy it is to be together in heaven, just the two of them.
  • "And Then You Became the Moon" is a sweet, charming song about two children dying of hypothermia in a frozen lake. The singer is sinking to the bottom, slowly dying, but the last thing they see is the girl who played with them slipping into the hole. She dies first, then they follow, and the singer tells the listener that nobody ever found their bodies. If you look closely during the first few seconds, you can even see the exact moment the two "become" the Moon and Star in the corner.
• Kaito's "Rose+Thorn", a bittersweet Break Up Song.
  For everytime I cried, I laughed a little.
  For everytime it hurt, I smiled a little.
  Even when things were bad, I was never really sad
  Now I'll say goodbye to the love that I had.
• Cruel Clocks is about a young boy who finds a robot girl living in his clock. He befriends the girl, who watches him grow into a young man. One day, the man is blinded, leaving the girl to care for him. It's during this time that the two develop feelings for one another. Sadly, tragedy strikes when the man is murdered, leaving the girl all alone. In a fit of rage, she destroys the clock tower he was working on, believing it to be responsible for his death. At the end of the song, the girl is finally able to cry, and despite being a robot, it's implied that one day, she'll be able to enter heaven and see her beloved again.
• Magnet, a song all about forbidden love. The girls live in a world where society views their relationship as sinful, and no matter how hard they try to deny their feelings for one another, they're always drawn together like magnets.
• Vocaloid producer Neru has a few to their name:
  • Tokyo Teddy Bear. which focuses on a boy (named Teddy) who runs away hoping change himself, because he believes he is unloved as he is. The teddy bear is used as a metaphor for how he wants to cut and sew his life anew, how he just wants to be someone that isn't him.
  • Abstract Nonsense. The lyrics are vague, but do depict the story of someone (a girl name Raku) who does not want to live any longer because they are unhappy with the world, and wishes to kill herself but cannot find the courage to do so.
  • I'm Drowning in a Wave of Sadness. Which lives up to its name very fully.
  • I Want to Become a Kind Person, about a girl (named Yuu) who struggles with the pressures of the world around her, along with the misery of everyone else to where she feels she's turning into a horrible person.
  • Terror, a song which expresses the desires of the protagonists from "I'm Drowning in a Wave of Sadness" and "I Want to Become a Kind Person" and how they will exact revenge on anyone who ever wronged them. The way the two outcasts are seen comforting each other is very touching and sad.
  • The Lost One's Weeping is about a high school boy (named Mamoru) who is good in science and math, but horrible at Japanese class, who is pressured so much to be perfect at everything in school that he feels he has no personality and has forgotten what his childhood dreams were. And it can definitely hit close to home.
  • Jailbreak/Datsugoku. Unlike other Neru songs, this one has more concrete and clear story, topped off with beautiful animation and visuals by Sidu. The story is told from the perspective of a boy named Kawasemi, who lives in a dystopian, caged-in city with his friend, Kuina. The two (especially Kuina) dream of building a plane that could break the cage bars and take them out of the city. Years pass, and the two boys grow older. Kawasemi still holds on to their dream, but Kuina has lost hope and joined the tyrannical police force. Kawasemi spends many years building the plane Kuina drew in his blueprints. The two meet again (for presumably the first time in years), now on opposite sides. Kuina is determined to stop Kawasemi from his attempt at escape, but Kawasemi takes off nonetheless. Unfortunately, this only ends in tragedy, as the plane winds up malfunctioning and exploding. The final shot of Kawasemi's goggles falling before Kuina's eyes indicate that Kawasemi probably didn't survive. Even worse? It would seem Kawasemi never believed he would survive in the first place. He sacrificed himself to give Kuina something to believe in, and even though the plane wound up crashing, he still broke through the bars of the cage.
  • CYNICISM in general is depressing, but two of its featured songs "Whatever~Whatever~Whatever~" and "Let's Drop Dead" are particularly relatable and sad. Essentially, the former is a song about having a mediocre and unfufilling life but masking it under indifference and hedonism, while the latter has the singers look more into that mindset, with the bridge of the song having them slowly admit that they feel lost. Add in the heavy implications in the former that the singers are hiding their insecurities behind wit and sarcasm, and this song can hit very close to home for people with depression.
• Fakery Tale is implied to be about a deceased person singing to their grieving lover. This English cover sung by rachie just makes it even sadder.
• Suttaka’s "There’s no one who’s bad at art". Thinking it’d just be an encouraging song just from the title? Think again. It’s a song about how so many people are choosing to give up being artists due to things getting too hard for them, and how many of them created art because that’s how they coped with being alive. It’s an absolutely heartbreaking song that punches you in the gut with reality as much as it gently reminds you of the truth of the title.
