Tear Jerker / Katawa Shoujo

Spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

Tearjerking moments in Katawa Shoujo.

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• Hisao's Act 1 bad ending is one, even if he had not drunkenly fallen to his death. He walks around the festival, lonely as he notes that none of the girls he met in his first days are available, and never emerges from his state of depression and bitterness.
  • For that matter, try to imagine the aftermath. Kenji is crazy, but it's unlikely he's going to take Hisao's death all that well, especially considering it's more or less his fault. And that's assuming he doesn't get held responsible.
  • Not to mention the reactions from the girls. Especially Emi and Hanako, who have experience with losing a loved one. OK, They weren't that close to Hisao yet, but Emi and Hisao have been running together while Nurse told her to keep an eye on him, while Hanako is scared shitless of making a new friend but tries to anyway. Then suddenly Hisao falls off the roof and dies. That's so not going to help them deal with their traumas.

Emi

• The discussion after the exams, where she explains why she can't rely on you.
  She leaves her mouth close to my ear, as she confesses this one thing to me.
  Emi: Because, Hisao. I've already had everything I knew ripped away from me once. I don't know what I'd do if it happened again. (...) So I can't rely on you. Or the Nurse. Or anyone else. Just me.
• The Bad Ending. After Hisao's unfortunate choice of words gets him thrown out of Emi's house — and eventually not telling anything about it to Misha after she questions Hisao about it — Hisao confronts Emi over the whole issue, and they break up and never talk to each other again. Particularly painful after seeing how well they got along during the whole route up to this point, as well as Emi's complete lack of hesitation at calling things off.
  Hisao: I just you to be happy, you know?
  Emi: So you want to fix me, Hisao? (gets angrier) Wanna swoop in your white charger and save the day? Stop the nightmares, the phantom limb pains? Restore what's lost? (her voice catches, and she starts to cry) Well, you can't. Nobody can. Nobody will.
  • The last line especially drives things home. With most of the other girls, there's at least some possibility of reconciling after their bad endings, but that line bluntly drives home that no, Hisao and Emi are through.
• The scene with Emi opening up to Hisao, a week after she threw him out of her house for bringing up a touchy issue. The conversation in the graveyard counts as well:
  Emi: Eight years ago today, I lost my legs. And I lost my father as well.

Hanako

• Hanako is basically a walking tearjerker. She's horribly scarred from a fire that killed her parents, one of which she presumably watched die before her very eyes, all her friends she had before the accident became her bullies and she was consistently bullied and excluded throughout elementary and middle school. At the orphanage in which she lived she had to see most other kids get adopted eventually, but was never adopted herself. Good God is that depressing.
  • The reveal of how she came to be scarred, and why she's got (some of) the psychological issues she has.
  Hanako: The fire happened when I was eight years old. It was night, and I was sleeping when it started. I... curled up into a ball... when the fire swept over me. My mother... tried to shield me. Th-that's the only reason... I lived.
• Hanako's panic attack is quite upsetting and rather uncomfortable to watch, especially considering that everyone involved tries to make things better after the inital faux-pas, but it simply doesn't work. The next time you see her, she's curled up on her bed, alone and weeping.
  • Worse: As noted on the Nightmare Fuel page, her panic attack is accurately depicted. Not everybody suffers the well-known symptoms such as crying or collapsing in public; many instead shut down exactly like Hanako does, and unfortunately this shutdown is almost never recognized for what it is in real life, even after it's over and the person suffering it is able to communicate again. Some people develop the shutdown response out of necessity; that may well have been the case for Hanako, considering...
• Hanako's Bad Ending. It's shocking enough to see her suddenly lash out at you, but what really drives it home is the fact that it's very easy to think the choices that lead to it are the right ones. Most of what Hisao's done to try to help has actually been hurting her, and her rant against Hisao's insistence on protecting her is entirely justified. This one comes as a massive What the Hell, Player? moment, and forces the reader to consider whether or not they went down Hanako's route just because she is The Woobie.
  Hanako: Get out of my room, get out of my room, get out of my room...! Leave! I'm telling you, go!
  Hisao: B-but... I was just trying to... help you...
  Hanako: I know I need help! I know I'm broken! I don't need you to tell me that!
  Hisao: I never said you were broken, or anything like that!
  Hanako: It's written on your face, it's written on Lilly's face, it's written on everybody's faces! I see a therapist every week, Lilly dotes on me as if I were her child, and now... even you! Nothing's changed, nothing at all! I hate Lilly, and I... I hate you more than anyone!
  • To pile on the tears, after that outburst, Hanako's angry face immediately turns into a tearful one; as if she suddenly realized that she shouldn't have exploded like that, but much too late.
  • Her Neutral ending isn't much better. She and Hisao do spend a much quieter evening in her room, having dinner and playing chess while making small talk... but there's a lingering sadness in the whole scene. Especially as it's implied that, while remaining friends, Hisao will keep putting his needs aside for hers, which will eventually turn their deal into a self-destructive one. Who's to say that Hanako won't eventually snap at him like in the Bad Ending?
• On more of a fridge level (Fridge Tear-Jerker?), Hanako's playful, goofy personality that comes out after she'd been drinking. This is the closest we'll see of what Hanako would likely be like if it weren't for the fire, the bullying, and the rejection, and, sadly, it can only come out when she's drunk.

