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Tear Jerker / Space Runaway Ideon

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Space Runaway Ideon is among the darkest anime works ever made, and it's not hard to see why.


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  • Long before getting into the series' hallmark tragedies, the general plight of Solo Ship's crew is depressing to think about. Essentially turned to refugees after the Buff Clan destroyed their colonies in Planet Solo, they only survived because they discovered an ancient spaceship close enough to their colonies with ample room to shelter them. Despite their constant pleas for help from other Terran colonies, their cosmically bad luck always end up in these colonies succumbing to the Buff Clan's superior forces to the point that other colonies stopped caring about their suffering. Being doomed as seemingly permanent space runaways, they became stateless, homeless refugees due to circumstances beyond their control.
  • Episode 14 is where the tragedy and horror are about to start. Earlier, Cosmo was suffering from PTSD after he got cornered by the Buff Clan. Later, he's taken care of by Camyula Lanban, an officer stationed in Braziller base who reminds him of his mother. When the Buff Clan attacked the base, Camyula got crushed by falling debris. Cosmo tries to save her but she dies right in front of him. At that point, Cosmo gains his resolve to fight and board Ideo-Delta. After wiping out a third of the Buff Clan forces, Cosmo screams in anguish which also causes Ideon itself to give out a heartwrenching roar as if it can sense Cosmo's pain.
  • Episode 31 is very painful to watch, especially if you're a fan of Bes. The Earth's military orders him to surrender Ideon and the Solo Ship in exchange for a promotion and a reunion with his parents. Bes decides not to because he knows Ideon's power is very dangerous and that if it falls into the wrong hands, it could end the universe. Then, the generals bring in Bes' parents to persuade him to follow their orders. The reunion is very painful for Bes that he doesn't want to look at them and prevents his father from opening the door while trying to explain to them that he's trying to do the right thing. Later, he confesses to Cosmo that he has to cut ties with his parents in order to save them from the war that he and the crew brought. When the Jordans saw the Buff Clan attacking the Solo Ship, they realized what their son had been up to. But in order to save their reputation, they choose to disinherit him, blaming him for the mess they're in. By the end of the episode, Bes' father rips out the childhood pictures of his son as a sign that they had given up on him. What's sadder is that Bes is standing on top of the Solo Ship, looking down at his former home planet with a very solemn look, and the ending song is being played which makes the scene more meaningful and heartbreaking.
  • Even before you watch Be Invoked, the entirety of the story downfalls quickly, especially in later episodes, such as the deaths of Moera, Lin, and Gije later in the series (which affects a lot of the characters, especially Sheryl), and how the Solo Ship denizens are increasingly hopeless in their desperate attempts to escape the Buff Clan's universe-spanning chase.
  • Be Invoked. Especially if you have seen the entire series before. Even before everyone dies in exceedingly cruel ways, the movie makes it clear that there is no hope of bringing this war to a peaceful end.
    • Even worse, both sides admitted that the herculean misunderstanding which spans the whole series should have been avoided if both sides had been willing to talk to each other. But in the end, there was no other way to properly bring peace for both sides until the Ide wiped out all of them. Doba remained Defiant to the End, and his obsession to destroy the Ide, the "Logo Dau" (the human colonists of Solo), and especially his own daughter Karala damned everyone.
    • The movie's beginning immediately tells the viewers that this won't end well when Kitty is decapitated by a Buff Clan bombing and Cosmo can only scream in rage and grief.
    • One of the most painful moments is when Cosmo finds out about Kasha and Karala's deaths at the hands of Harulu. His reaction and subsequent emotional breakdown is the page image for a good reason.
      • What's worse is that Karala was pregnant with a child she conceived with Bes, whom she wanted to name Messiah. She hoped her son would be able to mend the wounds between humanity and the Buff Clan and those hopes died when her own sister murdered her. Though Messiah was able to unite both peoples, he was only able to do so in death.
      • Everybody's reaction to Karala's death, where Bes silently cries while looking at her corpse and Rapoh begging Kasha if this is what the Ide really expected. It doesn't help that a while ago, everybody was celebrating and congratulating Bes and Karala for the pregnancy, and then, that all ended because Harulu is jealous.
    • Cosmo unleashes his fury shortly afterward in Ideon's Last Stand, single-handedly slaughtering the majority of the surviving Buff Clan forces. Sadly, it's not enough, as they boarded the Solo Ship and a massacre shortly follows.
    • Ashura's brutal death by rocket launcher is ingrained in the minds of a lot of people, showing even children are also targets of Doba and Harulu's forces.
    • By the time the fighting inside the Solo Ship stops, Bes is the only survivor, with everyone else dead or dying, with Bes himself being too injured to leave the chair he's in.
    • There's a Hope Spot near the end, where despite the horrors of the final battle, it seems the last survivors of humanity will make it through and defeat the Buff Clan for good as Ideon has destroyed the bridge of the Bairal Jin and he's about to split the Gando Rowa in two. Unfortunately, a single surviving Buff Clan pilot manages to ram Ideon into Gando Rowa's path before it can finish off the massive weapon and Cosmo only manages to call the last Guramu Zan's pilot a bastard before Gando Rowa fires and turns a Pyrrhic Victory for the last humans into a Mutual Kill, as both sides utterly destroy each other. Bes and Deck can only scream in horror as they die.

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