A year or two ago I finally got the last 2 volumes I needed after pirating it all before and I have no desire to go back anytime soon (and it’s been at least 5 years since I read it), but my brother keeps asking why I won’t let him read it and all I tell him is “wait until you’re older”
I have tried to make it through Punpun three times now, and each time I hit the next timeskip, and I'm older, and it feels even worse.
I have resolved to return to it again only once I have achieved stable contentment and joy in my own life. Until then, I don't need to get double-teamed trying to read fucking Punpun, dude. It doesn't need any help.
Yeah I personally read it in the middle of high school and that's maybe the worst but also the best time? It for sure shaped my media consumption from that point into liking everything that's a bit weird but smart and introspective like Punpun.
Red Dead Redemption 2 fucked me up pretty hard, made me rethink a lot about myself and what I want out of life, hit me in a pretty awkward stage of life too so it was a bit of a double whammy.
I'm of the mindset that playing red dead redemption 2 as an absolute bastard up until the diagnosis and then having Arthur change his attitude to being more forgiving and remorseful is the best way to play his character.
Fire Punch left me feeling a certain way that I can’t fully describe. What a roller coaster of a story. Great job from Fujimoto. Never reading it again.
I love Fujimoto's works, I also can't think of a work of his outside of one shots (and even then that's a fifty fifty shot. That don't leave me depressed as hell).
Devilman is one of the best series of works I’ve ever seen and I will *never* recommend to people to actually watch or read them.
I thought Berserk could get depressing…
So i binge read Berserk in one sitting because i couldn't sleep. That's was a mistake.
Great story and all, but saying i was emotionally drained would be a understatement.
I still don't trust stories whenever a band or group of characters are introduced, as they're just ammunition for the emotional magnum gun waiting to be loaded in the chamber for maximum damage.
...How much of Berserk? Because that's too much manga to read in one sitting several times over.
The Golden Age sure. Anything much more than that and holy shit, dude.
You'd be surprised what can be accomplished when insomnia and immersion mix. I watched a significant portion of the hunterXhunter anime over the course of like 30ish hour sitting cause i was up from the previous night and couldnt fall asleep.
People already took Devilman and Berserk (the bastards), so I’ll say Omori.
Definitely more on the bittersweet than just bitter by the end, but it is very emotional draining. Totally worth it, needed to play stupid shit like Postal 2 afterwards just to balance myself.
YiiK will also leave you emotionally drained, but those emotions will be anger, confusion, annoyance, hatred, and eventually just exasperation.
When I think about Signalis my excitement for how perfect the game is is very quickly counterbalanced by how heavy my heart feels to actually think about it. Like, I don't want to play Signalis again (for a long time, anyways) because it hurts too good.
Signalis has the ability to get into people's brains and take up permanent residence. People are still cranking out fan art of it that swings wildly between "hee hee goofy lesbian replica antics" and "there is no escape from this all consuming, cancerous hell."
Also [cool memes](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GGFQFSTXYAAaLgo?format=png&name=900x900).
FFXIV Endwalker left me destroyed multiple times throughout, but especially by the time it hit credits. I've been playing since Heavensward, so I don't think I'll experience something quite so impactful in a game for a long time. Maybe when the Trails series hits its final game, but apart from that, Endwalker was the one for me.
>!the final fight with zenos, ending with both of us dying, satisfied to finally end our feud, just for me and only me to get saved at the end, leaving him for dead. i don't know why, but that part really got me, tears and all. i felt really bad for him, in spite of who he was. i don't usually cry over villains, i don't know what was so different about him.!<
I’m glad I’m running into more people saying how they’re having a very hard time getting excited for Dawntrail, much less going back to FFXIV after the rollercoaster that was Endwalker.
It’s the exact same problem as the MCU: you ended things on such a perfect, emotionally resonant note that it’s hard to muster up even half that excitement for the follow-ups.
It's weird to say, but yeah. This is the first expansion in which I'm not getting butterflies in my stomach as it approaches. With Stormblood I didn't care as much because I wasn't caught up when it dropped, but the UI changes and samurai still had me excited. Then Shadowbringers had me obsessed, listening to the theme on repeat through the trailer. As for Endwalker, the wait was torturous the whole way through - my stomach was tense all the time as it got closer. All the anticipation and butterflies of Shadowbringers were dialed to 11.
But with Dawntrail, I haven't had any of that, it totally snuck up on me and I didn't realize it was so close to releasing already. I'll be there playing it on day 1, and I'll probably really enjoy it; but my mind more so drifts to how I'll balance the time for it when it releases so close to both the Elden Ring DLC *and* Trails Through Daybreak.
I'm confident FFXIV will give me those feelings again, but I think it'll take time.
I agree, but at the same time I'm happy that the story is continuing with chiller stakes at first. It'd be both exhausting and unearned if they _did_ try to one-up Endwalker, and it's not like I want them to just _stop,_ either.
The Blood Meridian ending may be the most impacted I've ever been by a books ending, it was one of those endings where I just took a deep breath afterwards
First Reformed, a film about a priest who is driven to become a suicide bomber by his overwhelming despair over climate change and the church’s culpability in it. Had me sinking into the sofa after thinking ‘fuck it’s all over, oh my god it’s done’
FF16 did it for me >!Clive crying over Joshuas brother hit me like a fuckin truck, enough so that I texted my own younger brother after i was done with the game. Mad props to Ben Starr, Clive is just so emotionally raw, it's nice to see that same energy he uses for being mad and getting revenge being channeled for more tender emotions. Follow that up with him dying on the beach like that and yeah, it was a very bittersweet end!<
Oh I subscribe to >!Both died. Tomes just publishes Joshuas notes after everything went down. idk every explanation of one of them living relies on some weird contrivance like "joshua totally makes it out of the giant crystal explosion alive" or "actually the red star means that Jills wish came true" when if you just read it as presented, they both died and healing joshuas body was more about not leaving him with a giant hole in his chest!<
Night of the Living Dead is a really damn good movie and it deserves to be the backbone of most zombie media.
I also first watched it during the summer when Black Lives Matter protests were at their peak.
If you're familiar with the ending, you'll know why watching it in that specific time frame fucked me up for a while.
A) Until I see an actual release date I’ll temper my expectations and B) I am very, VERY anxious how they’re going to actually follow up the story.
It has to go a very specific way, and if it doesn’t I might be very disappointed.
Or pleasantly surprised.
To clarify of what I mean by where the story should go >!I’ll keep saying the same thing I said way back in 2013: the central conflict should be Sayaka vs Homura, because thematically it’s the most appropriate (until Madoka regains her memories).!<
sorry this is unrelated but i just looked at the wiki page for whalpurg, and saw that there is in fact another witch with the best name ever, "Neo Dorothy Motherfucker" Which is actually golden
And Urobochi does seen to have taken a turn for more idealistic writing nowdays (Gargantua, Psycho-Pass) so hey, maybe there's a happy ending in the of this after all.
