Chrono Crusade is a story where loss is a central concern and death is ever-imminent. Naturally there's going to be a lot of sad moments, in both the original manga and the anime. Beware unmarked spoilers.
- Rosette's death is a Foregone Conclusion, and the anime still manages to make it a tearjerker. It's one of the most notorious sad endings in all of anime."I'm just... so scared, Chrono. I don't want to die!"
- The original manga pulls it off too, albeit in a totally different way. It starts with these words: "Rosette's life… came to an end in March of this year* ." Then we learn that, instead of dying quickly like in the anime, Rosette spent seven years waiting for Chrono to come back, as her body deteriorated. He returns just in time for her to die in his arms (again).
- The end of the anime (unlike the manga) gives in to cynicism in its Distant Finale and strongly suggests The Bad Guy Wins. A completely broken Remington in 1981 sees Aion with a Turkish man, and utterly fails to prevent that man from shooting the Pope.
- Azmaria's entire backstory up to the point she meets Rosette is just one long Trauma Conga Line – any time she found any happiness, like with the travelling orchestra, fate intervened to make her miserable again.
- Even thinking about what happened to Seventh Bell – everyone and everything, frozen in time.
- The near-volume-long flashback that reveals Chrono's long-avoided backstory.
- Particularly the completely silent section – no dialogue, no sound effects, no narration – showing Mary Magdalene's death at Chrono's hands. It's a shame the anime rushed through it.
- The anime has a similar sad scene where Mary Magdalene gives her life to save a mortally wounded Chrono.
- Particularly the completely silent section – no dialogue, no sound effects, no narration – showing Mary Magdalene's death at Chrono's hands. It's a shame the anime rushed through it.
- Some more sad moments from the manga:
- When Chrono realized what he did during his rampage in San Francisco.
- When Satella freezes herself together with Fiore.
- Rosette's near-death experience and the effect it has on Joshua and Chrono.
- The epilogue where a revived Satella watches the now-deceased Azmaria's tape. Azmaria's grandson reveals that she died just a year earlier.
- Satella's fate at the end of the manga. She's now stuck in 1999, with all of her friends dead. And Fiore never gets her memories back, ever. Satella resigns to this and parts ways with her, admitting that she'll never truly get her sister back.
- And the anime takes the sadness further as it grows darker.
- Rosette finally finds Joshua, only to find he doesn't recognize her.
- Satella's faithful butler Steiner dies needlessly, especially sad considering he survives in the manga.
- Rosette becoming Aion's pawn for a couple of episodes. note
- Satella is forced to fight (and kill) her long-lost sister Florette.
- The denouement in the final episode, where we learn that Joshua will be mentally eleven years old for the rest of his life, with no memory of his sister or any realization that the events of the story (which he does remember) actually happened.
