Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
In General
- The most heartbreaking aspect of this game isn't the deaths. It's the realization where all deaths are predetermined based on route, so if someone in your party is obviously going insane there's absolutely nothing you can do to save them from a certain death. Characters in-game know perfectly that shit has gone off the rails and you're sometimes even given options to comfort party members who are undergoing Sanity Slippage, but since the deaths are route-dependent, nothing can be really done and their fate is usually sealed for good. Look no further to Shuuji who has been obviously deteriorating until he beats Lopmon and gets Eaten Alive by Wendigomon as a result, completely ignoring Kaito's best efforts to make him cease.
- Anytime when the Track 39
plays, since it pretty much solifides that a character has died. And his/her partner Kemonogami will perish as well. - The Wrathful and Harmonious Routes are one of the most bitter and cynical outcomes of any Digimon story and thoroughly deconstructs what happens when people suffer from a heartbreaking loss of a loved one, then let their survivor guilt consume them and reject any form of help from people who actually cared about them. It's as if the writers took Leomon's quote "everyone has their own fate" a bit too literally, because no matter how dire the consequences of Leomon's death is, his former Tamer Jeri does get out from her depression with a heavy push from Takato and Beelzemon. Had Saki died, Aoi descends into madness and there's nothing you can do for her other than giving her a nice death, same thing goes for Miu and Kaito on the Harmonious Route. It's fate because as soon as you choose a route, those characters are already set up to die.
- Poor, poor Lopmon will tug at your heartstrings, because despite being one of the sweetest partner one could ever ask for, he is partnered with Shuuji, who didn't manage to trust Lopmon and couldn't hold himself apart shortly after ending up in the other world. As a result, Lopmon is constantly ignored by Shuuji and by chapter 5 this degenerated into him just being an outlet to lash at despite trying his best for him. Some of his thoughts that we got to see is absolutely heartbreaking.Lopmon: Why... Why am I the only one that's so... despised?
- While Lopmon's evolution into Wendigomon and what happens afterwards is without a doubt a Nightmare Fuel, the few words that came out of his mouth - crying over how much it hurts and begging for help - shows just how much he is suffering; Lopmon doesn't want to do this, but Shuuji's anger and rage is just so overwhelming that in the end, he's reduced to nothing but a monster who wants to kill and destroy everything. Hell, when it took both verbal and physical abuse for Lopmon to deteriorate to this level says a lot on how kind he is.
- Even more tragic is that Shuuji being abusive to Lopmon reflects his father's attitude towards him; Shuuji even realizes that Lopmon is basically a reflection on how he acts to his father at the beginning of Chapter 5. But instead of working to become closer to Lopmon, he becomes worse, sealing both of their fates.
- Ryo’s nervous breakdown and nightmarish death count here. Ever since they entered the Kemonogami World, Ryo was a terrified nervous wreck. He had very quickly fallen into paranoia/despair and once they found out that they were on an island the whole time and nowhere near Japan, Ryo’s mind snapped, believing it was the afterlife and his mother was waiting for him. But as it turns out, she had already died long before the game’s story began. His horrible death (being pulled in and crushed) was heartbreaking and terrifying. He never got along with everyone and was pushing people away but his death had a lasting effect on the whole party and left a mental scar on Takuma who swore he would protect the party and make sure this can’t happen again, but not before he laments about not being able to save him after Agumon stopped Takuma from reaching Ryo to prevent him suffering the same fate.
- Takuma also feels like he let Ryo suffer, he blames himself for not helping Ryo enough and feels like their situation to get back home was getting increasingly bleak, since they had no true means of escaping the Kemonogami World (at the time) which was revealed to be an island and that no rescue effort would ever come from their world. Agumon feels Takuma’s (the player character’s) distraught grieving feelings about Ryo and tries to cheer him up, saying that he believes in him and that no matter how hard things get, he can do anything which is Heartwarming.
- Agumon later on expresses sadness at Ryo and Kunemon’s deaths, saying the idea of disappearing utterly frightens him and empathises with Takuma’s grief about Ryo’s passing. Even in the case where Ryo survives, Takuma and Agumon are still deeply scarred for the rest of that night and the next morning.
- The phone call Takuma got from his mother after choosing a route at the end of Chapter 8 definitely counts. Hearing his mother checking in to make sure he's fine, telling him to just hold on for "one more day" before the camp ends, and how she's going to cook him his favorite food when he got back home is so sad when Takuma is a moment away from returning to the other world once again, not knowing whether he'd live through it or not. To Takuma, it might very well be the last time he heard his mother, and his promise to return "tomorrow" when time flows much faster in the other world makes it seems like an Empty Promise than anything else.
- The Non-Standard Game Over if you refuse to go back to the other world has Takuma give up on saving everyone, feeling that he's weak and he just wants to go home. Despite Agumon and Miyuki's best efforts to beg him to return, with Agumon even crying, Takuma refuses and seals everyone's fates—no one else returns from the other world, and the human world is Just Before the End.
