Jujutsu Kaisen is a notoriously grim shonen anime that doesn’t spare anyone from suffering, including its main character. Yuji Itadori loses his grandfather, his only living family member, at the very start of the series, only to shortly find himself pulled into the ruthless world of sorcery, where he constantly sees friends and comrades die, and his body is used by an ancient curse, Sukuna, to commit atrocities.
Yuji certainly doesn’t have it easy, yet there are anime characters who have arguably suffered even more tragic fates, leading lives of constant hardship. While trauma is not a competition, and none of these characters’ miseries trivialize Yuji’s grueling journey, they put into perspective just how dark an anime hero’s life can get.
Natsuki Subaru Has to Suffer Through Death Countless Times
While many isekai protagonists get to enjoy rather happy and exciting lives as overpowered heroes, things go terribly wrong for Re:Zero’s Subaru upon being transported to another world. Like most isekai heroes, he gets a supernatural power – the Return by Death Authority. However, it turns out to be more of a curse than a blessing.
Subaru can return to a prior “save point” after death, which allows him to continuously alter the events of the “past.” It also means that Subaru has suffered through countless painful, excruciating deaths, from being eaten alive to enduring hours of torture. On top of the physical and emotional toll of repeated deaths, Subaru also despairs over being the only person to remember “abandoned timelines,” which adds to his continuous torment.
Ichise Had to Survive in a Collapsing World Where Misery Is the Default State
Texhnolyze is one of anime’s most depressing, hopeless series, and it fittingly does not feature any characters who can be said to live a happy, fulfilling life. Ichise, the series’ protagonist, starts off as a prizefighter in the dying underground city of Lux, yet ends up losing an arm and a leg in a brutal fashion and undergoing a tormenting texhnolyzation process.
Throughout the series, viewers witness Lux eat itself alive through Ichise’s eyes, and the protagonist himself is constantly subjected to physical abuse and emotional anguish, destined to watch the few people he cares about suffer and die. Despite being the embodiment of humanity’s raw survival instinct, Ichise ends up dying slowly and painfully after everyone else in Lux has already perished.
Fushi Proves That the Price of Immortality Is Too High for Most People
While being immortal might seem fantastic in theory, many characters in anime have demonstrated that eternal life brings misery in practice. To Your Eternity’s Fushi is an immortal shapeshifting creature who begins as simply an orb without any self-awareness, yet the more he develops his personhood, the more he feels the weight of having to live forever.
Over his endlessly long life, Fushi develops close bonds with many people, yet has to watch each and every one of them die – in most cases, not even from old age, but due to much more tragic circumstances. Fushi himself has also been“killed” brutally numerous times, personal trauma merging with the heaviness of countless losses on his journey through eternity.
The Anime Only Scratches the Surface of Phos’ Suffering
The Land of the Lustrous anime adaptation, while fantastic, only covers a portion of the original manga, and mostly portrays Phosphophyllite, the series’ protagonist, as a carefree, gullible gem. As the series progresses, signs that Phos’s story is doomed to be tragic begin to emerge, yet the true scope of their suffering only becomes clear in the manga.
As the most brittle gem, Phos continuously loses pieces of themselves, and their identity shatters and gets reshaped together with their body. Gradually, they transform into a much darker and more desperate individual, and, through their agonizing journey, grow even more isolated from other gems. In the end, Phos is left to shoulder a dreadful sacrifice for the sake of the other gems’ salvation, stranded on Earth for 10,000 years in complete isolation.
Shinji Ikari’s Pain Is Shockingly Relatable for a Mecha Anime Protagonist
Few mecha anime protagonists escape tremendous suffering, yet Shinji Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion is, perhaps, the genre’s most notorious hero when it comes to the despair and misery he endures. Shinji never wanted to be a hero – after his mother’s death, his father abandons the boy and only summons his son when he needs him as a pilot in a grueling war against Angels.
