Tear Jerker / Tabaluga

Warning: Spoilers Off applies to this page. Proceed at your own risk.

• Tyrion's death, no matter the type of the work.
  • In Tabaluga und das leuchtende Schweigen, he dies during the fight with the winds in the mountains. The whole fight is described in one of the songs near the end of the album. And he died searching for his young son, who (again) left home without any notice.
    • Taken up to eleven with narrator mentioning dragon blood flowing down the mountain. This is the only time in the whole franchise the blood comes in the descriptions, and it was the most graphic thing till 2018 movie.
  • In the animated series, he is frozen by Arktos seconds after hiding his son's egg under a tree.
    • Moments before that scene, Arktos overhears Tyrion speaking about the egg, and declares that he must destroy it, followed by an attempt to freeze the grey dragon. Luckily, Tyrion dodges.
    • Tyrion's appearance in the retrospection in The Sands of Doom as a whole, especially after he is crushed under the iceberg Arktos dropped on Greenland to cause eternal winter while trying to melt said iceberg with his fire.
    • The worst thing? Tabaluga has to watch the whole scene, knowing that he can't do anything to stop Arktos.
  • His death in 2018 movie hurts too: after being hit by Arktos' freezing beam, he falls from the sky.
    • Note that even if his death wasn't as "big" as in previous works, he witnessed his wife falling from the sky with their son's egg in the same manner he followed seconds later.
• Tabaluga und Lilli: The context of the Villain Song "Der Schlüssel zur Macht/The Key to Power" is gut-wrenching. Tabaluga has just won Lilli from Arktos in a game of dice - but discovers to his horror she can only move via being wound up by a magical key. A key that Arktos still has, since he only put Lilli up for the bet, which means she is no more than a statue. The entire song is the devious snowman rubbing his deception in Tabaluga's face as the little dragon breaks down in despair, having come so close to saving the girl he loves only for his victory to be cruelly ripped away from him.
• Tabaluga un das leuchtende Scheigen/Tabaluga and the Magic Jadestone has the Halfchild, who sits at the end of a rainbow and weeps bitterly. When Tabaluga asks her what the matter is, she explains that her parents are the sun and the moon, and this leaves her "stuck somewhere in the middle". The end result is that she’s so wracked with loneliness and self-loathing, she doesn't let the idea that she has a rainbow for a friend give her any comfort. As the rainbow explains, “whoever doesn’t love themselves can’t love anyone else”.
  • The same album gives us Robotron, an entity from a dark and sunless world populated by robots. Despite calling himself "the most perfect being in the universe", he and his kind can't feel emotions at all, the idea of which shocks Tabaluga. Worse, when Tabaluga asks Robotron to define love, the robot suffers something akin to an emotional breakdown. His song, "Human of Steel", heavily implies that he willingly stripped himself of emotion to become "perfect", but now regrets doing so, being "free but still trapped" in a gilded cage of his own making. Yeesh.
• Tyria's death in 2018 movie. Before dying, she entrusts the egg with her son to hers and Tyrion's friend Kolk, and manages to write a message to Tabaluga on the wall to beware Iceworld and find his fire.
  Tyria: (to Kolk) You must take our son, he's the last one of his kind. His name is... Tabaluga...
• Nessajja's near death because of lack of water in her lake and the situation in season 3 episode Troubled Waters. After Shouhu and Tabaluga determine that Water Sign is responsible for that (it created a whirlpool that sucked out the water), they are faced with choosing between saving Nessajja by blocking the whirlpool with big stone and preventing Tabaluga from obtaining the Sign (and thus, Dragon Pendant), or letting Tabaluga obtain the Sign but sacrificing Nessajja. The third option move results in Nessajja being declared dead and Tabaluga blaming himself for her death. Luckily, she opens her eye and is subsequently saved by Tabaluga melting icecaps, bringing litres of water.
• Happy's near death in season 1 episode Dragons Don't Cry. It's only tenth episode of the series, but already shows how close Tabaluga and Happy are to each other.
• What Tabaluga goes through in season 3 episode Menace in the Mountains. Seeing him being unable to fly at first, then being tired more and more, then unable to walk at all, then being unable to even talk, and finally losing consciousness, hurts, especially if you followed his adventures throughout previous 75 episodes. And there is no conventional cure to help him. Had the River of Life not existed, he'd die in probably the most painful way in the franchise.
  • Greenlanders' reactions, especially Happy (who was in reversed situation in season 1), to the situation don't neeed any comment.
  Happy: (crying) Don't leave us alone!
• The second half of next episode, Dragon World, is full of this:
  • These few hours of Tabaluga living with normal family of dragons. Something he was literally denied in Greenland because of what happened before he was even born.
  • Tabaluga gives the Pendant to Arktos so that the snowman won't turn Dragon World into his amusement park. After going to literal hell, fighting with the wind, risking the death of his mentor and nearly losing his life in order to get complete the Quest and receive Pendant, he is forced to give away his greatest reward in his life to the murderer of his father, who had stalked him throughout all of his journey.
  • What follows immediately after is Tabaluga's departure from Sparky's family - the only dragon family he has ever met and lived with.
  Tabaluga: I will always remember you.
  • These things hit harder if you consider the theory that Sparky's mother is also Tabaluga's mother to be true.
• The fact that Tabaluga will outlive all of his friends is simply this, especially in cases of Happy and Digby.
• The story of Leo from the Christmas special. He lost his parents when he was little and lived in orphanage since then. Criticized for his clumsiness, his dream is a spending Christmas with foster family who would love him, but in his opinion^note By this point the audience knows he actually is wrong , but because he was criticized for years , the boy developed negative beliefs about himself that he's useless and nuisanced nobody wanted him. This was the final straw to run away (and, as a result, fall by accident into the portal to Greenland).