Moral Route
- Jijimon's death in the hands of the Master. Not only do the Amusement Park monsters lose their beloved caretaker, Takuma is visibly shook by the incident and undergoes an immense Heroic BSoD that would go worse had Aoi and Kaito not pull him back to the right track.
- At one point in the penultimate battle, the professor and Renamon managed to draw Miyuki's consciousness out of the Master with her body still fused into several Kenzoku. Despite their intervention, the Master quickly regains control of the body and stabs Renamon with several hands coming from the possessed body, killing Renamon for the duration of the battle. Unlike the other murders the Master has committed using Miyuki's body, Miyuki is completely self aware over this because her consciousness surfaces right after the Master kills Renamon, and her blood-curdling scream after seeing her partner being murdered right in front of her doesn't help any matters.
- The aftermath to Renamon's death is no better. The professor is disheartened upon seeing Renamon go despite she's was a Token Evil Teammate with close to no morals whatsoever as long as Miyuki is by her side. Worse is unlike the several times where Miyuki dies, she dies off content having been protected Miyuki, making this hit even harder for the professor and her human partner. Thankfully, it becomes a Heartwarming moment when the death comes undone quick because a miracle from Miyuki's emotions revived her.
- Unlike the other endings, the party never gets to stay with their partner monsters, but has to bid them goodbye. As Jijimon told the party in Part 4, they might very will not be capable of remembering their bonds with their humans again.
Wrathful Route
- Saki's death is absolutely heartwrenching. Takuma and Kaito arrived just in time to save her from the Kenzoku attack, and Saki manages to run away with Miu, but after the fight, the Kenzoku springs back up and grabs Saki by the foot anyway. Despite Aoi managed to catch her hand before she completely disappears into the fog and Takuma and Kaito helping Aoi as they entered a tug-of-war with the Kenzoku, the enemy was so much stronger than expected, so Saki chose to let go of Aoi's hand before the rest of her friends are dragged in with her, killing her instantly. It's horrible because not only because her death is witnessed by everyone, but also because it seemed that they'd be able to save her at first, but for all we know the deaths are all scripted based on route and there is nothing you can do to save anyone who is about to die.
- The aftermath is just as heartbreaking, with most being in shock while Aoi is in denial that her best friend just died in front of her eyes. Aoi trying to go into the fog to "save" Saki while Kaito holds her back and has to physically drags her with him, with her crying Saki's name all the while, is gut-wrenching.
- The rest of the group recovers very quickly on the next chapter, but Aoi would never be the same after Saki died. She's constantly spacing out, blaming herself and misremembering things, wants to be left alone and even refusing Labramon's company. In the library, she was completely taken in by the illusion of Saki, to the point of seeing all the Kenzokus as Saki and barely managing to register that the Saki she saw were not real. Afterwards she'd wander alone in the forest until Labramon found her, not sleeping at all, and her monologue and thoughts starts to differ from what she actually says as she goes on a rant on how harmony and cooperation is key to understand one another and prevent conflict. Her kind heart shines through despite all of this, but it's twisted to the point of barely-lucid recklessness when she found a dying Piedmon and heals him, believing that he's just another victim of the Master and that they can understand each other and work together despite he and his whole group have a track record for unnecessary cruelty and he's not even worth bothering. For her trouble, Piedmon repaid her by choking and mortally wounding both her and Labramon. Having her answers and ideals betrayed by Piedmon, failing to protect Labramon and now on the verge of death on top of everything else, that is the final straw required for the poor girl to finally snap and dark-biomerge with her partner to become Plutomon.
- When the rest found Aoi and Labramon mortally wounded, they cried and panics as Miu asked for someone to do something to help her... until you realize that Aoi and Labramon were always the one who take care and heal the others whenever they got injured, so nobody knew what to do when the two were the one to be grievously injured. Similarly, after she was gone the party could no longer enjoy a good breakfast, showing just how great of a loss losing the Team Mom of the party really is.
- After Aoi becomes Plutomon, all of her dialogue becomes unhinged ramblings among the lines of how she will become the world's messiah by absorbing all of humanity into her and how anyone who tries to reason with her must be eliminated. Miu even sobs seeing how she has degenerated into some insane monster who is a far cry from the Aoi she knows.
- Aoi regaining her sense of self at the very end, just before she dies. She wonders whether she had made another mistake even though she had promised not to, apologizes to Takuma and Saki, and finally apologizes to Labramon with a smile on her face before she finally disappears for good. It's very tragic and sad, because as Kaito said, her ideals and goals weren't wrong; it's just her methods that was wrong, and at the end she was just a broken girl who failed to accept the loss of her best friend and let herself consumed by grief. In the ending proper, the survivors swore to keep fighting in order to make Aoi's dream of a better world where people and monsters can understand each other come true.
- The trophy name for defeating Plutomon in the final encounter is "So Sorry, Sweet Aoi...". It's effectively a Mercy Kill against a fellow survivor who had gone too far into the deep end to be reasoned with.