• Meiko, Gakupo and Miku's backstories in the Synchronicity trilogy. Meiko's best friend Teto was the previous sacrifice to the dragon and the memory of her being taken haunts Meiko up to that point (as well as leading her to oppose Luka). Gakupo's mother worked as a scholar who was an expert on dragons, but for some reason threw herself off of a tower when he was just a kid (if you pause the video at just the right moment, you can see a younger Gakupo crying over a book his mother had shown him when he was a kid). And lastly, Miku was forced to be the guardian of the dragon, as revealed by a flashback of her being restrained and crying as a mask is forced onto her face. This one, however leads to a heartwarming/awesome moment when Len cuts the mask off of Miku's face, freeing her for good.
• shiningray sung by Miku Hatsune is a rather sad song in the sense that it is about a girl dying from terminal illness and her acceptance thereof.
• Hirari Hirari by Tamaz-P. It's a song about grieving for a loved one that has passed away and wanting to see them again. Combine that with soulful piano music and you're all set.
  • VY2's cover makes him sound like he's about to cry.
  • And that didn't tear you up, listen to Oliver's English version. Your heart will melt.
• The ZOLA Project song Crossbill. In a world where gods pit humans and demons in a war against each other, Wil is forced to choose between his two best friends Kyo (Hero) and Yuu (Demon Lord). Wanting to recover their friendship, he denounces the gods and goes insane, even turning his gun onto his friends. However, he finds out that he cannot hurt them at all, as "their bodies have been changed", and chooses to off himself in despair. His friends split his soul between the two of them so that he would always be with them and... continue to fight each other. And in the end, after Kyo and Yuu end up killing each other, Wil's soul is reformed, leaving him alone once more.
  WIL: "I just want all of us to laugh together, just one more time."
  (later) WIL: "Like I said... There's no point if I'm to be alone..."
• "First Experience" talks about the declining popularity of Vocaloid in Japan.
• Ward Room 305. After being betrayed by the man who set up to rape her, Miku sings about her life and how she still loves him. She became insane after seeing his dead body, and she eventually kills herself there to be with him.
• The late Powapowa-P tends to write sad songs rather often, and it shows in the following examples.
  • For starters, his "Please Give Me a Red Pen" is a pretty sad song, especially with how abruptly it ends. The fact that this was the last song Powapowa-P made before his untimely death doesn't help.
  • His second-to-last song "Goodbye, Everyone" qualifies as tearjerking, as well. It shows a girl growing up from childhood to adulthood, not quite excited for the future and questioning if she really "grew up" at all. Before she says goodbye, she muses that she had acknowledged all the good times she had. And all of this is impacted by the fact that Powapowa-P himself is singing the verses along with Gumi.
  • And the final song uploaded a couple of months after his death, "Healthy End", makes it worse. The lyrics are already sad enough in one interpretation, but the MV really takes the cake; it shows an astronaut falling onto a planet and discovering a bright shiny object, and then in the end floating helplessly away into the depths of space. With the lyrics of this song, the MV, and the context for the last couple of songs in his life, many have interpreted the astronaut to be Powapowa himself. And just in case it's not enough, the demo, dubbed The War Within Me makes it even sadder than it already is, as he was singing that very same song, but it's clear he sounds shaky while singing it, and taking in mind this is the demo for his last song, it proves to be very heartbreaking.
  • He made an entire song series called "Story of 'Zinnia and Meme'" prior to his death, and a good chunk of the songs in it are pretty sad. "Brown" is about Meme spending time with Zinnia, knowing soon they won't be by each other's side anymore, while "Zinnia and Meme" is about Zinnia's thoughts on the same matter and bidding her last farewell. "stoy." hits the hardest, as it's about Meme's thoughts after losing Zinnia and, after about 3 minutes in, we hear her speaking, saying that she loves Zinnia and doesn't want to be without her.
  • He also made Astronauts, which is about all the regrets someone has with his loved one, thinking about what could've been and what he could've done right, but didn't. His commentary on Nico Nico Douga confirms that this was a personal song, making it all the more heartbreaking.
  • There's also the last post he made on Twitter before his death: "That charm has disappeared because it turned into an adult. It doesn't seem like it was supposed to be an adult."
• The Hanged Girl in the Haunted House starts off with a summer festival with rumours of the titular girl. A group of kids travel there, but don't see her, even though she sees them. She tells herself that she's not dead, even though she can't even pet a cat. A boy notices her briefly before leaving. At the end, the girl says that she only lasted for one summer, and then pictures show her meeting a blonde girl. The titular girl hangs herself because the blonde girl was a ghost who disappeared. The boy rushes to see the girl after realizing that he knows her. He sees her as she disappears and, devastated, kills himself. The title appears and the word boy replaces the word girl.