Lilly

• Lilly's neutral ending is definitely this: Lilly's storyline gradually becomes more and more depressing, as Hisao starts to think his relationship with her and indeed his entire experiences at the school have been All for Nothing as she leaves for Scotland never to return, eventually culminating in the "Farewell" scene before immediately cutting to credits. Even if you know the good ending is coming, watching "Farewell" can be downright heart-wrenching.
• However, in her good ending, Hisao refuses to accept her leaving and has a Race for Your Love moment where he chases her out to the airport the next day, desperate to see her just one more time, but just as he finds her, he collapses to the ground, suffering from a major heart attack as she walks away. The scene at this point really does resemble a bad ending, really driven home by the fact that Hisao, and possibly the player, actually believes that he's going to die there and then, taking one last glimpse at Lilly as she leaves forever. And when he wakes up in a hospital after reaching for someone he was in love with, he's certain that history just repeated itself. However, this is luckily turned into a purely and entirely heartwarming moment by the end of the scene, with one of the best uses of Chekhov's Gun in the entire game.
• The fact that Hisao suffers from not one, but two, even three in the Good Ending heart attacks throughout the route, one of which would have been enough to kill him. Made even worse by Lilly's desperation to keep him in her life and yet she's at least indirectly responsible for the heart attacks.
• When Lilly tells him she's been planning to accept her family's summons for some time, Hisao undergoes a minor Broken Pedestal moment:

For her to not only be leaving but to have been actively hiding her own plans from me, and after seeming for so long to be the one solid pillar of support and reliability I could depend on... It feels as if the foundation underneath me is suddenly shifting drastically, much faster than I can adapt to.

Rin

• Rin's first H-Scene. It doesn't help that you find her alone on the floor, sulking and a complete mess. The dark background and music only makes things worse. It feels like you are destroying her in some way while you two have sex in her depressed, almost insane state. The bad ending you can possibly get after that is utterly soul wrenching just to top it all off.
  • Even more so in her neutral ending, where she invokes But Now I Must Go, as she has decided to accept her scholarship in a Tokyo art college. Considering her behavior as well as what happened to Sae's husband, and how she begs Hisao to forget about her, it's implied she'll take her own life in the near future.
    Rin: I can't hug anyone, Hisao. I'm a bad person like that.
  • Possibly her biggest tear-jerker of all is Rin breaking down in front of Hisao and shouting; "I have no idea what's wrong with me!"
    • Also, a few moments later in that same scene, Rin crying. Oh my God!... The detail in those tears. Let's also not forget that actually Rin is the only romanceable girl whose sprite includes tears rolling down from her eyes, dethroning Emi's famous Puppy Eyes completely. Then in that state, she lets herself fall in Hisao's arms, crying silently for a while, until she raises again her head to say: "Let me be here for a while. Please, Hisao. Just give me a little while". And this is already in the way for the good ending of her route.
• Her good ending is a Tear Jerker of the best kind.
  Rin: Hisao? What's the word for when it feels inside your heart that everything in the world is all right?
• This line when discussing putting Rin's art up in a gallery, especially if you or someone you know has the same or a similar mindset, as well as the the apprehensive look she gives:
  Rin: Change is the scariest thing in the world to me. And I seriously don't know if I want to change into a person who could do the thing the teacher wants me to do. I don't know if I could even if I wanted to.