- The Wrathful Ending, in contrast to Harmonious' more hopeful tone, shows that Aoi's dream is a very long way off as society has grown so fearful of monsters that they've started creating isolation camps and hunting down anyone who has a monster partner. The last scene of the ending even shows a cop beating the crap out of a kid just because he has a Gomamon. Maybe it's a good thing Aoi never lived to see this, given how she yearned for a world of co-existence. What makes this ending worse is that the Harmonious route - where both Aoi and Saki live - shows Aoi's dream coming to fruition despite having over half of the major cast dead, and society integrated itself with Kemonogami/Digimon in the Moral and Truthful Routes.
- Crossed with Fridge Horror, but this senseless, horrific tragedy of a Route becomes even more tragic after the Truthful Route reveals Miyuki's powers can split apart a fusion like Aoi's when she breaks the Master apart into Haruchika and Fanglongmon Ruin Mode...but Miyuki dies before that can happen here. There was a way to save Aoi, but it died with Miyuki and no one was even aware of it.
Harmonious Route
- Everything about Kaito's sister complex becomes Harsher in Hindsight when we find out why he's acting like that. Miu was stalked by a grown man who claimed that he had a romantic relationship with him, then Kaito beat him to a bloody pulp and ran away to the rural town where the Kemonogami Shrine was in. Then students in Miu's school began to bully her so Kaito beat them to a bloody pulp too. It's as sickening as it's sad. There's no wonder Kaito is overprotective to Miu; he's not controlling or possessive, he's horrified that the police might put him behind bars soon once word gets out that he beat a man to near-death to protect his sister.
- The aftermath of Miu's death in the Harmonious Route shows itself to be way more heartbreaking than Saki's. Instead of trying to lighten up the mood by a bit with a babysitting section after, even that is omitted and unlike Saki's aftermath where everyone bar Aoi quickly regains composure, they clearly don't take that well and Kaito outright rejects attempts to help him with violent threats. In that Free Action phase Takuma seldomly even talks and most of his time is spent on consoling his fellow party members, showing how Miu's death impacted the group way more than Saki's did. He doesn't even so speak to a broken Kaito, with Dracumon even advising against it. It tells when your best choice in that "conversation" is to leave him alone.
- After Miu's death, Kaito is no longer the same person. Gone was the trustworthy but brash young man with a keen sense of danger, but a ticking time bomb that even Dracumon knew to just leave alone to not risk a violent scuffle. He's so broken that most of the time he doesn't even so shout or talk a lot, and if anyone attempts to drag him out of the tar pit (often by telling him about Miu) he sounds absolutely furious that they're bothering with him. It becomes even worse after Renamon baited him into the Library and shown him illusions of his worst fear of Miu rejecting his care that he snapped entirely and left the group out of disgust, with revenge against the group and the Master for Miu's death being the only thing in his mind. Not even Miyuki is spared from his wrath despite Miyuki had literally nothing to do with his sister's death and that's just the Master using her body to walk around. It quickly degenerated into a fit of him punching innocent monsters, implied to death until he meets Piedmon who was going to exploit him for the last laugh. It's just gut-wrenching and frightening at the same time knowing the person you trusted as a reliable but brash friend degenerated into some murderous, barely recognizable mess just because he couldn't accept his sister is gone.
- Eventually, Kaito gets so obsessed with revenge on the world that took Miu from him that it degenerated to the point where he willingly offers Dracmon (as Myotismon) to Piedmon in order to fuse the two together. While at first he tries to make Kaito see reason, in the end Dracmon agreed to his partner's wish, resulting in this bittersweet farewell between the two:Dracmon: Kaito...
Kaito: What?
Dracmon: You and me... we were like brothers, weren't we?
Kaito: ...Yeah, we were. Thank you.
Dracmon: All right. Here I go then! - The Harmonious Route has whatever remains of the crew have a hearty breakfast meal prepared by Aoi unlike the professor's rather questionable cooking in Wrathful. It's supposed to be a light-hearted moment, until Aoi brings out that she prepared more than she needed now because some of the food was for Kaito. This was before his barely lucid rampage with Boltboutamon some time ago. Takuma and co. just wanted Kaito to come back and return to his senses, not knowing that he's too far gone in the spiral of grief and hatred to be saved.
Truthful Route
- Surpisingly, the Master's backstory. He was the brother of Yukiha, the acting priestess of the Kemonogami faith and an ancestor of Haru and Miyuki, who was thrown into the other world like four other children alongside him in a bid to save Japan from war through bonding with sovereign beasts. Despite Yukiha could visit him at any time due to having the song that connects the worlds, she didn't because she was too busy for her real life priorities. Unfortunately, he mistook it as her abandoning him to die on purpose, so he festered an insane amount of hate that turned his partner Fanglongmon (the resident chief Physical God of the other world) into something straight out of Nightmare Fuel territory and declares that he will destroy both worlds to exact his revenge. All the children he killed over several real-world centuries and his attempts to destroy both worlds exact for nothing but an empty grudge based on a misbelief that could be solved with some communication before he was thrown in. There's a reason why his fellow sovereign children asked Takuma to save him rather than getting him killed despite the deaths he more or less orchestrated over centuries and Haruchika was pretty much horrified of what he had done under his misguided beliefs when Yukiha tells him the truth.
