Tear Jerker / ERASED

• Satoru finding the bloody corpse of his mother in the first episode certainly made more than a few viewers feel really bad for the dude, especially when he tugs at her corpse helplessly before finding the knife in her gut.
• The abuse Kayo endures from her mother. While many viewers were turned off by how one-dimensional and how overly-violent Kayo's mother is...there are indeed cases of mothers being this cruel to their children, and the unflinching way the anime portrays this can make a cross between both a tearjerker and Nightmare Fuel.
  • Kayo's thinly-veiled cry for help in the form of an essay doesn't help matters, either:
    When I get bigger, big enough to go somewhere by myself, I want to go to a land that’s far away. I want to go to a faraway island. I want to go to an island that has no people. I want to go to an island that has no pain or sadness. On that island, I can climb a tree when I want to climb, swim in the sea when I want to swim, and sleep when I want to sleep. When I think about the town without me, I feel a sense of relief. I want to go far, far away.
  • The overall contrast between Kayo's abusive mother and Satoru's loving one.
• When we're introduced to Satoru in the first episode, we see him as a stoic, unhappy, and generally acting like he's emotionally drained. The droning and somber tone of his voice certainly paints him in a cold and bitter light, and as the episode reaches its end, we finally see why he is the way he is: the kidnapping and murder of Kayo, in particular, shook him up when he was a child. He blamed himself for not inviting her to walk home with him, and ultimately possibly sparing her from her Cruel and Unusual Death. The fact that his older friend, Yuuki, was framed and convicted for the crime, doesn't help matters much. When we see flashbacks of him as a kid, he's shown to be very emotive, very open, and very bright...but the tragedy of what happened clearly messed him up. The boy just wanted to be a hero, and he failed to act when he was needed most.
  • Worse yet, one of his friends, Hiromi, was also kidnapped and murdered. But Satoru repressed the memory of Hiromi even being his friend, because the pain was just too much for him.
• Kayo tearing up after getting a birthday gift. Considering how isolated she is, it's likely that she rarely, if ever, got any gifts before.
• In episode 7, Kenya gets one when he confronts Satoru about his sudden personality change. But rather than an accusation, it's much more like a confession from Kenya himself. He noticed Kayo's cuts and bruises long before Satoru did. And seeing Satoru immediately take action to help her after seeing it for the first time makes him feel truly ashamed of his cowardice, for not acting to help someone who was in pain. So much so that he's brought to tears by it.
• When Kayo eats breakfast at Satoru's house, she is handed a plate with a really well-made dish, prepared by Satoru's mother. Kayo remembers then how horrible her home life was, and how she basically wasn't fed anything, sometimes being handed only coins to buy food for herself. The sight of Satoru's mom handing her such a delicious-looking dish moves Kayo to tears, and Satoru somberly watches on, allowing her to break down. Absolutely no words are needed to establish the magnitude of this scene. A number of viewers said it hit home for those who had neglectful parents or impoverished upbringings.
• Kayo's mother is confronted over her abuse towards Kayo, and her backstory is revealed: she was abused by her ex-husband, Kayo's father, and was driven to abuse Kayo herself because she had her father's eyes. While this is a point of contention amongst the fandom, and may not even really be considered a tearjerker, it can indeed be pretty sad to see just how Kayo's mom had attempted to be such a good mother before ultimately succumbing to her anger and hatred.
  • While Kayo's mom herself isn't a very sympathetic character, it's quite a tear jerker to see the flashback of her being brutally beaten and then covered in bandages.
  • Also, when Kayo's mom breaks down in tears and remorse, Kayo herself is unmoved. She's simply been hurt so bad and for so long that at this point she just can't bring herself to care that her mother is falling to pieces in front of her.
• When Akemi's mother comes and sees what her daughter has turned into. Imagine raising a child, become estranged from them, and when you finally see them and your grandchild again...
• At the beginning of the 11th episode, when we see for a brief moment Sachiko living alone before it's revealed that Satoru is in a coma. The fact that she took care of him for 15 years without giving up... And that episode's opening, where Satoru is literally erased out of the whole intro, as an adult and a child.