Fate stay night/Tear Jerker

""Using my own hands, I killed someone who protected me until the very end Neither regret nor a confession will bring forgiveness ...""
 * This troper once had the Fate/stay night Visual Novel described to him as such: "It will rip your soul out and tear it to pieces." When he played it, he and others found out that that may have been an understatement:
 * Fate route:
 * The only ending (and a truly bittersweet one) for the Fate route is "Continuation of the Dream."  The last scene you see is the final moments of  Cue profound crying.
 * Four simple words threw This troper into an endless stream of tears:
 * The anime adaptation of that scene isn't much better, either, since now you have very sad music playing in the background. Damn you La Sola, damn you!
 * Shirou and Saber's confrontation after their date in Fate. There's something heartbreaking about Shirou's first real admission that he's in love with Saber, mixed with his hopeless realization that he can't save her from her own self-destructive path.
 * Unlimited Blade Works route:
 * The Fate route had already established Ilya as a homicidal, sociopathic Creepy Child and her Servant Berserker as a Nigh Invulnerable embodiment of madness and destruction... And then we come across Berserker desperately pressing forward into Gilgamesh's endless hail of swords in an attempt to shield his master. After a flashback revealing their bond in Ilya's backstory,, calling out for her Servant for comfort; to fulfill his master's wish,.
 * Similarly, Servant Caster tries to protect her master from ... This scene was also in the anime adaptation.
 * Uh... that scene (or at least, that exact rendition of it) was ONLY in the anime adaptation, where it was In the game, where it was  Not quite the same effect.
 * The manga redition of this scene is arguably worse:
 * When Archer is fighting
 * This troper cannot read Archer's goodbye to Rin and his last smile without bursting into tears.
 * Just reading about Archer's life for the first time was extremely depressing. To summarize, . Unfortunately, this troper failed at writing this summary, but hopes that the messages gets across.
 * Addenum to the above:
 * To add in, the UBW movie ending with Archer's final words to Rin with his 'Old Look' & smile back + Rin's promise to both Archer & Shirou + the ending theme song, [[Voice Tadori Tsuku Basho~]] by Tainaka Sachi has this troper shedding Manly Tears even long after the movie ended. Well done, Tainaka-san & Nasu-san. Damnit.
 * Rin (narrating): The boy who stated that he just doesn't want to see anyone cry... could only see crying humans forever. Tears.
 * Archer is basically a walking Tear Jerker himself.
 * And yet all those (except perhaps the ending of Fate) pale in comparison to the Heaven's Feel route:
 * is (possibly) killed off in the finale: the Tear Jerker ending then sticks to and expands on this, showing the epilogue through eyes, as  ages and watches everything change around, remaining alone until the end... Needlessly and maliciously cruel.
 * This Troper also interpreted the very last scene of the normal ending as This Troper, using a flowchart, managed to unlock the True End (which was the only other non-Bittersweet or Downer Ending besides UBW's possibly too optimistic "Good" end) before he unlocked the normal end, and thought that having the HF "True" end in mind as he went through the "Normal" end would shield him from the impact that he knew the "Normal" end was supposed to have (having had the fact of 's death spoiled by this very wiki). He was completely unprepared.
 * Oh, and then after that the f@#king title screen changes to both the music and background of the very last scene of that, so we can now ALWAYS feel depressed on loading the game! Oh joy!! Dammit, Nasu...
 * And who can forget, in that same route, when
 * Fuck it, I bawled like a baby.
 * 's death is bad enough (especially when Shirou learns of it, ). Forcing the player to make the choice to stab in the heart while  helpless is just mean.
 * And then the Last Episode goes out of its way to tell you how much you lost.
 * And dear god, nothing could prepare This Troper for what came next. What's the scene called after making that painful decision? I'll forget about you. Within it, Shirou reflects on the fact that he's just committed an unforgivable act that cannot be justified in any capacity, how he feels so bad about that he has to erase every trace of  memory from his mind just to keep from going mad, how he knows he's sacrificing literally everything he has and he knows it just isn't worth it... but that if given the choice, he would do it again, because a world without  in it is incomprehensible to him.

"Saber (thinking):"
 * The rainy night in the park, with Shirou's decision to abandon his ideals and protect the most-likely dying Sakura.
 * Later on, Shirou asks her what she'd like to do "when" she gets better. She says she just wants to go watch the cherry blossoms fall. Shirou then promises her they'll go do exactly that. Given that at this point, ...well, this troper had to stop playing for a few minutes, to say the least.
 * The Ilya's response to your choice and the knowledge that so soon after her Crowning Moment of Heartwarming in the infamous "Mind of Steel" ending ought to wring some tears our of you.
 * Bad End #38. Right after the Crowning Moment of Awesome for Shirou that is by going past his limits, the consequences of doing so hit and . At this point narration switches to Saber, who contemplates his strength and what will come of his sacrifice.


 * The ending of the Fate route can be considered one of these. Shirou and Saber defeat their respective Big Bad and yet This is made substantially worse when Saber  How Shirou manages to smile through it all is simply amazing. I Want My Beloved to Be Happy indeed...
 * While Gilgamesh is taking a level in badass when killing Berserker about 13 times in the UBW route, he also destroys Ilyasviel's eyes and rips her heart out of her body, thus making an incredibly sad play on kick the dog.
 * More like kick the token loli, who totally didn't deserve it.
 * The real tearjerker is the scenes we are rewarded with afterwards. Shirou desperately tries to be the big damned hero, running towards Ilyasviel and the flashback of Ilyasviel's past 'training' with Berkserker, which is spartan training at it's finest. You finally gain some affinity with the emotion driven huggable giant.
 * For this troper,Heaven's Feel route has one when Shirou is fighting in the cave, and
 * Maybe it's just because of the music, but this troper very nearly cried during the dream-flashbacks Shirou is having about Saber's past in the Fate route, about how she was all alone and had to kill her emotions to move on...
 * Archer's Heroic Sacrifice in the anime (and by extension, Fate), staying behind with the intent to defeat Berserker (or at least take out some lives) while his Master, Shirou, and Saber flee. Even as he takes that beating, not once does he think to strike at Ilya (for very good reason, as it turns out ...), and when he finally fades away upon completely draining his mana ... God. Rin's reaction is already heartbreaking as she vows to not forgive Shirou and Saber if they get killed by Berserker; worse when the credits play and instead of the usual song we get "Hikari" as the ending theme. In the last moments, we get to see Archer's red cape disintegrating into light
 * Anime episode 18 makes it appear that Rin has had to kill Sakura to prevent Caster using her to summon the Grail. She's left holding Sakura in her arms as the credits roll, and Sakura looks up at Rin and seems to be thanking her....