Anime can sometimes be surprisingly heartbreaking, with stories in genres that can run the gamut from science-fiction to slice of life, and which don’t always have happy endings, the same way that any kind of story doesn’t necessarily guarantee a happy ending.

RELATED: 10 Anime Breakups That We're Still Sad About

But there are some anime out there that are heart-wrenching all the way through, giving viewers a sense of dread about what will come at the end, but which end up surprising everyone. Many melancholy stories in anime actually end, if not in an outright happy way, at least on a note of hope, an understanding that maybe someday, things will turn out okay for the characters.

10 Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day

Ending scene of Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day.

Anohana is the story of a group of childhood friends now grown-up, whose relationships fell apart after the accidental death of one of their own. After one of the group starts seeing her ghost, the group comes back together to figure out what she needs in order to pass on and, in the process, deal with their issues and their guilt over her death.

The ending is devastating, and it’s impossible not to shed tears during it, but the hopefulness and renewed bonds between the characters are truly moving.

9 A Silent Voice

Cast Of A Silent Voice

In A Silent Voice, an elementary school boy maliciously rips the hearing aids out of his classmate’s ears, injuring her and destroying the aids so that his single mother has to pay to replace them. By bullying her, he loses his friends and grows up a social pariah, until the very girl he bullied befriends him, and they begin on a path to healing.

Issues of mental health and bullying are at the forefront of the story, but it’s also a hopeful story of forgiveness and the power to change.

8 Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood Anime

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood absolutely has plenty of moments of comic relief and actual joy, but the overall tone of the series is very melancholy.

The series deals with everything from genocide, the grief of losing a parent, and the trauma of going to war, and there are times when it doesn’t seem like the teenage boys at the center of the story are ever going to find a way to their goal that doesn’t make them compromise their morals. But despite all this, they manage to beat the odds.

7 Angel Beats!

Cast Of Angel Beats Anime Silly Pose

Angel Beats! is a series that takes place in a limbo-like world in which all of the characters are already dead. So, like The Good Place, which is a comedy about the afterlife, there is automatically a melancholy about the proceedings.

RELATED: 10 Of The Most Popular Pink Haired Anime Characters You Forgot Existed

The fact that the characters can’t pass on until they deal with an unresolved trauma means that there are a lot of moments that are difficult to watch. Still, the characters coming to terms with their lives and finding the peace to move on makes it all worth it.

6 NANA

The cast of Nana anime Duo

NANA is a bit of an interesting case for an anime. The long-running and popular josei manga on which the anime is based has actually never been completed, due to an illness suffered by the manga creator.

Despite this, the anime tries to find a way to wrap up a love story in which everything goes wrong and everybody gets blown apart by misunderstandings and resentments, and it manages to do it with an ending that, while not necessarily perfectly happy, is hopeful for better days to come.

5 Orange

Naho Takamiya, Hiroto Suwa, Kakeru Naruse, Saku Hagita, Azusa Marasaka, and Takako Chino standing together and smiling (Orange)

Orange is a slice of life story with a slight fantasy element. The main character receives a letter from her future self, in which she instructs her to do certain things in order to make sure one of her classmates doesn’t die later that year.

It’s a story of second chances, the isolation one can feel amongst their peers as a teenager, and making difficult choices because they’re the right ones, even if it means that not everything will turn out exactly as one expects.

4 Haibane Renmei

Haibane Renmei main cast

Haibane Renmei, like Angel Beats!, takes place in a mysterious world that seems to exist as a kind of afterlife, in which the characters all have wings and wear halos like angels.

The somewhat complex story follows two young women living in this mysterious town, as they consider what it means to have committed sin, and how it feels to be bound by feelings of guilt for past transgressions. But they ultimately come to understand and forgive themselves in the end, allowing them to escape the village.

3 Paranoia Agent

Paranoia Agent Final Episode

Paranoia Agent is probably the most bizarre anime on this list. While there is quite a lot going on in this Satoshi Kon classic, the main crux of the plot is that a baseball bat-wielding child on roller blades, known as Lil Slugger, assaults people who seem to be at the end of their rope with no way out.

RELATED: 5 Modern Horror Anime To Watch (& 5 Classics That Can't Be Topped)

He’s a creation of one of the characters who is attacked, and her penance for an accident she caused allows her to make Lil Slugger disappear.

2 Wolf Children

Wolf Children

Wolf Children is a sweet anime about a single mother raising two children who are half-wolf. Her husband, who was a wolf-man, has died, and she moves to the country with her children to better conceal their wolf natures and to give them more freedom.

The anime itself is melancholy, following a mother who is grieving the loss of her husband and also struggling to raise children who aren’t fully human, but it’s also a love story for the kind of strength mothers have when it comes to their children.

1 Erased

Erased

Erased is a time travel anime, not unlike Orange, in which the main character is able to go back in time to prevent a tragedy from happening. However, each time he goes back, he changes things so that something else that’s bad happens instead.

The story ends with him and his friends not quite getting it right, but at least coming to a point where they can put an end to the time travel and to the devastation, offering, if not a happy ending, one of relief.

NEXT: Anime Squared: 5 Of The Best Anime Teachers (& 5 That Should Lose Their License)