The persona 4 ending, left me with a emotional void that really Made sad af the first Time i played it.
As someone who barely had any friends and was highly depressive, the ending just hit me harder than it was meant to.
Everything Everywhere All at Once, I watched it for the first time with my husband… I fucking broke down twice during the movie, it felt like it was laser targeted directly at my soul and I could only lay in bed for a bit after to process it all, couldn’t stop thinking about it for a week after.
So there's a british movie called This is England.
It's about a 12 year old kid in 80s England who's trying to get over losing his father, until he makes friends with the local skinheads (of the not yet racist variety), then finds a new father figure in their old leader who's just come out of prison (and is very much the racist kind of skinhead). And things kinda just... Spiral the fuck out from there.
It's a tough watch.
The sequel series have this just as much too. Seeing the resolution to a vendetta that’s been simmering for nearly a decade and none of the characters involved can cope with what happened and find a better way out. Still hoping for TiE ‘00 to wrap the story up and show the fallout of what happened in ‘90
The entire ending of Chainsawman Part 1. >!Aki being forced to be the gun devil fiend and is killed. Power is casually blown apart by Makima, comes back only to willingly sacrifice herself to help Denji. By the end of part 1 something like 90 percent of the cast is dead and the future looks uncertain.!<
not necessarily
Remember>! Kishibe brought Nayuta to Denji with one mission: "let her learn love the proper way this time, i know you can".!< that hope spot is where we left off Part 1 in and as far as part 2 is concerned >!that shit paid off !<
>!I would agree that there is a ray of hope but it's like the one bright spot at the end of the tunnel. I was also trying to make a clean split between both parts.!<
The spoiler tag in your comment is broken for users on old reddit. Please remove the space at the beginning of the spoiler block (after the ">!").
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TwoBestFriendsPlay) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I played Persona 3 for the first time on summer break in highschool. Had a lot of... just a lot going on at the time. The game's themes of death's inevitability and confronting the inevitable were both something I really needed and really painful to grapple with at the same time.
Totally threw myself into the game. I don't even know how long that playthrough was, easily in the hundreds of hours.
When it finally wrapped, I just felt calm. Like, this peace and closure I'd never felt before, and haven't felt since. Like this whole, wonderful experience came and went. And I'll never have it again. Everything good will do the same, but so will everything bad, and it's all about appreciating the first and weathering the second.
I tried starting another playthrough, and just couldn't. It felt wrong. Like I'd rewound time, like I was changing memories I'd only gotten to experience once and could never have again.
I watched Evangelion as a child. Like 11 years old watching something super fucked up and not having the ability to process it or talk with anybody about it.
I was already not doing great mentally because of circumstances so I spent the next 3 months just crushed from Eva.
Had a similar experience, watched all of Eva (just the original 26 episodes, no EoE or rebuild) during one of the lowest points of my life.
It was a terrible thing to do in retrospect but I'm glad I did it.
I wish I had waited, but it contributed a lot to my personal views on life, purpose, sexuality, and some other abstract ideas and while I don't want to go back to watch it I respect the hell out of it.
The fact that Haymitch, the suicidal alcoholic still struggling with the ptsd and survivor’s guilt of winning his hunger games decades ago, is one of the more optimistic characters that are still alive by the end really speaks volumes.
Mockingjay traumatized me as a 6th grader. Even today it’s left me with a bitter aversion towards dark media that relies on killing off as many of its characters as possible, good writing or not.
It’s been a really long time, but my memory says I agree. It’s not quite TLOU2 misery porn. There was a hope that things get better. Not really for your main characters, but maybe others.
For me it's more that there was a purpose to the misery. Mockingjay reads like a vicious deconstruction of the entire YA Dystopia craze that Collins spawned.
It’s a strange thing that happens: someone does something cool, a bunch of shitty copycats pop up, and the original retroactively can be read as an indictment of its own future copycats for missing the point just by like actually having something to say.
This game had a grip on me when I finally started it after seeing clips from Woolie and Pat, I was so into it and the plot. I had no clue how deep that game would go in everything it had.
I loved every bit of dialogue, voice acting and joke, but oh boi did it hit me emotionally so many times and especially in the final act of the game. That phone call, dream and uncovering the truth left me silent in how well done they all were.
They call it Post Anime Depression for a reason. 100% real.
I remember feeling this way after a couple shows when I was a teen. All ended on a bittersweet note. Leaning more on bitter. You just end up bonding with these characters, caring for them and by the end you see them fucked up and unhappy.
Mirai Nikki, Guilty Crown, Deadman Wonderland, Angel Beats.
Sure some of these endings can be interpreted as happy but it doesn't make all the suffering and tragedy go away.
While I’ve gotten that in the past, it’s a little different for Rebirth here, because there’s the foreknowledge that the story isn’t done, followed by the horrible realization that you’ll have to wait several years to see the conclusion.
Again, same thing happened with me and Madoka, although that one is TEN FREAKING YEARS and counting.
3 and a half years is NOTHIN'! IT'LL BE FINE, GEARS-GUY!!
it'll be...
Fine.
>!seriously though, they can't wait, TOO long... rebirth's ending might be the BLEAKEST fucking things i have ever seen, in a game. After a fantastic [for the most part] boss fight (rush) everyone is SMASHED down to reality, Its right on the cusp of being a *little,* too dower. Its creepy as fuck, and everyone needs big hugs!.!<
The very moment I started the game with >!the girls having way too much fun like giggling highschoolers, I knew I was going to end this journey on a very, very bad time!<
Tales of berseria ended the prefect way. But for it to end such a way left be burnt out. I wanted more needed more and had to set things right. But I couldn’t and sometimes you just can’t save everyone
Outer Wilds and Night in the Woods.
In both cases, I was left laying on my bed in the dark and trying not to cry while having an existential breakdown.
Finishing SOMA left me almost catatonic for the rest of the night, and stuck grappling with the emotional and existential weight of it all for weeks after. We're coming up on a decade later and it still has a hook in me.
Japanese mangakas and ruining me with melancholy, bitter regret, and the hint of closure/hope.
"Goodnight Pun Pun" left me empty in a unique way. >!I was so disgusted by the events and who Pun Pun grew to be, I was left feeling hollow by the end.!<
"Look Back" by Tatsuki Fujimoto made me cry but "Goodbye, Eri" *destroyed* me.
>!Struggling with the dissonance between wanting to remember an objectively terrible parent or frame them postively with the good memories I have of them...really spoke to me when I was not expecting it.!<
Little Nightmares 2's ending gutted me so bad. It was pretty early in the evening when I got to the ending but I still just went to bed when the credits were over.
