In the world of fiction, "melodrama" refers to works that especially try to get an emotional reaction from their audience, playing on their sentiments. The world of anime is filled with melodramatic series that try hard to break the characters and the hearts of their viewers all at once.
Shojo is infamous for having a few melodramatic anime and manga under its belt, but it's certainly not exclusive to the genre. There are even a few shonen series that play up the dramatic elements. However, at the end of the day, it all depends on the viewer if the series is overly dramatic or heartbreaking.
10 Sailor Moon: Most Of The Senshi's Home Lives Are Tragic
Outside of being a magical girl series, the anime really played up the drama in Usagi's love life. Not only is her true love someone from her past life, but he is also brainwashed into becoming her enemy; dies; is brought back to life without any of his memories; breaks up with her because of visions from the future taken out of context; and even dies all over again in the final story arc.
Even the other Senshi's home lives are complicated. Minako has a bad relationship with her mother. Ami's a child of divorce. Mako's an orphan who lost her parents in a plane crash. Rei lost her mother, has a bad relationship with her politician father, and her only friends are crows. And Hotaru is literally the daughter of one of the villains.
9 Princess Tutu: Each Episode Focuses On A New Emotion
Emotion is very important to this magical girl series, as Princess Tutu is tasked with finding the shards of Prince Mytho's heart, each the personification of one of his emotions. Added to that, each of the shards has taken possession of various people and talking animals within the town, taking over their personality.
Added to that, the main story of a duck falling in love with a prince, becoming human to be with him, and cursed with disappearing into the light once she confesses her love to him is filled with drama, not to mention involving their other love interests.
8 Saint Seiya: The Series Is Infamous For Characters Crying
Five friends serve the reincarnation of the goddess Athena, but the science-fiction and action don't prevent the characters from going through drama and their emotions.
The dramatic way characters cry in this series has especially become infamous: when a person cries, their tears reach down their chin, stay in place, and take their time getting there, like sparkly jelly. It's extremely noticeable in scenes where multiple characters cry at once.
7 Yu-Gi-Oh!: Even Children's Card Games Can Cause Drama
Life and death situations especially become melodramatic since everything revolves around children's card games. Because of this, even fans can think characters can overreact to situations. That said, stakes can still be pretty high in the series.
Attempts to revive dead loved ones, saving loved ones in the hospital, and characters having to face the ultimate fate of the world all occur, each with card games and the kids who play them factoring into the plot in some way.
6 CLANNAD: Even The Name Hints At The Melodrama
In this anime series, two lonely classmates decide to restart their school's drama club. Eventually, the other members of the new club slowly start finding themselves connecting with each other and gradually starting to open their hearts to each other.
Even the name of this series highlights the emotional undercurrent of the series: "Clannad" means "Clann as Dobhar" or "the family from Dore," reflecting the ultimate concept of the characters serving as a family of sorts. Even so, even fans are known to admit the series is filled with heartbreaking moments.
5 Code Geass: Alternate History Does Not Stop The Drama
This anime series looks at an alternate view of history: the United States of America has instead become the Holy Britannian Empire and Japan has been stripped of its autonomy and become "Area 11."
The story unveils exiled royalty, political pawns, resistance, and rebellions, as the characters face battles that will change this new version of the world. Even the first episode involves a powerful explosion.
4 Detective Conan: A Lot Of The Mysteries Involve Melodrama
In this mystery series, many of the murders eventually turned out to have a melodramatic backstory. A character might kill someone who had bullied them and then learned secretly loved them after the fact. A person might kill their ward for the insurance and frame their love interest who looked like their dead mother.
That's not to say Shinichi's life doesn't occasionally contain drama in it. Being turned into a child has especially made things with him and Ran complicated.
3 Anohana: The Series Takes A Look At How Death Impacts Different People
Six friends grow apart after one of them, Menma, dies in an accident. A few years later, Menma appears to have returned as a ghost, somehow the age she would have been had she survived, believing that she cannot move on to the afterlife until she finishes unresolved business: a wish she had before she died. Unfortunately, she doesn't exactly remember what her wish was.
As her surviving friends reunite in the hopes of solving the mystery, the series takes a look at how death impacted each of them and the changes they have adopted from their childhood selves.
2 The Rose Of Versailles: The French Revolution Can Be Really Dramatic
Oscar François de Jarjayes, a French noblewoman, is raised as a boy to give her father an heir against the backdrop of French history, starting with the dwindling years of the Ancien Régime, not to mention the start of the French Revolution.
This historical drama has all kinds of emotional highs and lows: characters literally die of despair after already tragically losing other loved ones.
1 Candy Candy: Life Was Hard For Candy Even Before World War I
Candy Candy feels like it was anime's answer to soap operas. Candy starts out as an orphan, misses out on a chance to get adopted to stay with her best friend, and loses her best friend when she agrees to be adopted in her place. She then gets taken in by a family that uses her as a servant, followed by the death of the boy she likes. And then she even has to live through the horrors of World War I.
The series is so infamously cruel at times the Italian dub literally had to piece a new ending where Candy gets a more traditional happy ending with one of her love interests. In Greece, an opera was written concerning the death of one of the series' characters.