Tear Jerker / Science Ninja Team Gatchaman

• Joe's dying speech to the team in the first series finale.
  • At the end, the team can be seen flying off in the God Phoenix, still protecting the Earth from threats. However, a shot lingers on Joe’s empty chair and it’s clear the team is not okay and won’t be for a long time.
• Jun's aparent death on the Jigokiller Flowers episode.
  • The teams despair at having to set the flowers on fire, knowing Jun is in one of them is palpable. Ken screams out her name in despair and the flowers resisted the fire.
  • Jinpei's sadness is heartbreaking, remembering how Jun adopted him because she was an orphan too. Luci Christian goes all out in this scene as Jinpei.
  • Ken then learns the Jigokillers not only survived the fire, but thrived even more. He quits the team then and there. It takes Red Impulse literally beating sense into him, that he shouldnt give up and find her, even if its just her bones. Red Impulse then mentions how many of his men died and how he kept going... showing tears, probably for what his son is going through.
• The deaths of the final survivors of Red Impulse's team. They try to show the Gatchaman team the way to Galactor's headquarters and are ambushed in a trap. One dies immediately but Onishi, the last survivor, talks to Jun in morse by touching her hand. "Finally...I...Can...Go...and...See the Captain... You'll have... To take care...Of the Rest...Farewell...Science Ninja Team". Jun's sadness over this event is later made clear when she begs Ken not to foolishly risk his life, begging him to die with them and not leave them alone in Earth's final moments.
• Katse’s reaction to Sosai X’s revelations that the Black Hole Operation isn’t a means to coerce the world to surrender but an unstoppable method to destroy the planet as a means of spite drips with Alas, Poor Villain. After Katse has sacrificed everything for Sosai X only to just be abandoned to die with everyone else, Katse goes mad with despair, openly lamenting why they had to be turned into a mutant instead of living life as normal humans. Their last words are a shrieking call for everyone to just die before leaping into the lava pit Sosai’s escape left behind into an undignified and painful end. Even though Katse was a Card-Carrying Villain who killed whoever to meet their goals of totalitarian conquest, their fate combined with their origin makes them more pitiable than anything.
• Kentarou Washio aka Red Impulse's death. Made even worse some episodes later when Ken is tricked into believing he may be alive, but it was just a trap from the enemy. Seeing Ken watch the sunset in tears and being unable to finish his usual afterthought speech is just cruel.
  • To add to that, Ken is tricked into believing his father is alive once more in an episode of Gatchaman II, but it again turns out to be a trap by the enemy. At the end, a melancholy image song plays as Ken muses over the events.
• The end of episode 3. Ken befriends a boy in a similar situation to his, but unlike Ken this boy's father is dead and Berg Katse has taken the man's identity. Ken fights him, drives him off and lets the boy hate him for making his "papa" go away again because he knows the boy's pain all too well. He just doesn't have the heart to crush his dreams even when they've already been crushed, and the sad music accompanying a more melancholy "hang in there, Gatchaman" doesn't help.
• Ryu quitting the Science Ninja Team after his mistake of oversleeping gets the team in trouble. Once again we hear the sad music as he sits alone on the train, mentally apologizing to the team. "I'm sorry, guys, but I just can't let this go".
• The ending of the Star-Crossed Lovers episode 43. A happily engaged couple is captured by Galactor and made into cyborgs, and by the time the Science Ninja Team arrives to save them it's too late; they've been fully corrupted and when Ken tries to talk to them they're already ready to go through with ending their lives. They share one last tearful kiss and embrace before their cyborg bodies explode, and the team is left to deal with the aftermath while sad music plays in the background. The fact that the couple resembles Ken and Jun doesn't make things any easier.
  • The ADV dub even adds a robotic echo to the two lovers' voices after their cyborg modifications to drive home the fact that they've been permanently altered with no hope of saving them.