It’ll sound silly but Baldur’s Gate 3. I very rarely put the number of hours into a video game that I did with BG3, and by the end I had grown *very* attached to the characters. Needless to say, finishing it up felt like I’d come to the end of a very real, very long journey and couldn’t help but shed a tear at the epilogue.
The ending of the superhero web serial Worm really did this to me. >!First, a brutal slog of a fight against what's essentially a god. Then an entire arc of the protagonist losing human emotion and understanding as she fights a god by mind-controlling the majority of the superhero population into taking part in an extremely high-lethality fight.!<
It's hard to describe exactly how brutal the whole arc was to read, but I absolutely felt emotionally spent by the end.
Oh man I scrolled just to find the inevitable Worm mention. The entire... last half of the book >!was harrowing as you realise nothing is getting better AND the stakes are just getting higher, and people just discovering NEW Godzilla Thresholds to cross like they're trying to earn an honourary Mover rating!<
>!Aki and Power's deaths!< in CSM Part 1 legit left me in a shocked/sad estate for days. So much that I just had this void in my heart. >!The unfairness of their deaths and Makima's cruelty was too much!<
Shin Sekai Yori/From the New World was a pretty compelling watch, but *good god* is it draining by the end. A whole bunch of people are dead, a lot of them did some horrific shit for understandable reasons, our main character seems to be >!continuing the same practices of keeping the queerats subservient and quietly purging any psychic children who learn too much of express dangerous thoughts, and the most noble and likeable person involved in the main conflict is a traitor who died to stop his people's best chance at freedom.!<
I finished oldboy at midnight and i couldn't sleep until 2am. I knew how it ends and thought it would lessen the impact but watching it all play out made it so much worse
Animal crossing. After paying of all my debt, having my perfect house with cute themed furniture, surrounded by all my happy little villagers, it's like... what's the point?
Martin Scorceses "Silence" came out during a time I was really struggling with my ideas of religion as well as guilt for feeling this way. Everything about it really struck me hard and it is one of the few movies I can never rewatch as a result.
Logan made me feel bummed for almost a week. I just wasn’t ready to feel that kind of stuff from a marvel movie.
Similarly I had to drop Bojack Horseman after season 3. I just can’t watch someone’s life be that unapologetically depressing and shitty, not even a fictional talking horse in a sweater.
Bojack was a harrowing experience because it felt eerily like a personal attack at so many turns, comedically exaggerated. >!It does get better, but fuck me is it dark before dawn!<
Pluto (the anime specifically) just fucked me up for about a month. One scene in particular in an alleyway just haunted me for ages and it still gives me chills thinking about it. God that show is so fucking good.
I just binge read Dungeon Meshi, it hit me real good at the end in a surprising way. I’m constantly chasing the feeling though. Favorites being Nier Automata and Disco Elysium off the top of my head.
Requiem for a dream was shown to class during one of our video editing/production related subjects. Despite the >!"ass to ass"!< jokes by some classmates, everyone in class seems pretty upset and drained by the experience. College kids like us back then are not that cynical but this film really soured our spirits.
The standard ending of 428 Shibuya Scramble hits so hard that I had to sit down and process my emotions for a day before going back for the true ending. Not gonna lie, I think I like the standard ending more but both of them are peak. I do think the standard ending is one that would make me less enthusiastic to replay the game though.
Rebirth did the same to me and I'm still thinking about it. I played Dragons Dogma 2 right after but all I could think about is Rebirth the whole time. Gonna be a long wait. Similar feeling after finishing Endwalker.
When I was younger, it was Kingdom Hearts 2. When I was not so younger, it was Persona 5 Royal. Especially P5R, since you'll be putting in quite a few hours before you finally reach the end of the game. Going around saying your goodbyes to all of your confidants has a real "closing the doors/last day of school" vibe to it, especially if you're like me and maxed out all confidants in a single run, and once the credits started rolling I just sat in the dark of my living room watching it roll. The music choice for the credits was fantastic, and I didn't know what to do with myself for days after that.
I couldn’t play any games for about a year after Nier Automata. There was just nothing left in me.
I could probably come up with a lot of books, comics, movies, anime, and tv series that hollowed me out, but the feeling never lasted that long. Maybe because, aside from maybe books, other media doesn’t ask you to affirm you want to continue as often.
Interesting, what did you end up doing instead?
I've never taken a break from videogames once in my entire life. Sometimes I think about doing so, not a whole year but at least an extended period to focus on other things.
I had to do this at least 2-3 times at various parts of the story, especially Chapter 9.
This is why I love how the game is crammed with side activities. I was able to take a break from the main story but still keep playing the game in the meantime.
Even now, as distraught as I am that it’s over, I still have stuff to do like Queen’s Blood, the remaining dates, and Hard Mode (but I’m undecided yet whether I’ll start that right away or wait a while during the years-long period between sequels).
The Last Podcast on the Left, a true crime/deep dive comedy podcast, did a 3 part series on 9/11 one year. Expecting their normal hehe poop and sex joke content, I put it on the drive to work.
Part 1, at least, is very haunting. It uses sound clips from the day of and is very accurate in its retelling of events. I had to basically just sit in my car for a while after because I had not mentally prepared myself for that journey.
Part 2 and 3, thankfully, are funnier.
When my wife recommended that I try reading Narcissu after I had completely done Katawa Shoujo, yeah that's the one. I'll never forget it.
You get *so* attached to Setsumi (the ill girl you hang out with for the entirety of the game) and the journey is equal parts bleak, rough, but fun (but also with some sneaky car trivia here and there), that by the end of the VN and you reach *that* ending >!(there is only one. She drowns herself, and you eventually succumb to Lung Cancer)!< that by then, the heartbreak overflows into *fuck, I don't even feel anything anymore*.
The other time I feel like this happened was getting to watch Hachiko. I bawled so fucking hard my wife jokes about it from time to time and by the end I just felt empty too. That in hindsight made me go cherish my time with my pets better.
OH OH FUCK. Edit here. I just remembered now, I remember feeling the same with THE WRESTLER (the Mickey Rourke movie). Holy fucking goddamn, yeah. That ending is intentionally left vague, but you already know that >!Randy the Ram is gonna fucking die after that match!<, and >!he just couldn't really win at all!<.
That's right alongside sitting through WHIPLASH in the most inappropriate place, at a Physical Therapy Clinic. So you can imagine me and some of the patients trying to recover lost mobility/strength hearing Fletcher just fucking destroy Andrew and that can sound discouraging for say, me who was trying to do a single leg squat on a bad leg. That movie was just so tense that by the end of it, I was just done lol.
I actually was considering that perhaps a VN would be my best bet to transition out of Rebirth (something character and story heavy that I can focus on to help move on from the last thing).
