Tear Jerker / Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds

• One could argue that almost everything in the Dark Signers Arc of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds was somehow a Tear Jerker.
  • The end of Episode 39. Basically, Carly has come Back from the Dead as a Dark Signer and avenges her own death by killing Sayer and, by being undead, cannot return to her normal life. Once she realizes this, she is, needless to say, overwhelmed.
  • The end of Episode 46 is also pretty sad. Rudgar switches places with Rally, setting up a situation in which only one of them can survive. Rally, calling Yusei the hope of Satellite, makes the ultimate sacrifice; despite Yusei's desperate pleas for Rally to attack him, Rally Synchro Summons his One-Shot Cannon, destroys the Earthbound God Uru, and takes out his own life points. As Yusei cradles him in his arms, Rally asks him to defend Satellite before turning to dust. Yusei's Skyward Scream completes the moment by truly pulling at the viewer's heartstrings.
  • Episode 53. Just as Crow is going to destroy the Earthbound God - Chacu Challhua, he sees the faces of Bomber's siblings and the children of his village. When Crow tries to get Bomber to look, Bomber presumes it is just a distraction until Yusei forces him to look. Bomber realizes that it was the Dark Signers who destroyed his village. Just as he's going to surrender, a voice forces him to continue, taking control of his body and using the pause to force Crow's turn to end and begin his own. In the end, Crow defeats the Earthbound God, but its death throes cause rubble to fall. Just as he is going to be crushed by rubble, Crow is saved by Bomber, who rams Crow out of the way and is buried in his place. Bomber fades to dust buried under rubble after making Yusei promise to get revenge on the Dark Signers in his stead. Heavy.
  • The end of episode 55. Kiryu loses to Yusei. During the duel it appeared that Kiryu's "Earthbound Immortal" was betraying him. When it attacked, it conveniently happened to damage the field putting Kiryu in a dangerous situation. Yusei does manage to save him from dying in a motorcycle accident with Savior Star Dragon, but Kiryu, just like Rally, turns to dust in Yusei's arms. Yusei is driven to tears and screams his name in anguish. To add another punch, Kiryu's last words really pull the heartstrings.
    Kiryu: "Yusei, when I became a Dark Signer, I asked for one more wish. I wanted to play Team Satisfaction's last duel, the one that never came true back then. I wasn't able to... stay mad at you... talk about lame, this isn't enough to satisfy me.
    • Not sad enough? This is technically Yusei's third time failing to save Kiryu. The first got Kiryu arrested and imprisoned. The second had no effect on the now insane Kiryu. This time, he saved Kiryu from the Dark Signer's influence...only for him to die soon afterwards.
    • The Crash Town arc, along with Kiryu's return is downright morose in and of itself not even helped with Kiryu contemplating suicide to seek vindication for his sins as a Dark Signer.
  • The tragic conclusion of Episode 59 - everyone knew this was going to happen eventually, but it didn't change how sad it was when it finally came, especially since it recalls the similar Tear Jerker with Mai and Jonouchi during Waking the Dragons, except with the roles reversed. To think, Jack and Carly were almost about to let love end their destined duel, but Asila Piscu was having none of it!
    • Agreed. One word: Glasses. *sob*
    Carly: "I love you... Jack"
  • Aki's duel with Misty concluding in episode 60. Yusei tricks Divine into blurting out that he killed Misty's little brother. Misty has Ccarayhua kill Divine, and then she prepares to surrender since she has no desire to kill an innocent person. Ccarayhua, however, will not stand for it, and pulls a Villain Override and forces her to continue the duel. Aki doesn't want Misty to die and tries to simply destroy Ccarayhua in hopes of freeing Misty. She fails and is forced to deplete Misty's lifepoints in order to win. Aki takes no joy in her victory as all she can think about are how innocent people have died.
  • The end of episode 64, especially due to the lead up. Not because it's sad or anything, but it's because All their hard work paid off. The Dark Signers (Sans Rex and Rudger Godwin) were resurrected, and the Daedalus bridge was finally finished.
    Yusei (smiling): Riding Duel, ACCELERATION!
• When watching the few scenes where Yusei cries over something, particularly in episode 57, where after confessing the guilt he feels over his father's research ruining his friends' lives, he demands an answer from Roman about how he's supposed to redeem himself. Crow does make it rather Heartwarming when he answers Yusei's question instead, though.