• Taking Shelter From The Rain, by Xiexie-P, sung by Gumi. The PV really sells this already tear-jerking song. A girl is forced to take shelter in a disused railway station house from a sudden typhoon with a boy she likes, eventually bonding with him and considering confessing her love to him ... before he is killed in a rockfall. She runs back to to the station, only to find it demolished by negligence, finally longing to see him again while imagining the future they could have had. The fact the music cuts completely for a moment really hammers in the horror she feels for seeing his body crushed in the landslide.
• Portrait of the Pirate F, though mostly Creepy Awesome and Fridge Horror Nightmare Fuel, has a bit of this too when Len's character, after having taken up the pirate-role, admits he can't go back, implying this is the reason why he throws himself into the role so much.
• ODDS&ENDS, by Ryo featuring Miku, is about how the titular Odds and Ends helped a composer become famous by singing his songs. Its lyrics are heartwarming on their own until you realize that the story is similar to Ryo's own life as a composer. It's as if this song was made as an apology to Miku and the fanbase.
• "Housenka (Balsam)", Yuzuki Yukari's remake of a song by Otouto no Ane, is an incredibly depressing tale about a girl who isolates herself from others and doesn't want to admit that she doesn't want to be lonely anymore. Yuki's version is just gut wrenching to hear.
• corasundae's desync, while ridiculously bubbly and catchy, is heartbreaking, as it deals with Oliver dealing with the aftermath of a bad breakup. "There are times I feel like dying", indeed.
• Ikanaide(Don't Go) by Sohta (using Kaai Yuki) is a relatable and heartbreaking song about having to part with a friend or a loved one, and hits home for people who have seen their best friend/relative move away from them, never to be seen again, or even worse - pass away. Some parts of the lyrics are sadder than others ("I shouldn't cry, I shouldn't cry") and really express the singer's feelings and sadness - how they don't want the relative/friend to leave them and beg for them to stay just a little more.
  • Mafumafu's cover of the song might even be more saddening than the original. Mafumafu expresses the sadness in the song even more strongly than Yuki does. It is widely regarded as superior compared to Yuki's.
  • You can find the PV here.
  • Another notable cover is JubyPhonic's English cover. Her voice is expressive in a way that the quality of the cover is competitively the same as Mafumafu's.
• Kokoronashi/Somehow by papiyon is about someone who thinks that they don't deserve the love they get, asking for, presumably someone their lover, to stop being so kind to them.
• Star Lily Dance Performance seems like a happy ending to the otherwise gory Onibi series, but nope! The song may be about the two main characters being together in peace, but in reality Gumi's character Mai is actually dead and the entire song is just her dying dream.
• "Witch" tells you to prepare a handkerchief for a good reason. A young woman has a chance meeting with a prince and they fall in love, only for a jealous rival to run to the church and claim she's a witch who brainwashed him. The prince hands her over to the mob rather than defending her, and even cuts her hair before they go to burn her at the stake. She has to endure, on top of an implied beating from the townsfolk, hearing all her pleas for mercy disregarded as 'evil spells' while the prince stands beside the woman from the church, looking both saddened and furious, yet still never speaking up in her defense. At the end of the song she does sprout wings and fly away, but it's clear that her feelings were genuine from the start and the betrayal drove her over the Despair Event Horizon. The last shot is of the prince reaching for one of her feathers in the same way that he caught her headband when they met...
• This short song titled "Miku's Rain" has some quite depressing lyrics about Miku wanting to forget the person addressed (presumably someone who betrayed her or abandoned her) and asking them to forget her too. The video is equally depressing - a lone Miku sits with her face buried in her arms, motionless while rain gradually begins to fall. By the end of the video, Miku is barely visible due to how heavy it is.
• Coin Locker Baby's PV will leave you sad for the ghost child.
• The Shoeshiner and Maria, a horribly sad song about a shoeshiner and a girl. The shoeshiner's alcoholic father abuses him constantly. The girl, who is compared to Saint Maria (hence the name of the song), is the only person in said shoeshiner's life who treats him with kindness. Unfortunately, they are forced to not talk as often, due to the Shoeshiner's ever-changing schedule. As a keepsake, Maria gives him an amulet, which the boy treasures forever. Then, the father, after a particularly bad bout of gambling, tries to take the amulet from his son so he can sell it. The shoeshiner refuses, and gets beaten by his father badly, so much so that it's presumed the shoeshiner died from his wounds, and yet, he still manages to keep the amulet Maria gave him.