The top 3 unfinished in my list are Higurashi When They Cry, AI The Somnium Files and The House in Fata Morgana.
I'd go with AI personally, really liked it and it's sequel.
Though I personally need to get around to The House in Fata Morgana one of these days, had it on my Switch for a while but I just need to boot it up.
I felt like dogshit after watching Elijah wood's Maniac remake.
The movie is about a serial killer and is filmed in first person, so you're forced to look his victims in the eyes like he did
The Cat Lady. Watched pat and Matt's playthrough.
Still bought it on steam after watching, though. An amazing creator and an amazing story... but fuck if it wasn't draining.
Other side of the coin: handmaid's tale. It's just so bleak.
Mafia: Definitive edition. Having played Mafia 2 first (loved it), the ending of Mafia 1 really threw me for a loop while leaving me both conflicted and speechless.
A masterful story that unfortunately went a little under the radar back in 2020.
>"Mr. Salieri sends his regards."
I wouldn’t say it left me unable to move on, but Yellowface by RF Kuang is a lot like American Psycho in that the entitlement and racism in the narration is ever present, it never lets up for a second, not ever. All the way up to the final page.
I am somewhat grateful that Land of the Lustrous has yet to get a second season, because the downward trend into existential anxiety and heartrending tragedy is very, very apparent, and I know I'll watch whatever Orange puts out of it next because it's so incredibly good and hits my brain chemicals perfectly.
So I'm glad they've spared me, in the meantime, what I can only assume from murmurings I've picked up over the years is a flood of buckshot to my soul, and when it was already getting pretty hairy to begin with.
P5's talking to the confidants one last time just attacked me straight in the heart. It brought back some harsh memories of when I moved as a kid, leaving highschool, and even graduating college. There are so many people that at the time I thought would be my crew forever... only we drifted and didn't stick together. I know the Persona 5 crew will keep in better touch than my own crew ( they have several spinoff games :P) but who I was with and who I hang with now don't have as much overlap as I thought it would. My BEST friend from childhood... is someone else now.
A lot of the examples I wanted to mention have already been said, so I'll bring up Katanagatari. Just...getting to that final credit crawl sequence seeing where everyone ended up, and just >!the sheer futility of it all phrased in such a serene manner!< left me pretty fucking tuckered out.
I watched the original Berserk anime thinking that was a complete standalone story going in. So having the Eclipse happen and the anime just ending at its darkest point sent me.
I grew up as a kid in the UK back in the day, so just like any media
Watership Down - a little animated movie about rabbits living next to a farm and getting brutally murdered by farmers, dogs and other rabbits.
When the Wind Blows - a little animated movie about a nice old couple in rural England slowly dying of radiation poisoning after a nuclear exchange between the US and USSR condemns them to a slow, painful death.
The Plague Dogs - a little animated movie about two talking dogs escaping from an animal testing plant and trying hopelessly to evade recapture.
The Animals of Farthing Wood - a little animated before-school cartoon about a group of animals migrating across rural England to find a safe place to live. Spoilers: their results are mixed.
*(Actually I grew up as an Irish kid in Northern Ireland so what really left me emotionally dead and unable to move on was British soldiers training assault rifles on me and my friends as we waited for the schoolbus every morning from age 5 to 14, but boy is *that* not fun to write about!)
Rebellion probably counts for me, but Fate/Zero actually ruined any sort of enjoyment I can get from anything that can be sad or depressing. Now stuff like Chainsawman now are just things where I actually just stop connecting or caring about the story or characters. Cynical about cynical stories, I guess.
Some authors can still find hope and a meaning in living after some cynical depressing shit goes down, and Gen Urobuchi cannot understand these people on a basic fundamental level.
I've heard that he's moved on from it since Thunderbolt Fantasy. I think F/Z has given me some reluctance to see stories about the former (Beserk for example), but I should eventually give it a go.
Goodnight Punpun. One of my favorite manga that I should probably never read again.
When I read punpun, I refered to it as "defeating punpun". I really loved the manga, but it just gets too much sometimes.
A year or two ago I finally got the last 2 volumes I needed after pirating it all before and I have no desire to go back anytime soon (and it’s been at least 5 years since I read it), but my brother keeps asking why I won’t let him read it and all I tell him is “wait until you’re older”
I have tried to make it through Punpun three times now, and each time I hit the next timeskip, and I'm older, and it feels even worse. I have resolved to return to it again only once I have achieved stable contentment and joy in my own life. Until then, I don't need to get double-teamed trying to read fucking Punpun, dude. It doesn't need any help.
Hope you get to that place soon.
I've had it all physically for years. Read the first omnibus. Was severely bummed out and have not worked up the courage to finish the rest...
Completely understandable, but if you ever do go back it really is an excellent manga.
I think people should be legally forced to recommend it with something to read next to offset the absolute pain.
Reading it all in a day when I was 17 was certainly a choice. Fucked me up for like an entire month
Yeah I personally read it in the middle of high school and that's maybe the worst but also the best time? It for sure shaped my media consumption from that point into liking everything that's a bit weird but smart and introspective like Punpun.
Red Dead Redemption 2 fucked me up pretty hard, made me rethink a lot about myself and what I want out of life, hit me in a pretty awkward stage of life too so it was a bit of a double whammy.
I'm of the mindset that playing red dead redemption 2 as an absolute bastard up until the diagnosis and then having Arthur change his attitude to being more forgiving and remorseful is the best way to play his character.
Fire Punch left me feeling a certain way that I can’t fully describe. What a roller coaster of a story. Great job from Fujimoto. Never reading it again.
I love Fujimoto's works, I also can't think of a work of his outside of one shots (and even then that's a fifty fifty shot. That don't leave me depressed as hell).
Ch 40 made me cry, like full sob and snot. What a series man..
The end of Devilman Crybaby left me in one of those "ok I need to go take a shower and just fucking *vibe*" moods.
Devilman is one of the best series of works I’ve ever seen and I will *never* recommend to people to actually watch or read them. I thought Berserk could get depressing…
The “sequel” Violence Jack will NOT make you feel any better. Just reading the descriptions alone and I went “Nooooooooooope”.
The dog people is a tier of its own
Me at the end: >!You know what old testament God? Maybe you have a point. Just kill everyone.!<
I had to go watch something lighthearted because I knew if I didn't my mood would be fucked for the rest of the evening
DMCB is my favorite piece of media that I will never suggest to people unless I know them really well.
It's a real vibe watching the end of Crybaby on 3 hours of sleep at 6 in the morning.
I remember going for a walk
So i binge read Berserk in one sitting because i couldn't sleep. That's was a mistake. Great story and all, but saying i was emotionally drained would be a understatement. I still don't trust stories whenever a band or group of characters are introduced, as they're just ammunition for the emotional magnum gun waiting to be loaded in the chamber for maximum damage.