• Aki Izayoi's backstory is one of the most heartbreaking parts of the series. After being teary-eyed for the better part of the entire episode, watching Divine hug Aki and realizing how much he really meant to her was what finally elevated this scene to the burst-out-in-tears level. Especially after Yusei wakes her up and she asks, "Yusei... You came to save me?" Yes, the ending where she wakes up and realizes Divine is dead (or so she thinks) is absolute Narm, but it was so painful getting there. And to be fair, after seeing her parents for the first time in years and just barely surviving a death duel, her reaction was pretty justified.
• Crow dueling the old man Tetsuzo in episode 68 gets pretty gloomy. Jack and Yusei wonder why the old man isn't pulling out a sure-win combo of combining the Kid Junk monster with the Maternal Junk and Paternal Junk monsters already on the field. It turns out that he doesn't have that card at all, because his beloved son has it and his wife took him away when she left him years ago, which is why Tetsuzo is so attached to his home, which is now in the middle of a junkyard.
• Hey, don't forget Yusei's dad putting him inside the escape pod, then dying afterwards.
• Episode 138, when Leo and Luna beg Yusei not to go to the Ark Cradle for fear of his death. It's especially heart-wrenching when Leo/Rua bursts into tears. Also when Jack, Aki, Crow, and the twins confront Yusei as he is about to leave them behind, asserting that they won't let him face the Ark Cradle alone. Yusei's facial expression gives away just how touched he is by his friends' words.
• Aporia and ZONE's fates. Essentially Aporia lost his parents, his girlfriend, and was one of the few humans left that survived the apocalypse. But even when he and his friends tried to experiment to come up with a solution, all of them died of old age including himself... except ZONE. ZONE was left alone and was force to use his friends in order to create robots and travel to the past to set things right.
• Aporia's death.
• Bruno's death. Not only does it have strong parallels to Carly's fate in the Dark Signers arc (with the exception that, unlike Carly, they don't get better) but it's one of the few moments in the series where Yusei breaks down in tears. It's really saddening when Bruno initially doesn't consider himself Yusei's actual friend, and the reassurance that he is causes him to Go Out with a Smile.
• When Jack, Leo, and Luna duel with Aporia. After his Heroic Sacrifice to protect his sister, Leo doesn't just drop to his knees in defeat...he falls flat on his face with a soul-crushing thud that drives the point home: he's not just defeated, he's dead. It especially hit true with Luna, whose own heartbreak at the loss of her brother was, as indicated by the slow roll-down of her Life Points, about to kill her as well.
  • This quickly became a Moment of Awesome for him, though. He not only got better a moment later, but got the ultimate 11th-Hour Superpower out of it to boot: he became the Sixth Signer and brought forth "Life Stream Dragon," the Signer Dragon that had been missing the whole anime!)
• The final moments of ZONE. After his defeat by Yusei, he tells him that his device that has been prolonging his life will soon shut down, but says it is fine and his life has reached his limit. He then explains that he took such drastic measures to save his future because he knew his own end was near and he wanted to die knowing his apocalyptic timeline would not occur. He then laments about his loneliness, but says that thinking about his deceased friends gave him the strength to go on by himself. Yusei tells him that his intervention means the future can still be changed, but that he (Yusei) must crash positive Ener-D into the negative Ener-D to reverse the Ark Cradle's generator, and that will be his final mission. All the while, the music that signifies the death of a Yliaster member—"At the End of the Battle"—plays in the background. As Yusei nears the generator, ZONE appears and tells Yusei that his body contains positive Ener-D much like Yusei's Duel Runner. Telling Yusei he has now entrusted the future to him, ZONE crashes into the generator in Yusei's place, as Yusei screams his name. ZONE's final words are to his deceased friends, telling them that he will soon join them, at long last. He then disappears further into the generator's light, never to be seen again. This indeed reverses the Ark Cradle and saves the city, but between his Heel Realization that he's a desperately lonely Well-Intentioned Extremist, Yusei screaming his name as he begins his Heroic Sacrifice, and his final heart-tugging words to his deceased friends, the whole scene is absolutely heart-wrenching.
  "Aporia... Antinomy... Paradox... I'll be there with you soon, at long last..."
• Think the last survivors of humanity's story couldn't get any more tragic? Think again. With the revelation that Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links is not only a Stealth Sequel to all of the series in the franchise as a whole, but also confirms that multiverse theory is canon to the franchise, it retroactively renders all of the desperate things ZONE, Antinomy, Aporia, and Paradox did to change the course of history completely and utterly meaningless. Their timeline was merely one of several in a vast space of infinite possibilities, and would have stayed its course of being destroyed by the Machine Emperors no matter what they did. All they ended up accomplishing in the end was severely messing with and nearly destroying another timeline similar to their own. They ruined, ended, and erased several innocent lives all for the sake of a hopeless dream.

---