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Tear Jerker / Japan Sinks

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It's the story of a family's struggle to survive in the midst of a life-changing disaster. Prepare yourself for one hell of a heartbreaker. Spoilers are unmarked.


  • The first characters we see killed by the earthquake? The young girls on Ayumu's track team. All of them. After the quake strikes the locker room, Ayumu wakes up and finds herself surrounded by the battered corpses of her companions, and it gets even worse when she sees her friend crushed under a huge slab of debris, barely alive and calling out for help; the sight is so traumatizing that Ayumu freaks out and runs away, leaving her friend to suffer an agonizing death. It's a choice that will continue to haunt her for the rest of the episode.
  • Koichiro's death. All he wanted was to dig up some yams from a garden so he could feed his family. Sadly, Ayumu realizes too late that he's digging in a minefield, and as soon as her father catches on, he blows up, leaving behind a rain of blood and a severed hand that lands right in front of his wife.
    • In the following episode, Go has a dream about meeting his dad, dressed as a heroic samurai, within an RPG-style world. It just hurts your heart to see how a little gamer like Go copes with losing his own father...
  • Nanami's sudden demise. What starts off as a simple restroom break at the bottom of a hill quickly turns to tragedy when Nanami is swiftly (and silently) killed by the poison gas surrounding the area. This causes Ayumu to suffer even more Survivor's Guilt, as she believes Nanami's death was entirely her fault since she was the one who wanted to take a break.
  • The destruction of Shan City. After the characters finally find sanctuary in the peaceful city, their happiness is cut short when the place falls victim to another major earthquake.
    • The friendly cook that Go befriends during their stay ends up shielding the boy from a falling chunk of the tower, and is crushed to death as soon as Mari takes Go to safety.
    • The old man, armed with his bow and arrow, chooses to stay in the crumbling tower in order to fend off the gunmen blockading the group, allowing them to escape. All Go can do is look back in tears as he's forced to leave behind the man he saw as a grandfather figure.
    • Mother makes her way to the top of the tower to rescue her son. When she finds him, he reaches his arms out and yells "Mother! Thank you!", the first words she's ever heard him speak. Then out of nowhere, a chunk of debris lands on the boy's head, killing him instantly.
    • As Mother mourns her son in the collapsing tower, she's greeted by a small handful of her followers, who claim that they want to die alongside her since she was the one who saved them. Now accepting the fate of her and her brethren, Mother quietly utters, "I intended for us to live on together. Where did I go wrong?" before the floor under them gives way.
  • Mari's Heroic Sacrifice. With her ventricular device completely dead, she chooses to use the last of her strength to dive into the sea to free a boat that will take her kids and Koda to safety. As Ayumu and Koda swim after her to bring her back, she loses her breath onscreen and dies as soon as she reaches the surface. Blinded by tears, her daughter tries desperately to resuscitate her, but to no avail.
  • Koda's Heroic Sacrifice: With Onodera's archive on the tectonic activity in Japan in danger of being washed away as the last land in Japan slips beneath the ocean, Koda volunteers to retrieve it. For the first time since he quit running in school, he takes off like a bullet, and succeeds in retrieving the archive and tossing it to Ayumu, memories of winning races running through his mind, mere moments before a powerful wave crashes into him. It would be the last anyone saw of him, dead or alive.
  • After being rescued and hospitalized, Ayumu receives a video on her phone, delayed so it would arrive on her birthday: it's a prerecorded message from her mother, Go, Koda, and Onodera, who wish her a happy birthday with a puppy filter (presumably from Snapchat). Heartbroken by the fact that these are the last words she’ll ever hear from her mom and Koda, Ayumu breaks down completely and lets out the most gut-wrenching of cries.
  • It crosses over with Heartwarming, but the final montage of Japan before the disaster is a truly emotional send off for the series. Intercut with some flashbacks of the deceased characters, we see multiple images of Japan in its glory days, from the people who once lived there to its beauty and culture. It really hits home that this version of Japan is gone forever, but its legacy and history will live on until the end of time.

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