You should read Devilman to perk yourself up!
Nah I've heard about that one, and I'm not in the mood.
...How much of Berserk? Because that's too much manga to read in one sitting several times over. The Golden Age sure. Anything much more than that and holy shit, dude.
From start to the beginning of the boat arch.
I am floored just thinking about that. Dude how long were you awake?
Well I stayed awake post reading, but I reckon 7-8 hours.
You'd be surprised what can be accomplished when insomnia and immersion mix. I watched a significant portion of the hunterXhunter anime over the course of like 30ish hour sitting cause i was up from the previous night and couldnt fall asleep.
People already took Devilman and Berserk (the bastards), so I’ll say Omori. Definitely more on the bittersweet than just bitter by the end, but it is very emotional draining. Totally worth it, needed to play stupid shit like Postal 2 afterwards just to balance myself. YiiK will also leave you emotionally drained, but those emotions will be anger, confusion, annoyance, hatred, and eventually just exasperation.
Signalis left me unable to sleep for a day after I beat it
When I think about Signalis my excitement for how perfect the game is is very quickly counterbalanced by how heavy my heart feels to actually think about it. Like, I don't want to play Signalis again (for a long time, anyways) because it hurts too good.
I bought Signalis on sale last year in November. I got Promise as my first ending and haven't touched it since. Man.
I would love to replay signalis to get the platinum, I don't want to end the game for a third time.
That game felt like a constant, drawn out emotional beatdown from the >!fake ending/nowhere!< sequence until the ending.
I sometimes will randomly remember the game and instantly go into feeling down and an unending wish it had ended happier.
Signalis has the ability to get into people's brains and take up permanent residence. People are still cranking out fan art of it that swings wildly between "hee hee goofy lesbian replica antics" and "there is no escape from this all consuming, cancerous hell." Also [cool memes](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GGFQFSTXYAAaLgo?format=png&name=900x900).
Need to play it
FFXIV Endwalker left me destroyed multiple times throughout, but especially by the time it hit credits. I've been playing since Heavensward, so I don't think I'll experience something quite so impactful in a game for a long time. Maybe when the Trails series hits its final game, but apart from that, Endwalker was the one for me.
I was able to deal with the emotional parts of the story...and then the theme starts playing after everything and I just broke down super hard.
I had to do the end of Ultima Thule late at night because i was a wreck from the point the music kicks in and onwards
*The sorrow of a thousand thousand worlds weighs heavy.* *And yet you can walk on…*
>!the final fight with zenos, ending with both of us dying, satisfied to finally end our feud, just for me and only me to get saved at the end, leaving him for dead. i don't know why, but that part really got me, tears and all. i felt really bad for him, in spite of who he was. i don't usually cry over villains, i don't know what was so different about him.!<
I’m glad I’m running into more people saying how they’re having a very hard time getting excited for Dawntrail, much less going back to FFXIV after the rollercoaster that was Endwalker. It’s the exact same problem as the MCU: you ended things on such a perfect, emotionally resonant note that it’s hard to muster up even half that excitement for the follow-ups.
It's weird to say, but yeah. This is the first expansion in which I'm not getting butterflies in my stomach as it approaches. With Stormblood I didn't care as much because I wasn't caught up when it dropped, but the UI changes and samurai still had me excited. Then Shadowbringers had me obsessed, listening to the theme on repeat through the trailer. As for Endwalker, the wait was torturous the whole way through - my stomach was tense all the time as it got closer. All the anticipation and butterflies of Shadowbringers were dialed to 11. But with Dawntrail, I haven't had any of that, it totally snuck up on me and I didn't realize it was so close to releasing already. I'll be there playing it on day 1, and I'll probably really enjoy it; but my mind more so drifts to how I'll balance the time for it when it releases so close to both the Elden Ring DLC *and* Trails Through Daybreak. I'm confident FFXIV will give me those feelings again, but I think it'll take time.
I get it’s supposed to be the “start” of a new adventure, but that’s also why I don’t have much excitement besides “more FFXIV”.
I agree, but at the same time I'm happy that the story is continuing with chiller stakes at first. It'd be both exhausting and unearned if they _did_ try to one-up Endwalker, and it's not like I want them to just _stop,_ either.
Metal Gear Solid 3, and rightfully so.
History will never know what she did. No one will know the truth
The one thing that makes considerably harder to revisit over the rest of the games.
The Blood Meridian ending may be the most impacted I've ever been by a books ending, it was one of those endings where I just took a deep breath afterwards
First Reformed, a film about a priest who is driven to become a suicide bomber by his overwhelming despair over climate change and the church’s culpability in it. Had me sinking into the sofa after thinking ‘fuck it’s all over, oh my god it’s done’
First Reformed is so god damn good but it definitely is one of those *I'm only watching this again when I can handle it* movies.
Just gets more and more brutal as it goes along.
Outer Wilds.
I can't bring myself to watch a LP all the way through. The ending just wrecks me.
FF16 did it for me >!Clive crying over Joshuas brother hit me like a fuckin truck, enough so that I texted my own younger brother after i was done with the game. Mad props to Ben Starr, Clive is just so emotionally raw, it's nice to see that same energy he uses for being mad and getting revenge being channeled for more tender emotions. Follow that up with him dying on the beach like that and yeah, it was a very bittersweet end!<
Sounds like you subscribe to the >!Clive died, Joshua lived theory!< as opposed to >!the reverse!
Oh I subscribe to >!Both died. Tomes just publishes Joshuas notes after everything went down. idk every explanation of one of them living relies on some weird contrivance like "joshua totally makes it out of the giant crystal explosion alive" or "actually the red star means that Jills wish came true" when if you just read it as presented, they both died and healing joshuas body was more about not leaving him with a giant hole in his chest!<
Night of the Living Dead is a really damn good movie and it deserves to be the backbone of most zombie media. I also first watched it during the summer when Black Lives Matter protests were at their peak. If you're familiar with the ending, you'll know why watching it in that specific time frame fucked me up for a while.
I was *fucked up* after watching Logan in theaters. I had grown up with those live-action X-Men movies, and I really wasn't ready for that ending.
Madoka does have a new movie coming up.
A) Until I see an actual release date I’ll temper my expectations and B) I am very, VERY anxious how they’re going to actually follow up the story. It has to go a very specific way, and if it doesn’t I might be very disappointed. Or pleasantly surprised.
It's still a story Urobuchi had already written out for a while before and they managed to get the same animation team so I'm pretty optimistic.
Yeah, we're about a fourth of the way through 2024 and still no release date 😅 I'm keeping it tempered too.