• Blessed Messiah and the Tower of AI is an incredibly sad song by Hitoshizuku x Yama. Miku plays the part of a seamstress chosen to be the next Messiah in a world reduced to a wasteland. To save the world, she must travel to the tower of AI and take the blessings bestowed upon her. Miku is accompanied by her 9 friends ^note Kaito, Meiko, IA, Mayu, Gumi, Gakupo, Luka, Rin and Len to the tower. However, when she reaches for the first blessing, Kaito cuts in and steals the blessing. At his apparent betrayal, the friends are in turmoil, and one by one they vanish as they steal the nine blessings. Nothing left, heartbroken and angry by her friend's betrayal Miku walks up the stairs to the altar, flameless torch in hand- only to find she had completely misinterpreted their actions. The nine 'blessings' were in actuality sacrifices, so each of her friends will now suffer in various ways (being drowned, burnt to death, dying of thirst, trapped in darkness, buried alive, struck by lightning, torn apart by gales, frozen from the inside out and having to crawl on magma, respectively) for eternity. Miku is in tears, but has no choice but to carry out the ritual with their sacrifices, the creator of "nine sorrows"^note So the AI in the title can refer to either the love of the companions who sacrificed themselves or the sufferings they must endure.
  • A heartbreaking detail of the PV comes in the drawings of the characters: when each of the nine friends are stealing a blessing, their faces appear angry, sinister or smug. However, when the twist is revealed at the end, each of their sacrifices is reviewed with their faces instead solemn, hopeful or gentle. Miku's face by the end, however...
  • There are expressly two sets of siblings among the companions: IA and Mayu, and Rin and Len. The older one takes a blessing first in both cases (with Rin even shoving Len out of the way.)
  • It's also heavily implied that this event (A Messiah being chosen to go to the tower and being accompanied by 9 others) repeats every decade or so, that is, it's all meaningless anyways at it only buys time and cannot solve the problems.
• nexus' 0.1dB. It's about someone's loved one going far away somewhere in space (or dying, depending on your interpretation), and wishing they could see them again.
• Tightrope by Creep-P toes the line between this and Nightmare Fuel. It tells the story of a tightrope walker who's an Armored Closet Gay, to the point where he feels disgust even speaking to other men. He keeps himself focused during practices by removing the safety net underneath him (knowing that the fear of death will keep him from making any mistakes). However, he finally meets a man he doesn't feel disgusted by... only for him to see said man flirting with a woman during the tightrope walker's performance. He's so upset that he missteps, falling to his death.
• Mikito-P:
  • "Sayoko" is sung from the point of view of somebody who has grown tired of their lonely, monotonous existence and has already tried to end it. Thing is, it's lonely and monotonous partly because this someone is so convinced of their worthlessness to begin with, to the point where they're not even willing to call their friends because they're probably too busy to bother with them. They have sunken so deep into this depression that at the end of the song, they express their doubt that there is any way out of the slog except death.
  • "Shutter Chance", despite the cute PV and refreshing music, is about a long-lasting relationship (whether a friendship or a romantic relationship) growing apart and subsequently ending, and the feeling of loss and guilt that comes from feeling that you let someone go.
  • For another Mikito-P one, "Shoujo Rei" tells the story of a girl mourning after of her best friend's suicide, which she feels she directly contributed to. To make it worse, the sound effect end of the song heavily implies the narrator girl was so struck with guilt she killed herself in the same manner, by jumping in front of a train. And all this to refreshing, summery music.
• "DUNE", Kenshi Yonezu's first Vocaloid song in the four years since "Donut Hole" and the theme song of Magical Mirai 2017 (as well as a marker for Miku's 10th birthday bash). You'd think with all those credentials the song would be a nostalgic look at how the system has grown, but it's quite somber. A more serious Miku, followed by heavily clothed musicians representing producers, wander around a dust bowl of a planet in the hopes of planting an apple tree that we later see a more common Miku making music under. They pass a castle resembling a birthday cake, starting off a slew of references to previous hits and Miku advises them to "salute to the graves of the masses/ the life that was born from the Melt sensation". Some of the pack leaves on their own, some join other desert walkers, and she keeps marching on and on with new people waiting on the horizon. The symbolism, and what it represents for the whole of Vocaloid, can be taken as a half-nostalgic half-bitter eulogy for the entire Vocaloid phenomenon, and Hachi's own involvement in it. And that's not getting into the symbolism for the ones that left the pack, who are alleged to represent late vocaloid producers Samfree and Powapowa-P.