An emotionally isolated, traumatized child forced to fight in horrific, mentally and physically damaging conditions, Shinji crumbles in ways that, while unimaginably tragic, feel heartbreakingly human and relatable. And the same can be said about every other character in Evangelion, all of whom are incredibly complex, uniquely troubled individuals pushed to the edge by the impending apocalypse.
Vash the Stampede’s Happy-Go-Lucky Demeanor Shouldn’t Fool Fans
At first glance, Trigun’s Vash the Stampede appears to be immune to sorrow; despite living on the harsh, violent desert planet of No Man’s Land and having a massive bounty on his head, he is optimistic to a fault and strives to solve all problems through love and peace. Beneath Vash’s cheerful facade, however, hides a deeply tragic hero who, despite the scars covering his body and soul, remains merciful and empathetic.
As a Plant, Vash has lived a long life of over 150 years and has endured countless losses, his brother’s heartbreaking betrayal, and the scorn of the humanity he, nonetheless, continues to love. Vash is constantly weighed down by guilt, grief, and psychological torment, yet that only makes his determination and unyielding hopefulness more admirable.
Denji Comes From Misery and Dives Into Even Greater Despair
Ever since early childhood, Chainsaw Man’s Denji was dealt a horrible hand by fate. An orphan burdened by his father’s massive debt, he begins the series as a sickly, impoverished Devil Hunter who can’t even afford a decent meal, only to die brutally at the hands of the Zombie Devil in the very first episode.
Although Denji is reborn as the titular Chainsaw Man, his life hardly gets much easier as the Public Safety’s dog. The majority of the worst things that happen to Denji still await fans in future seasons, but even the small treasures he painstakingly gained while fighting for Public Safety get mercilessly taken away from him, including his found family, Aki and Power.
Akira Fudo’s Torment Escalates Through Devilman Crybaby
Devilman, be it the original series or its 2018 reimagining, Devilman Crybaby, is a notoriously brutal series that ends in humanity’s total destruction. Its protagonist, Akira Fudo, arguably suffers the most in the entire show and couldn’t even come out victorious at the end.
The role of Devilman is already a heavy burden; however, even his powers prove to be powerless when humanity succumbs to paranoia and, in a violent frenzy, destroys itself. Akira has to watch his family die, witness the entire world devolve into chaos, and face the knowledge that his best friend, Ryo, has betrayed him and orchestrated the apocalypse that took everything from Akira. Ultimately, Akira fails to save the world and dies at the hands of his former friend.
Rintaro Okabe Had to Watch His Loved Ones Die Over & Over
Steins;Gate’s Rintaro Okabe is a self-proclaimed mad scientist who accidentally discovers a way to send text messages into the past, which, ultimately, kickstarts his quest to trick time and prevent his loved ones (and the entire world) from a horrible fate. His mission comes with grave consequences for his mental state, as he repeatedly suffers the worst possible outcomes in a fatiguing search for the Steins Gate world line.
As the only person who remembers every single timeline, Okabe had to carry the burden of seeing his closest friends die over and over again alone, all while weighed down by the expectation of saving the world. The series’ sequel, Steins;Gate 0, further demonstrates how badly this has traumatized Okabe, leaving him as a shell of his former self.
Guts Has One of the Most Depressing Stories in Anime History
Anime fans agree that the most tortured and tormented character in the entire medium is Berserk’s Guts – a tragic hero whose entire life consists of unimaginable suffering. Born from a corpse and subjected to abuse, exploitation, and grueling violence for his entire childhood, Guts had no choice but to become hardened and ruthless in turn.
He experiences a brief moment of what, considering his circumstances, can even be called happiness with Band of the Hawk, yet that friendship culminates in the greatest tragedy in Guts’ already horrible life, the Eclipse. In the catastrophe’s aftermath, Guts was marked by the Brand of Sacrifice and forced into an even crueler life while searching for revenge, yet he never truly succumbed to hopelessness and despair.