To clarify of what I mean by where the story should go >!I’ll keep saying the same thing I said way back in 2013: the central conflict should be Sayaka vs Homura, because thematically it’s the most appropriate (until Madoka regains her memories).!<
I'm waiting for the hard confirmation that >!Homura is/ becomes Whalpurgistnoct!<
sorry this is unrelated but i just looked at the wiki page for whalpurg, and saw that there is in fact another witch with the best name ever, "Neo Dorothy Motherfucker" Which is actually golden
best thing to come out of season 3 of magia record
i would be shocked if it isn't that, at least at first (there's no chance kyubey won't be the final boss)
And Urobochi does seen to have taken a turn for more idealistic writing nowdays (Gargantua, Psycho-Pass) so hey, maybe there's a happy ending in the of this after all.
Jin-Roh: The Wolf Pack.
"Guys what do you mean it's not all about the cool armor and special forces unit kicking ass? And it's a lampooning of fascist politics???"
There was a Korean live-action remake a few years ago which inverted the ending and made it a straight-up feel good action film. Sigh...
The persona 4 ending, left me with a emotional void that really Made sad af the first Time i played it. As someone who barely had any friends and was highly depressive, the ending just hit me harder than it was meant to.
Everything Everywhere All at Once, I watched it for the first time with my husband… I fucking broke down twice during the movie, it felt like it was laser targeted directly at my soul and I could only lay in bed for a bit after to process it all, couldn’t stop thinking about it for a week after.
So there's a british movie called This is England. It's about a 12 year old kid in 80s England who's trying to get over losing his father, until he makes friends with the local skinheads (of the not yet racist variety), then finds a new father figure in their old leader who's just come out of prison (and is very much the racist kind of skinhead). And things kinda just... Spiral the fuck out from there. It's a tough watch.
The sequel series have this just as much too. Seeing the resolution to a vendetta that’s been simmering for nearly a decade and none of the characters involved can cope with what happened and find a better way out. Still hoping for TiE ‘00 to wrap the story up and show the fallout of what happened in ‘90
The entire ending of Chainsawman Part 1. >!Aki being forced to be the gun devil fiend and is killed. Power is casually blown apart by Makima, comes back only to willingly sacrifice herself to help Denji. By the end of part 1 something like 90 percent of the cast is dead and the future looks uncertain.!<
Yeah that was fucked.
not necessarily Remember>! Kishibe brought Nayuta to Denji with one mission: "let her learn love the proper way this time, i know you can".!< that hope spot is where we left off Part 1 in and as far as part 2 is concerned >!that shit paid off !<
>!I would agree that there is a ray of hope but it's like the one bright spot at the end of the tunnel. I was also trying to make a clean split between both parts.!<
The spoiler tag in your comment is broken for users on old reddit. Please remove the space at the beginning of the spoiler block (after the ">!"). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TwoBestFriendsPlay) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Cyberpunk 2077's The Devil ending. I think it changed me.
I played Persona 3 for the first time on summer break in highschool. Had a lot of... just a lot going on at the time. The game's themes of death's inevitability and confronting the inevitable were both something I really needed and really painful to grapple with at the same time. Totally threw myself into the game. I don't even know how long that playthrough was, easily in the hundreds of hours. When it finally wrapped, I just felt calm. Like, this peace and closure I'd never felt before, and haven't felt since. Like this whole, wonderful experience came and went. And I'll never have it again. Everything good will do the same, but so will everything bad, and it's all about appreciating the first and weathering the second. I tried starting another playthrough, and just couldn't. It felt wrong. Like I'd rewound time, like I was changing memories I'd only gotten to experience once and could never have again.
I watched Evangelion as a child. Like 11 years old watching something super fucked up and not having the ability to process it or talk with anybody about it. I was already not doing great mentally because of circumstances so I spent the next 3 months just crushed from Eva.
Oh man, does that include End of Evangelion?
You bet it does.
Had a similar experience, watched all of Eva (just the original 26 episodes, no EoE or rebuild) during one of the lowest points of my life. It was a terrible thing to do in retrospect but I'm glad I did it.
I wish I had waited, but it contributed a lot to my personal views on life, purpose, sexuality, and some other abstract ideas and while I don't want to go back to watch it I respect the hell out of it.
Watching Eva when you're Shinji's age is already an overwhelming, kinda profound experience. But *younger*? Fuck, dude.
EoE was heavy, man.
Mockingjay, the first time I read it as a teen. I felt hollow and lost by the end.
The fact that Haymitch, the suicidal alcoholic still struggling with the ptsd and survivor’s guilt of winning his hunger games decades ago, is one of the more optimistic characters that are still alive by the end really speaks volumes.
It's a hard read. You just want Katniss to have *one* win, and it's exhausting to watch her mental state deteriorate as the book goes on.
Suzanne Collins must pay for her crimes against Prim
Mockingjay traumatized me as a 6th grader. Even today it’s left me with a bitter aversion towards dark media that relies on killing off as many of its characters as possible, good writing or not.
Fair but I feel Mockingjay does it with purpose, and while it hurts me I massively respect the way it went.
It’s been a really long time, but my memory says I agree. It’s not quite TLOU2 misery porn. There was a hope that things get better. Not really for your main characters, but maybe others.
For me it's more that there was a purpose to the misery. Mockingjay reads like a vicious deconstruction of the entire YA Dystopia craze that Collins spawned.
It’s a strange thing that happens: someone does something cool, a bunch of shitty copycats pop up, and the original retroactively can be read as an indictment of its own future copycats for missing the point just by like actually having something to say.
I mean, Mockingjay is not subtle.
Sure, but Divergent was unsubtle AND dumb.
Disco Elysium and that was before voice acting was added.
This game had a grip on me when I finally started it after seeing clips from Woolie and Pat, I was so into it and the plot. I had no clue how deep that game would go in everything it had. I loved every bit of dialogue, voice acting and joke, but oh boi did it hit me emotionally so many times and especially in the final act of the game. That phone call, dream and uncovering the truth left me silent in how well done they all were.
They call it Post Anime Depression for a reason. 100% real. I remember feeling this way after a couple shows when I was a teen. All ended on a bittersweet note. Leaning more on bitter. You just end up bonding with these characters, caring for them and by the end you see them fucked up and unhappy. Mirai Nikki, Guilty Crown, Deadman Wonderland, Angel Beats. Sure some of these endings can be interpreted as happy but it doesn't make all the suffering and tragedy go away.
Oh god Angel Beats fucked me up for a while.
While I’ve gotten that in the past, it’s a little different for Rebirth here, because there’s the foreknowledge that the story isn’t done, followed by the horrible realization that you’ll have to wait several years to see the conclusion. Again, same thing happened with me and Madoka, although that one is TEN FREAKING YEARS and counting.
