The jerking of tears

[MiskWisk]

So...

Recently, Knowyourmeme went and added a Tear jerkers section to their website and I've been looking over the additions drowning in my feels and I had a thought.

What is the most effective tear jerker you know of?

It can be anything so long as it personally causes you to start crying (or at the very least tear up) and isn't real.

To kick things off, mine will be the funeral of the Going Merry from One Piece.

Spoiler: The video if you want to watch

HOW THE HELL AM I CRYING ABOUT THIS?! IT'S A BOAT!

I have no idea why, but this is one of the few tear jerkers that no matter how many times I go back to it, I still end up wiping away tears.

Anyway, let the feels commence!

Spoiler: P.S.

HOW COULD YOU MAKE THAT JOKE?!

 

[Relish in Chaos]

Grave of the Fireflies. 'Nuff said. I haven't cried like that since I fell over and smacked my head when I was seven.

And I'm going to cheat a little bit, since I didn't technically cry but I still got "dem feels"...and it's a spoiler...Johnny Joestar's

Spoiler

death in JoJolion. After everything he went through too.

 

[Frezzato]

This should do the job. A short film from Australia. You keep surprising me, land of the nightmarish spiders.

Spoiler: CARGO - Tropfest Australia 2013 Finalist

CARGO

.

 

[Elfgore]

Angelbeats! got me crying pretty good. It wasn't when a certain person was left alone, but when they showed everyone and one-by-one they disappeared. I cried pretty hard. Such a great anime series that has one of the most satisfying endings in anime history.

 

[Zontar]

I've seen many in my time, but a recent one is from The Lego Movie.

Spoiler

When Emmet jumps off the tower to save everyone, plunging to his doom. I honestly couldn't take the thought of him actually going, and I'll be dammed if I won't admit the set up made me thing it was going to kill him. I honestly didn't think I'd have to risk feeling that way going into the movie.

Thankfully for me I was alone in the screening (it was on the Friday it was released at a 2PM screening), so I didn't have to explain myself to anyone.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I've seen many in my time, but a recent one is from The Lego Movie.

Spoiler

When Emmet jumps off the tower to save everyone, plunging to his doom. I honestly couldn't take the thought of him actually going, and I'll be dammed if I won't admit the set up made me thing it was going to kill him. I honestly didn't think I'd have to risk feeling that way going into the movie.

Thankfully for me I was alone in the screening (it was on the Friday it was released at a 2PM screening), so I didn't have to explain myself to anyone.

While I understand getting emotional because that's what the movie wants from you...

Spoiler

... you didn't really think a 2014 PG movie would kill its own protagonist did'ya?

 

[Zontar]

I've seen many in my time, but a recent one is from The Lego Movie.

Spoiler

When Emmet jumps off the tower to save everyone, plunging to his doom. I honestly couldn't take the thought of him actually going, and I'll be dammed if I won't admit the set up made me thing it was going to kill him. I honestly didn't think I'd have to risk feeling that way going into the movie.

Thankfully for me I was alone in the screening (it was on the Friday it was released at a 2PM screening), so I didn't have to explain myself to anyone.

While I understand getting emotional because that's what the movie wants from you...

Spoiler

... you didn't really think a 2014 PG movie would kill its own protagonist did'ya?

That's the thing, when it happened I honestly did think they would. I know, now, thinking about it that it would make no sense, but I wasn't thinking about that at the time. The movie sure put a high water mark for movies this year.

 

[Coakle]

Edit:

Cats in the Cradle - Song

Remember the Titans - Movie

Spoiler

Scene with Gary and Julius in the hospital

The Lego Movie.

Spoiler

When the Dad realized that he was the villain.

Unfortunately, the theater I was in was full of couples on dates.

Original:

Gintama:
The most blatant offender was that arc with the old man and his dog.

Also Episode 13.

Spoiler: Gintama is a Comedy, Remember

A person's life is like
carrying a heavy burden while walking a long road.

When I first heard it, I thought it sounded so lame.
But I guess you can't dismiss what old people say.

It wasn't really a burden. It was something important that you held with both hands.
But you didn't realize it was there when you held it.

I only realized its true weight after it slipped from my hands.
I don't know how often I thought, "I'll never carry this again."


Get it? All his friends died fighting a hopeless war and he's terrified of letting it happen again. Ah man, Gintama. You a real knee-slapper.

Shinseki Yori

Spoiler: Gah

The Bulldog turning to stone and Squealer's trial

 

[The Wykydtron]

Uh pretty anything with decent characters and story will do the trick, I cry over everything remotely tearjerky especially if it's a long running anime or long game so I have time to get attached to the characters. Honestly it has gotten to the point that a small part of me feels like something has failed in its story if it doesn't make me tear up.

Obviously Episode 8 of Gurren Lagann is up there, I can't go through that without crying no matter how hard I try, Hanako's Route in Katawa Shoujo but hey who didn't have a tear in their eye when playing KS? Finally the last 10 minutes of Persona 4 made me cry three times.

Curse my overly sensitive sense of empathy...

 

[username sucks]

There is a poem that has got me multiple times. I can't say I really cried, but very few things can make me cry anymore. It fills me with sadness all the same.