• "Sleepyhead" by Steampianist and morbid-morsel seems innocent at the surface, about a girl sleeping in on her seventh birthday, and the narrator trying to wake her up so she can celebrate. But, if you analyze the lyrics enough, you realize that she won't wake up because she died in her sleep, and the narrator continues to try, knowing she has passed.
• Kurage-P's "My R" tells the story of a suicidal high schooler encountering other girls on the rooftop she plans to jump off of (who could be interpreted to either be separate characters or different aspects of herself). Every time, the girls talk about killing themselves for reasons she finds Wangsty, she tells them off, and decides not to kill herself that day. This goes on until she finds someone with similar reasonings to her—this girl is abused at home...but unlike every other time she can't tell her off because she feels she doesn't have the right to. She only silently pleads for her not to jump, which she doesn't. Then comes The Reveal: all the girls were the singer all along. Each girl (described with a physical trait of the singer) represented a reason she had to kill herself. Her arguing with them was her trying to convince herself not to jump. Having run out of reasons to not commit suicide, the girl just decides to jump guilt free. Turns into happy tears songs later when "Diary of Underage Observation" is released; the subject of this song noticed "My R's" heroine's struggle and prevented her from killing herself that final time.
• GHOST's "In Iolite" featuring LUMi. In comparison to the rest of their works, which are usually rather chaotic with a heaping helping of Nightmare Fuel, this song... just kinda sounds like loneliness incarnate. The last verse certainly doesn't help:
  Another today
  Another year, and
  A thousand tomorrows
  And a thousand more to come
  Are right here.
  • However, this becomes subverted in that GHOST confirmed the intended meaning of the song is actually rather uplifting - it's about someone telling their past self that they'll make it through the dark spot they're in, and will end up in a much better place than they are now.
• Monster by Jayn featuring GUMI can really hit home for anyone living with depression.
• Hitoshizuku-P and Yamadelta strike again with the Villains and Heroes album pair, consisting of 6 stories told through 12 songs.
  • Yuugen no Onmyoji and Tsubaki ~Oni to Onmyoji~ are about an Onmyoji (VY2) and a demon (IA) he has to expel after they fall in love.
  • Mushinronsha no Alchemy and Toumeika ~Kagakusha to Yuurei~ are about a scientist (Gakupo) who wants to bring his loved (Luka) one back through doubious means. It becomes Tear Jerker when the yuurei (which means ghost/spirit in Japanese) say that...]]
    My transparent arm,
    Embrace your sadness.
    I cry aloud on my back,
    That once a comforting hand was stroking.
    If you hold it back with a transparent hand,
    the spilled love will wet my cheeks.
  • Glorious Score and Downfall Score ~Eiyuu to Majo~ are about a boy (Len) prophesized to save the world, whereas his sister (Rin), preparing to be a priestess or nun, has no such prophecy attached to her. Such people are immediately thought to be evil in this setting though, and as they drift apart, Rin takes on the role of the evil witch everyone said she will have just so they can get closer again.
• Dreaming Beats by Chuna is about a girl who put herself in a coma, and is asking her family to leave her alone to live inside her dreams forever.
• Hanyuu Maigo's "The Anthem of a Certain Summer" (warning for Epileptic Flashing Lights), a rather sad song about reflecting on a summer that's passed. The narrator recalls back to what seems to be their depression during that summer, that they could never chin up despite what their loved one, who they spent the summer with, told them. It then goes into how the narrator and their loved one had to part ways, and the regrets the narrator has, then comes the final line that hits the hardest:
  I just felt like this regret shall forever follow me, until the end of time,
  for I wanted to see more of the self I’ve found in your world.
• "Aster" by Harumaki Gohan, a Retraux, 80s-esque synthwave song about a lonely cyborg. The cyborg is a teenager living on her own in what seems to be a virtual world, having been abandoned by her parents, who she wishes she could meet and be loved by again. She takes to her fantasies, as she knows she's leading a hopeless life, and is implied to refuse to face her reality. As the song goes on, she realizes that both her life and fantasies are not much more than fakes, and commits suicide.
• Nanou's "Hey." tells the story of a person calling up someone they love, telling their loved one that they just want to see them smile and to reunite once more, afraid that they'll never see their loved one again. The instrumental makes it even more heartwrenching, combining a solemn post-grunge sound with heartbroken lyrics.