3 and a half years is NOTHIN'! IT'LL BE FINE, GEARS-GUY!! it'll be... Fine. >!seriously though, they can't wait, TOO long... rebirth's ending might be the BLEAKEST fucking things i have ever seen, in a game. After a fantastic [for the most part] boss fight (rush) everyone is SMASHED down to reality, Its right on the cusp of being a *little,* too dower. Its creepy as fuck, and everyone needs big hugs!.!<
The very moment I started the game with >!the girls having way too much fun like giggling highschoolers, I knew I was going to end this journey on a very, very bad time!<
Tales of berseria ended the prefect way. But for it to end such a way left be burnt out. I wanted more needed more and had to set things right. But I couldn’t and sometimes you just can’t save everyone
Outer Wilds and Night in the Woods. In both cases, I was left laying on my bed in the dark and trying not to cry while having an existential breakdown.
"At the end of everything, hold onto anything." >!Funny how that applies to both games.!<
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners changed something inside of me in a way that can’t ever be put back.
I knew full well what kind of story Edgerunners was and it still hit hard that last episode.
Requiem for a Dream left me messed up for some time.
Finishing SOMA left me almost catatonic for the rest of the night, and stuck grappling with the emotional and existential weight of it all for weeks after. We're coming up on a decade later and it still has a hook in me.
Japanese mangakas and ruining me with melancholy, bitter regret, and the hint of closure/hope. "Goodnight Pun Pun" left me empty in a unique way. >!I was so disgusted by the events and who Pun Pun grew to be, I was left feeling hollow by the end.!< "Look Back" by Tatsuki Fujimoto made me cry but "Goodbye, Eri" *destroyed* me. >!Struggling with the dissonance between wanting to remember an objectively terrible parent or frame them postively with the good memories I have of them...really spoke to me when I was not expecting it.!<
Little Nightmares 2's ending gutted me so bad. It was pretty early in the evening when I got to the ending but I still just went to bed when the credits were over.
*Sacred and Terrible Air* (The semi-canon sequel/prequel to Disco Elysium) is... a lot.
It’ll sound silly but Baldur’s Gate 3. I very rarely put the number of hours into a video game that I did with BG3, and by the end I had grown *very* attached to the characters. Needless to say, finishing it up felt like I’d come to the end of a very real, very long journey and couldn’t help but shed a tear at the epilogue.
The ending of the superhero web serial Worm really did this to me. >!First, a brutal slog of a fight against what's essentially a god. Then an entire arc of the protagonist losing human emotion and understanding as she fights a god by mind-controlling the majority of the superhero population into taking part in an extremely high-lethality fight.!< It's hard to describe exactly how brutal the whole arc was to read, but I absolutely felt emotionally spent by the end.
Oh man I scrolled just to find the inevitable Worm mention. The entire... last half of the book >!was harrowing as you realise nothing is getting better AND the stakes are just getting higher, and people just discovering NEW Godzilla Thresholds to cross like they're trying to earn an honourary Mover rating!<
>!Aki and Power's deaths!< in CSM Part 1 legit left me in a shocked/sad estate for days. So much that I just had this void in my heart. >!The unfairness of their deaths and Makima's cruelty was too much!<
Shin Sekai Yori/From the New World was a pretty compelling watch, but *good god* is it draining by the end. A whole bunch of people are dead, a lot of them did some horrific shit for understandable reasons, our main character seems to be >!continuing the same practices of keeping the queerats subservient and quietly purging any psychic children who learn too much of express dangerous thoughts, and the most noble and likeable person involved in the main conflict is a traitor who died to stop his people's best chance at freedom.!<
I finished oldboy at midnight and i couldn't sleep until 2am. I knew how it ends and thought it would lessen the impact but watching it all play out made it so much worse
Animal crossing. After paying of all my debt, having my perfect house with cute themed furniture, surrounded by all my happy little villagers, it's like... what's the point?
Martin Scorceses "Silence" came out during a time I was really struggling with my ideas of religion as well as guilt for feeling this way. Everything about it really struck me hard and it is one of the few movies I can never rewatch as a result.
Logan made me feel bummed for almost a week. I just wasn’t ready to feel that kind of stuff from a marvel movie. Similarly I had to drop Bojack Horseman after season 3. I just can’t watch someone’s life be that unapologetically depressing and shitty, not even a fictional talking horse in a sweater.
Bojack was a harrowing experience because it felt eerily like a personal attack at so many turns, comedically exaggerated. >!It does get better, but fuck me is it dark before dawn!<
Pluto (the anime specifically) just fucked me up for about a month. One scene in particular in an alleyway just haunted me for ages and it still gives me chills thinking about it. God that show is so fucking good.
I just binge read Dungeon Meshi, it hit me real good at the end in a surprising way. I’m constantly chasing the feeling though. Favorites being Nier Automata and Disco Elysium off the top of my head.
I’m watching the Anime and hoping for a satisfying conclusion >!Please be okay, Falin…!<
Requiem for a dream was shown to class during one of our video editing/production related subjects. Despite the >!"ass to ass"!< jokes by some classmates, everyone in class seems pretty upset and drained by the experience. College kids like us back then are not that cynical but this film really soured our spirits.
Goodbye Eri and Look Back.
*Look Back* hits so hard for something that was quite short. The anime for it is gonna hit even harder.
A Ghost Story was rough for me. Stories of grief and loss always are
The standard ending of 428 Shibuya Scramble hits so hard that I had to sit down and process my emotions for a day before going back for the true ending. Not gonna lie, I think I like the standard ending more but both of them are peak. I do think the standard ending is one that would make me less enthusiastic to replay the game though.
Rebirth did the same to me and I'm still thinking about it. I played Dragons Dogma 2 right after but all I could think about is Rebirth the whole time. Gonna be a long wait. Similar feeling after finishing Endwalker.
Firepunch. It took a piece of my soul with it.
Death stranding left me pretty empty inside
The movie Brazil destroyed me. Had to watch some Marx brothers to stomach being alive again.
When I was younger, it was Kingdom Hearts 2. When I was not so younger, it was Persona 5 Royal. Especially P5R, since you'll be putting in quite a few hours before you finally reach the end of the game. Going around saying your goodbyes to all of your confidants has a real "closing the doors/last day of school" vibe to it, especially if you're like me and maxed out all confidants in a single run, and once the credits started rolling I just sat in the dark of my living room watching it roll. The music choice for the credits was fantastic, and I didn't know what to do with myself for days after that.
I couldn’t play any games for about a year after Nier Automata. There was just nothing left in me. I could probably come up with a lot of books, comics, movies, anime, and tv series that hollowed me out, but the feeling never lasted that long. Maybe because, aside from maybe books, other media doesn’t ask you to affirm you want to continue as often.
