As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
- The opening scene, where Kubo's mother nearly dies while trying to take her baby to a safe land. The way she, while injured, crawls up to comfort her crying infant, is heartbreaking.
- Just the saddening sight of baby Kubo crying, and bandages where his missing eye is supposed to be, will break your heart.
Kubo: (narrating) His name is Kubo. His grandfather stole something from him. And that really is the least of it... - Kubo has to take full care of his mother due to her head injury. She spends huge chunks of the day catatonic, Kubo has to feed her himself, and even when she's lucid she still has huge gaps in her memory, leaving her unable to function. When Kubo goes to his father's memorial, he mentions that she's been getting worse.Sariatu: Kubo? What happened to your eye?
- During the scene where she's lucid, when Kubo tries to give his grandfather and aunts the benefit of the doubt, it's Sariatu who emphasizes that they're nothing but monsters who won't hesitate to steal him away from her forever. She says it in such a desperate tone, as though she can't emphasize enough that Kubo's relatives are anything but good people. And then, there's her regretful expression when she sees she's needlessly scared her son with this very idea.
- In the Junior novel, it describes that whenever Kubo's mother tells him stuff like this, it makes Kubo feel completely alone, as though he were beside himself.
- During the scene where she's lucid, when Kubo tries to give his grandfather and aunts the benefit of the doubt, it's Sariatu who emphasizes that they're nothing but monsters who won't hesitate to steal him away from her forever. She says it in such a desperate tone, as though she can't emphasize enough that Kubo's relatives are anything but good people. And then, there's her regretful expression when she sees she's needlessly scared her son with this very idea.
- The early implication that Kubo's father and his entire army of loyal samurai died in order to let his wife and son escape the Moon King.
- While Kubo waits for his father's spirit to light the lantern, he watches as other villagers set their lit lanterns afloat on the river. His expression is that of poignant longing to have a normal, loving family like everyone else. At last, the time to return home is upon him. But Kubo takes one last angry look at his own unlit lantern before spitefully crumpling it up and yelling "Fine! I don't need you!" After his anger is spent, however, Kubo subtly realizes how harsh he might've been. He briefly takes the time to reconcile with his father's spirit: "I'm sorry".
- Even sadder, his father was never really dead. He was alive the whole time, only reincarnated as Beetle. He couldn't have answered his prayers, let alone with amnesia. If he had been there to hear Kubo's prayer, he'd be distraught to learn his son was struggling in his absence.
- Towards the end, while praying to his father and mother, Kubo tearfully admits that after everything he's been through, he does indeed need them, and still needs them.
- The saddened look on Sariatu's face when she sends Kubo away, so as to protect him from her Sisters.
- Monkey weaves Kubo a bracelet made from a strand of his mother's hair. It's a small moment where both Monkey and Kubo quietly mourn his loss. Monkey looks especially saddened as she tells Kubo a little about his mother.
- When Monkey asks Beetle who he is, Beetle can only shake his head sadly, as though he's thinking "I was hoping you could tell me". He then proceeds to tell his tragic backstory of how he was cursed a long time ago. What's more, he has no memory of his previous life. He probably doesn't even know what he did wrong to deserve such a punishment.Beetle: No comrades, no master. Not even a name, or a single memory of the noble warrior I once was.
- Also, it's Harsher in Hindsight once you learn it's Hanzo, cut down in his prime and reduced to a cursed amnesiac.
- Just poor Beetle's amnesia. All he has is the gut feeling he used to be a human samurai once, and even that hasn't helped ease the emptiness of being deprived his purpose.
Beetle: Memories, they fade, and I'm left with this sense that I was.. once part of something much greater. - The scene of Beetle teaching Kubo how to use a bow and arrow becomes this after The Reveal of Beetle's identity; it's a glimpse into what Kubo and Hanzo's lives could have been and what they've been denied for years.
- The mere fact that the ones Kubo and his mother are running from who are trying to steal his eyes are their family. And Sariatu ultimately has to kill her own sister.
- During the fight with Monkey, one of the Sisters share how badly Sariatu's "betrayal" affected her and her twin. She may be a cold-hearted sadist, but the sorrow and rawness in her voice reflects that despite her detachment from humanity, her experience at loss is very much human.
Karasu: I felt loss only once. Eleven years ago, I lost my sister! - Although it's Dramatic Irony that he's merely unconscious, when Beetle saves Kubo from the Garden of Eyes, it seems as though the boy drowned. He gives the out-cold Kubo to Monkey who desperately begs the boy to wake up, then quietly breaks down into tears assuring him he'll be okay. Since she's really Kubo's mother, it's sobering how scared-to-death Monkey must've been to see her son unconscious like that.
- Monkey's hesitance to tell Kubo that when she used to be Sariatu, she had originally met Hanzo with the intention of killing him. For her, it's painful to revisit who she used to be, and how their first meeting was not initially a tender moment. It takes courage for her to begin the story without faltering.
- Monkey revealing to Beetle that she is Secretly Dying, not just from her battle wounds, but mostly because the the magic that keeps her alive is fading. She fears that Kubo will be alone once the magic runs out, not to mention he'll be devastated to lose her after just learning she's his mother reincarnated in a new form.
- The state of the Beetle Clan Castle. There might've been a time when once, it stood as a promising home for Hanzo and his family. Now, it's only a ramshackle building, overgrown and falling apart. It's just a shell of what could've been Kubo's proud home.
- Not long after, Washi reveals Beetle's true identity: Hanzo. Upon learning who he is, Monkey looks over, with a saddened expression, at the man who used to be her beloved husband. Kubo is just as heart-broken to realize what's become of the father he was denied all these years. And Beetle? He too is a bit devastated that he was once the greatest samurai who ever lived, and he couldn't remember.Monkey: ...Hanzo?Beetle/Hanzo: (to Monkey) I.. I d-didn't know...
- Here's what Hanzo said to Sariatu, which ended up convincing her to Rage Against the Heavens and join him in the mortal world: four simple words, "You are my quest." Seems pretty sweet until later, as Beetle, Hanzo says it to Sariatu as she's dying as Monkey.
- Beetle being unceremoniously killed off just as he remembered his true identity and promising to protect Kubo.
- And then the next scene reveals that both Monkey and Beetle don't make it to the morning. You would expect that with Monkey's injuries and fading magic, Beetle would step up to the plate and take care of his long estranged son. But Kubo is denied both mother and father for the final leg of the movie.
- Sariatu and Hanzo, or at least what was left of them, were so close to each other once more - and they didn't even know it.
- By dawn, Kubo wordlessly mourns the death of both his parents. All around him are reminders of how he's lost his entire family in one night alone: his father's broken bow, the Monkey charm cleaved in half, Paper Hanzo in a lifeless heap. He can't help but quietly shed a single tear.
- Mortally wounded Paper Hanzo still trying to help.
- As Travis Knight points out, there's a subtly tragic Symbolism with Kubo donning the final piece of the armor as he turns away from the retreating villagers, as though turning his back on humanity out of his grief-driven goal to be strong enough to defeat the Moon King.
- Before his battle with the Moon King, Kubo sadly admits to himself that it was his fault his grandfather found him in the first place. Given he just recently lost Monkey and Beetle, it's heart-breaking to hear him say "I should've listened to my parents..."
- After the battle, we see the Moon King, now an amnesiac mortal with no memories of his former existence. He's even humanly appalled to see Kubo missing one of his eyes and asks "What happened to your eye?"
- The ending where Kubo honors his parents with the paper lanterns, with the closing shot being him standing next to the spirits of his mother and father. Counts as heartwarming."This was a happy story. But... it could still be a whole lot happier..."