• "CRAWL" by Fullkawa Honpo, the sequel to Kobayashi Onyx's "Saihate", which is already a tearjerker in and of itself. While Saihate is from the perspective of the person who lived, CRAWL explains the perspective of the one who died. Miku is on her way to the afterlife, and sees her family and lover mourning her death - she tries to tell them that she's still watching over them, even though they had to part ways so soon. It starts to overlap with Heartwarming Moments when she tells them this heralds a new beginning. Even though they'll still mourn her from time to time, everyone, including Miku, will be able to move on. It hits close to home for those who've lost a loved one, but will leave you in happy tears by the end. Fullkawa's explanation provides more to the meaning of the song, adding in more tearjerking and heartwarming moments.
• 1/4 by VocaCircus, sung beautifully by Kaito's English voicebank. It starts a little bit vague, but by the end, it becomes clear that the song is about the singer trying to recover from an abusive relationship.
  Was I supposed to just be okay
  With everything that you did!?
  I was broken, I was hurting
  But I'm meant to forgive?
  You cut me to pieces
  It's your fault I'm a complete wreck
  And I guess I didn't matter to you
  The worst part? I always knew
  So here's my final "Fxxk You"
• Toward the end of the Nightmare Fuel song "Pink Rabbit", we have this exchange strongly implied to be between a distraught mother and the titular rabbit...
  "Have you seen my child?"
  ...
  "Nope."
  "Haven't seen him at all."
• While kiichi is usually known for Mind Screw-y and Nightmare Fuel songs like "Fluticasone", "Virgo" and "Love Love Nightmare", Miktronica II proves he doesn't falter with more solemn songs. In this song, the protagonist is an amnesiac girl, who laments her loss of her memories and how empty she feels without them. The instrumentation manages to artfully switch from an upbeat sound to a more subtle, heartbroken sound.
• In Circus-P's "Lie", Luka portrays a girl who puts up a happy facade in a romantic relationship. She tells herself that she's not really in love and that it's just a hopeless, dead-end relationship - but she finds herself conflicted because she does have some sort of feelings for her partner. She can't reach a conclusion, and it's implied that she feels she's the wrong fit for her partner and thinks that her partner deserves someone better. Then comes along the answer song, "I(Love)", with Gumi in the perspective of Luka's partner, which pretty much all but outright confirms Luka's conflict is over her sexuality. Despite Luka believing Gumi doesn't notice Luka's inner conflict, Gumi's aware of the facade Luka's put up, realizes this relationship was not much more than an "experiment" and that it's not going anywhere, especially since Luka seems to be trying to strike up another relationship with a guy. Even so, Gumi's not ready to let go of the relationship because of how much she loves Luka, and wants to "save" Luka from yet another dead-end relationship so they can be happy together.
• The Gentle Hedgehog by Shibainu is about a Defrosting Ice Queen, who has shut out everyone and doesn't let anyone get close to her. She reveals that this is because of past trauma ("There was much gentleness in me, but it’s been stabbed to death."), and puts up the stoic act so as to not hurt anyone. Even so, there's a boy who tries to get close to her, and she even tries to protect him, but she keeps shutting him out because she's afraid of bringing him into her problems. The boy, having been through his fair share of trauma, tries to jump off a building - but Miku catches him just in time to save him, and tells him she loves him.
• "Candle Queen" by GHOST and Silver Chord. The song describes a manipulative Alpha Bitch who loves stirring up drama and plays the victim in response to criticism. As a result of all this, the song ends with her losing all of her friends and everything she ever built up. While she's ultimately pitiful, it's made clear that the Candle Queen only has herself to blame.
  Toddlers' cries that grow louder and louder
  Everyone rushing to disavow her
  All alone in a black and white scene
  The one and only Candle Queen
  
  Hurt by the flames that grow higher and higher
  Clutching a broken crown of fire
  All alone in the final scene
  The one and only Candle Queen
  
  What a pity, that Candle Queen

• The lyrics to Smoke of Midnight make it seem like the song is about someone drowning at night - possibly of their own volition. The fact that the soft piano accompanying them is a far cry from Babuchan's usual heavy dosage of Nightmare Fuel doesn't help. We quickly see a return to form with a Last Note Nightmare, though.
  Illuminated by midnight,
  My body is
  Slowly pulled in.
  The night is lamenting.

  Goodbye.
  Thank you.

• Another example from one the last artists one would expect is Utsu-P's An Alien's "I Love You," in which the title is very obviously a metaphor for being an outcast, possibly due to an unspecified disability. The song follows the speaker (Miku) falling in love for the first time, only for the object of her affections to become distant as they become more aware of her status as an "alien," and as she begins to face harsher and harsher ridicule for it. Unsurprisingly, she's terribly lonely, but does nothing about it, as her experiences have made her believe that she isn't "qualified" to love or be loved by anyone when she herself isn't even considered human. It becomes even more painful when the song fast-forwards to the speaker living alone as an adult, only to reveal that despite everything, she still loves her old childhood friend.