Shizune

• Shizune's bad end you get for accepting Misha's advances. Oh, Christ. While most of the text remains the same as the Good End which has the theme of accepting graduation, having it change to have the underlying subtext that you went behind Shizune's back with her best friend makes every scene so uncomfortable. And it all ends with Shizune alone, heartbroken, without a friend in the world, staring vacantly on a stoop as you leave, leaving her completely and utterly crushed. What the Hell, Player?! And as one final note, the stuffed cat toy you won her in Act 1 is hanging out of her bag.
  • And the worst part? Shizune thinks that the reason Hisao and Misha have been acting so distant is her fault, when you were the one who went behind her back!
    • Perhaps the worst part about all this is that of the five girls and Misha, Shizune is the only one who actively desires to make friends ^note Hanako obviously has her issues with other people, as does Rin, but even the relatively popular Emi and Lilly don't let many people close for their own reasons, and sought to make people like her by doing things that she thought would make them happy. Unfortunately, in her alienating others through her desperate pursuit of her goal, she ends up coming off like a Tragic Hero.
  • And let's not forget that, while the whole thing is a big NO... it doesn't exactly go black and white, and Misha isn't shown as a slutty and evil homewrecker... but as a person who loves Shizune, has kept her feelings bottled to cope with Shizune's rejection, and only asked for "comfort" when she was pretty much desperate. It sucks for everyone equally.
    • Misha also implies that she was bullied for being gay, stating that originally she didn't want to go but the school sounded interesting, and that even if she was utterly hated by the other students, "at least they would leave her alone". It's awful to think that someone as cheerful as Misha would rather be hated by everyone than tormented because of her sexuality.
    • In the leaked beta script, Misha confirmed that she had been bullied. On top of this, she recalled an old conversation where Shizune told her that she didn't like Yamaku because it was where parents sent away children they were ashamed of, suggesting that not only did Misha think her parents let her go for this reason ("I'm one of those children nobody wants."), but that Shizune thought the same of Jigoro. While it's unclear just how much of this was preserved in the finalized backstories, it's heartwrenching to know that these were once very plausible concerns for the characters.
• Misha's depression and eventual suicide in the leaked beta of the game.
• Misha is gay, but she is so lonely and depressed that she ends up having sex with Hisao, which she obviously does not even enjoy. She explains her feelings towards Shizune to Hisao after having slept with him, a moment where the full extent of her suffering is revealed in one go. Misha is also by far the character who practices the most extensive and most genuine self-sacrifice: Lilly has been raised like this (catholic school and all that), but Misha has entirely constructed this from scratch after Shizune rejected her advances, presenting a perpetually cheerful demeanour. She is practically a Christ-like figure, and her often being left out of the main cast is a great injustice.

Other

• Saki exists only in the 2011 April's Fool Joke by the developers, yet she got quite some attention, also because of her characterization which basically makes her a living Tear Jerker. While Hisao has to deal with a condition that puts his life constantly on the line, he'll be fine as long as he keeps up with his medication and gets some exercise. Saki's disease leaves no such hope: she may have from a few years to a couple decades left, but death will certainly come for her, and not before the disease will have gradually reduced her to a shell, finally taking away even her ability to breathe. She doesn't allow this to take the best of her, but even the happiest story with her could not be detached from a sense of constant sadness for the Foregone Conclusion that is her future. Katawa Shoujo might deal with some depressing stuff, but a story with Saki would likely blow all of the others out of the water in terms of making the reader cry.
• The fact that Ritsu is a cameo character and her disability is, of all things, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.