Spoiler: Big image warning

There are many others that have the same effect on me, but poetry always seems to do it best. It doesn't need to have illustrations as this one does, it is just how I remembered it.

I can't for the life of me think of any other specific examples right now. I always draw a blank when I'm asked for examples on just about anything. There are plenty, though. If I remember more I'll edit them in.

 

[Kieve]

The first ten minutes of "Up."
If that does not cause tears to be shed, then your tear ducts are broken and you need a doctor.

 

[[REDACTED]]

Video Games:

Everything in the Walking Dead game from episode 3 onward, culminating in the most emotionally harrowing ending I have ever seen in anything.

Second Place: A certain scene involving Mordin Solus in Mass Effect 3. You know the one. Just... goddamn.

Third Place: A certain document you read near the end *Hyun-ae's path in Analogue: A Hate Story. You know it's coming, but that doesn't soften the blow. At all. I didn't cry, but I did have a minor emotional breakdown, knowing that shit like this still goes on in the world. Honorary mention goes to the reactor scene. I was not at all prepared for that.

Television:

Everything from the last half of Breaking Bad season five. Ozymandias in particular absolutely destroyed me.

Other:

To the person who mentioned Cargo: thank you and fuck you for reminding me of that. That video is a tactical nuclear strike on my emotions.

 

[Weaver]

My mind is clearly broken because I keep reading this as "The Jerking Off Tears". I'm not sure why, but it just keeps happening.

 

[tippy2k2]

]Second Place: A certain scene involving Mordin Solus in Mass Effect 3. You know the one. Just... goddamn.

Spoiler

Mordin: My project. My work. My cure. My responsibility.
Tippy2k2: AHHHH! Right in the feelings!!!

Anyway, my answer is late in the Trigun series. I shall spoil it for obvious reasons...

Spoiler

Wolfwood's Death

He's tried so hard to do right for his entire life, sacrificing many lives for what he believed to be the greater good. Ash comes along and shows him that maybe sometimes shooting the problem in the face isn't always what's needed. He tries so hard to do right and in the end, he fights so hard to try to survive so he can continue helping people (maybe with less face shooting) but he just...can't....fight.......anymore.


God! Right in the feelings again!

 

[Master_of_Oldskool]

I think the only two times I've literally shed tears over a work of fiction were:

1) In fourth grade, when we were shown an anti-bullying PSA called "Broken Toy" in which the bullying victim straight-up throws himself in front of a car rather than continue dealing with it. In hindsight, it was kind of cheesy and melodramatic, but at the time I was getting bullied really, really harshly myself (we're talking actual physical assaults here; kindly never tell someone to "just ignore" bullying) and I just broke down sobbing in the middle of class. Thank god I wasn't the only one, or I think I would have got it worse for that.

2) Toward the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, when

Spoiler

Voldemort offers to let everyone go if Harry gives himself up, and Harry slips away from the gang and marches off to what he (and I, in the moment) thought was genuinely going to be his death... and,as he goes, he encounters the bodies of a metric crapton of supporting characters who died during the preceding battle. Including the weird-pseudo-ghost-thingies of his parents and Sirius WHAT THE FUCK JOANNE KATHLEEN ROWLING

But there are like a thousand other times when I may not have actually been crying, but I was definitely emotionally invested enough to be legitimately sad.

My mind is clearly broken because I keep reading this as "The Jerking Off Tears". I'm not sure why, but it just keeps happening.

Nope, that's my average Friday night. Zing!

...

God I'm lonely.

[sub][sub]That's actually what I thought it said at first.[/sub][/sub]

 

[Shadow flame master]

When Bro-skander died an epic death at the hands of that bastard Gilgamesh in Fate/Zero.

Then there was episode 10 of Magi Madoka.

 

[TristanBelmont]

In The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya there is a scene where the protagonist has to choose whether or not to return to his world or stay in the one he's in. Leaving means going back to familiarity and all the people he loves. Staying means saying goodbye to all that but he gets a more peaceful (if boring) life.

HOWEVER

One of the characters is named Yuki Nagato. In his original world she's essentially a robot who follows his orders so long as they fall within certain parameters and she can still continue her job of observing and recording the activity of another character. In this second world, she's a human being. Shy, nervous around anyone or anything that isn't one of her precious books (Yuki is bibliophile incarnate).

She falls in love with our protagonist in this second world and when he announces his choice to go back she starts tearing up. This is a character who has never showed emotion in this series beyond this movie yet she became my favourite character in all of anime evuh. When I saw those tears I began crying myself. I had never before been moved to tears by a film and this one did it without even trying.

 

[SmallHatLogan]

Walter and Peter watching Walter's goodbye video in the final episode of Fringe. Gets me every time.

Spoiler

 

[[REDACTED]]

My mind is clearly broken because I keep reading this as "The Jerking Off Tears". I'm not sure why, but it just keeps happening.

Trust me, you're not the only one. It's a strange, strange mental image.

 

[Codeman90]

for movies, there's nothing quite like the intro to Up in terms of the feels. Everyone who has seen that movie knows exactly what I am talking about.

As for video games, well I'd go with the attempted suicide of Celes after she wakes up in what is essentially the apocalypse. After Cid passes away she throws herself off a cliff. Geez Squaresoft =(