• Niru Kajitsu's flower song "Shama", the first of his "Kalmia" trilogy, tells the story of a naive and love-struck person trying their best to impress the person they love, only to realize too late at the end that they were played for a fool. The PV portrays this as a lesbian tragedy; the protagonist, a prison guard named Clay Pool, has fallen in love with a haughty yet broken high end prisoner named Kalmia. In order to help her escape, Clay switches places with Kalmia and distracts the guards by allowing herself to be shot. All Clay gets in return is Kalmia happily watching her take the rap as she leaves, Clay now jailed for assisting in a breakout. We also see that Clay was also considered a freak for liking girls throughout her childhood; considering that she had the one person who she thought would accept her betray her in cold blood, you can't help but feel sorry for poor Clay.
  • Kalmia's backstory, which is explored in "Kilmaa," is also tragic, as she is a member of a minority group that is enslaved, killed, and has their horns and eyes harvested. When Guy and his gang find her, he murders her mother in front of her, allows her to be brutalized by his right-hand man, and then takes her prisoner as his sex slave, telling her he'll look after her until she dies, causing her to snap in terror. To avenge her mother and escape her situation, she poisons a sword and kills Guy with it, which is how she ends up in prison and meeting Clay in the first place. While her actions in "Shama" aren’t entirely justifiable, you at least understand that she did what she had to do.
  • In "Arandano," it is revealed that Guy was tormented as a child by a sadistic bully who cut his lip (giving him the iconic double lip scar) and pushed someone, presumably his friend, down a flight of stairs, killing him. When he tried to get help for the child, he was rejected and forced to live with the fact that no one cares about them and that the bully can do as he pleases for as long as he pleases. He ends up snapping himself toward the end of his song, becoming the sadistic man we see in "Kilmaa" and even apparently scaring his bully straight, as the last we see of him is as an adult in a military uniform and no longer wearing a Slasher Smile.
• Syudou's "Bitter Chocolate Decoration" is a very cynical tribute to the process of becoming an adult, with its singer lamenting that he has to restrict himself and not cause trouble for anybody but also to appear well-adjusted and social to not stand out, restricting him further. By the end, he has been thoroughly beaten down and made into something he's not after being forced to swallow these lessons for years, but he's also made to be just as forgettable as the adults he dismissed when he was younger.
• Fake Diva is sung by Miku and Kasane Teto, all about how Teto was originally just an April Fool's joke and was doomed to die at midnight in a ceremonial fire and be forgotten. It's sung as if it is in memory of Teto, with Miku trying to keep her memory alive and bring light to the cruelty Teto was shown. At the strike of midnight, Teto, surrounded by fire, had finally dropped the act and come clean: "I... Wanted to sing, too." Thankfully, Miku is there to save her, and the song takes a much happier turn from there.
  Of course, you can sing, dear.
  • It's also worth mentioning this song is a parody of Daughter of Evil. For people who know what ended up happening to Teto's character, Chartette, in that song's series the fact that Teto almost dies in a fire in this song may leave a bit of a bad taste in your mouth.
• "After the Suicide Reputation for Aluminum!-Chan", as the title implies, is about suicide. More specifically, it appears to be about either a depressed girl trying to kill herself or an immortal girl trying to kill herself.
• Sunflower of Parting Regrets by Hitoshizuku × Yama△ has different level of sadness. The story centers around a pair of siblings (Rin and Len, of course) during a time of war. After their father dies in duty and their mother commits suicide, they are left to care for themselves. Eventually when the brother is old enough he's sent to the war as well and laments that he would've at least liked to see the sunflowers they planted grow again, having gotten so used to seeing them every year. When the sister, known to cling to the past, begs him to stay he comforts her and swears to fight for her future. However, the brother dies and the sister lives on alone and continues to plant the sunflowers each year well in to her adulthood.
• Flos by R Sound Design featuring Hatsune Miku, which is implied to be from the point of someone who has realized that the relationship with their significant other has withered and that the two of them were trying just to convince themselves that they were still in love.
• Natsushiro Takaaki's "Near" is a series of conversations from an ailing programmer and the android girl he lives with. He ruminates on the meaning of life, sometimes asks for Near's opinion on things, and all the while struggles to keep up with his medicine until he asks one final question on his deathbed. Poor Near is left tearfully singing about how much she loves her master as he takes his last breath. The PV makes this worse; there is a counter for each question and answer the pair exchanged, and how much time it took between each sentence. When the master dies, her Q/A log finishes with one less response from the master and the day counter gets slower and slower as we watch Near cry, contrast to the days flying by as she takes and gives answers.
  • While the original song uses Hatsune Miku, one of the more notable covers (by cillia) uses Fukase in the place of the scientist and Otomachi Una in the place of Near. Both synthesizers give a lot of warmth to the lyrics, and as the scientist lay dying the cillia version makes it sound like Fukase's giving one more passionate internal monologue while Una sounds like she's doing everything in her power to convey her affection for her master.
• IA's "Shinitai-chan" follows a girl who jumped off the roof and ends up hospitalized. As the song goes on, she remembers someone who tried to stop her, and realizes how crushed they'd be if she died. The idea of breaking their heart is enough for her to regret her suicide attempt, and she pleas for it to not be the end. Thankfully, it's implied she survives.
• Happppy song is mostly Nightmare Fuel, but if you take the time to actually understand the lyrics, some of them are absolutely heartbreaking.
  Impossible stamps are pressed on this garment
  This room has a incompatible padlock
  I knew, I knew,
  The world of tomorrow will not accept me as well

  I am evil because I exist
  It's a big sin if I survive
  Because, Because, I am...
• PinocchioP has some notable examples:
  • “Loveit” is about a girl who finds herself in toxic relationships and allows herself to be hurt over and over again, constantly comparing herself to a “weak rabbit.” The ending, however, does imply she wants to stand up for herself someday.
  • "Lonely UFO" is about someone who loves outer space and believes she saw a UFO. Upon trying to tell people about her sighting, it's revealed that it was little more than a hallucination and that the connection she feels to outer space is just a result of her psychosis, which she's currently being hospitalized for. Having been enamored for so long with space, she feels that finding a new interest will help her heal from her delusions and depression, but she can't find it in herself to break her interest in outer space because it's had such a profound effect on her.
  • "Anonymous M" reads like a normal interview between guest ARuFa and the eponymous "Anonymous M" (Miku), but rather than treating her like a character like most creators would do, M herself repeatedly and bluntly tells her interviewer that she's just a robot and a tool for others to use. When at one point she expresses a heartfelt thanks for people adding onto her personality and using her, she abruptly admits that she doesn't think any of this herself—it's just her handler who said it using her as a mouthpiece.
  • "404" is about an alien who tries to fit in with humans, but no one ever accepts him for who he is. In the end, he destroys the planet and goes back home to outer space.
  I love you, though our shapes of love may be different.
  I loved you but I was too sad, I wiped out the entire planet
• "AuLelia" and "AuRelia are songs about an abusive relationship between two girls. The blonde, whose side of the story is depicted in "AuLelia" has deep regret for how she treated her girlfriend, who is depressed, and is implied to have some massive issues herself. The brunette, whose story is depicted in "AuRelia" is suffering due to her own depression as well as how her girlfriend treats her.
• As catchy as "Bad Girl A" by Mitchie M sounds, Mood Dissonance is in full force as it tells the story of Miku's crappy life up until her Game of Chicken against Rin. She lives with an abusive and controlling dad, and feels free for the first time when she got rescued by Luka and joined her gang. Before the race, Luka gifts her a knife to defend herself with and a motorcycle, only for Miku to use the knife to murder her dad for attempting to drag her back to her shitty home, and the chicken race ends with Miku driving herself off the cliff to go out in a blaze of glory. Knowing she'd be convicted of murder, Miku chose to die free than live imprisoned.
• "Humansongs", the debut song of Porter Robinson's Vocaloid, Po-uta. It starts off heartwarming, with Po-uta promising Porter that he'll always carry on his legacy even long after he's gone. Then, it slips into existential heartbreak when there's an implied timeskip... to two hundred years into the future, where Porter is gone (implicitly along with at least most of humanity) and Po-uta — who can't die — is left mourning for his creator, even apologizing for being made from him.
  Po-uta: I've been teaching myself to cry so that you know how much you're loved.
• This song is mostly a Funny Moment. but there is some sadness in Miku's lament that Not Growing Up Sucks.

Producer-related Tear Jerkers

• samfree, real name Sano Takayuki, who brought us the Night series (e.g., Luka Luka Night Fever) and Promise, passed away on September 24, 2015, at the age of 31. He will be missed.
• wowaka, known for songs such as "World's End Dancehall", "Two-Faced Lovers", and "Rolling Girl", passed away from acute heart failure on April 5, 2019. Some see his passing as the End of an Age, as his music has made an enormous impact on Vocaloid's community for the majority of the decade. May he rest in peace.