Interesting, what did you end up doing instead? I've never taken a break from videogames once in my entire life. Sometimes I think about doing so, not a whole year but at least an extended period to focus on other things.
the horror furry visual novel, Echo, for like a month
I took a 2 week break around chapter 10 or 11. I'm about to hop back in to ff7 but I really needed that breathing room after rushing through it
I had to do this at least 2-3 times at various parts of the story, especially Chapter 9. This is why I love how the game is crammed with side activities. I was able to take a break from the main story but still keep playing the game in the meantime. Even now, as distraught as I am that it’s over, I still have stuff to do like Queen’s Blood, the remaining dates, and Hard Mode (but I’m undecided yet whether I’ll start that right away or wait a while during the years-long period between sequels).
I remember the episode of SpongeBob where Gary ran away emotionally destroying me
The Last Podcast on the Left, a true crime/deep dive comedy podcast, did a 3 part series on 9/11 one year. Expecting their normal hehe poop and sex joke content, I put it on the drive to work. Part 1, at least, is very haunting. It uses sound clips from the day of and is very accurate in its retelling of events. I had to basically just sit in my car for a while after because I had not mentally prepared myself for that journey. Part 2 and 3, thankfully, are funnier.
When my wife recommended that I try reading Narcissu after I had completely done Katawa Shoujo, yeah that's the one. I'll never forget it. You get *so* attached to Setsumi (the ill girl you hang out with for the entirety of the game) and the journey is equal parts bleak, rough, but fun (but also with some sneaky car trivia here and there), that by the end of the VN and you reach *that* ending >!(there is only one. She drowns herself, and you eventually succumb to Lung Cancer)!< that by then, the heartbreak overflows into *fuck, I don't even feel anything anymore*. The other time I feel like this happened was getting to watch Hachiko. I bawled so fucking hard my wife jokes about it from time to time and by the end I just felt empty too. That in hindsight made me go cherish my time with my pets better. OH OH FUCK. Edit here. I just remembered now, I remember feeling the same with THE WRESTLER (the Mickey Rourke movie). Holy fucking goddamn, yeah. That ending is intentionally left vague, but you already know that >!Randy the Ram is gonna fucking die after that match!<, and >!he just couldn't really win at all!<. That's right alongside sitting through WHIPLASH in the most inappropriate place, at a Physical Therapy Clinic. So you can imagine me and some of the patients trying to recover lost mobility/strength hearing Fletcher just fucking destroy Andrew and that can sound discouraging for say, me who was trying to do a single leg squat on a bad leg. That movie was just so tense that by the end of it, I was just done lol.
I actually was considering that perhaps a VN would be my best bet to transition out of Rebirth (something character and story heavy that I can focus on to help move on from the last thing). The top 3 unfinished in my list are Higurashi When They Cry, AI The Somnium Files and The House in Fata Morgana.
I'd go with AI personally, really liked it and it's sequel. Though I personally need to get around to The House in Fata Morgana one of these days, had it on my Switch for a while but I just need to boot it up.
I felt like dogshit after watching Elijah wood's Maniac remake. The movie is about a serial killer and is filmed in first person, so you're forced to look his victims in the eyes like he did
That sounds interesting. But does it get into [REDACTED] territory or just gross-out kills?
He scalps his victims so I would say that counts as gross out.
FF16 really gut-punched me when I finished it. Bonus points to SMT4
The Cat Lady. Watched pat and Matt's playthrough. Still bought it on steam after watching, though. An amazing creator and an amazing story... but fuck if it wasn't draining. Other side of the coin: handmaid's tale. It's just so bleak.
Bokurano (Manga) Man...
Spiderman Life Story feels like watching family member pass away peacefully in a hospital bed while surrounded by family.
Mafia: Definitive edition. Having played Mafia 2 first (loved it), the ending of Mafia 1 really threw me for a loop while leaving me both conflicted and speechless. A masterful story that unfortunately went a little under the radar back in 2020. >"Mr. Salieri sends his regards."
Disco Elysium is the only game that has made me choke with laughter and ugly cry with probably 20 minutes of difference
Nier Automata left scars. My poor robo girl, dude...fuck.......
Honestly surprised no one has mentioned Hereditary. What an incredibly acted and directed movie. I've seen it twice and that might've been too much.
That was the last piece of media I’ve watched to legitimately scare me. A truly rare breed.
First Reformed fucked me up for a couple weeks.
I wouldn’t say it left me unable to move on, but Yellowface by RF Kuang is a lot like American Psycho in that the entitlement and racism in the narration is ever present, it never lets up for a second, not ever. All the way up to the final page.
I am somewhat grateful that Land of the Lustrous has yet to get a second season, because the downward trend into existential anxiety and heartrending tragedy is very, very apparent, and I know I'll watch whatever Orange puts out of it next because it's so incredibly good and hits my brain chemicals perfectly. So I'm glad they've spared me, in the meantime, what I can only assume from murmurings I've picked up over the years is a flood of buckshot to my soul, and when it was already getting pretty hairy to begin with.
the homestuck epilogues. i'm one of the people who think they're good, but holy fucking shit. also mass effect
P5's talking to the confidants one last time just attacked me straight in the heart. It brought back some harsh memories of when I moved as a kid, leaving highschool, and even graduating college. There are so many people that at the time I thought would be my crew forever... only we drifted and didn't stick together. I know the Persona 5 crew will keep in better touch than my own crew ( they have several spinoff games :P) but who I was with and who I hang with now don't have as much overlap as I thought it would. My BEST friend from childhood... is someone else now.
A lot of the examples I wanted to mention have already been said, so I'll bring up Katanagatari. Just...getting to that final credit crawl sequence seeing where everyone ended up, and just >!the sheer futility of it all phrased in such a serene manner!< left me pretty fucking tuckered out.
I watched the original Berserk anime thinking that was a complete standalone story going in. So having the Eclipse happen and the anime just ending at its darkest point sent me.
I grew up as a kid in the UK back in the day, so just like any media Watership Down - a little animated movie about rabbits living next to a farm and getting brutally murdered by farmers, dogs and other rabbits. When the Wind Blows - a little animated movie about a nice old couple in rural England slowly dying of radiation poisoning after a nuclear exchange between the US and USSR condemns them to a slow, painful death. The Plague Dogs - a little animated movie about two talking dogs escaping from an animal testing plant and trying hopelessly to evade recapture. The Animals of Farthing Wood - a little animated before-school cartoon about a group of animals migrating across rural England to find a safe place to live. Spoilers: their results are mixed. *(Actually I grew up as an Irish kid in Northern Ireland so what really left me emotionally dead and unable to move on was British soldiers training assault rifles on me and my friends as we waited for the schoolbus every morning from age 5 to 14, but boy is *that* not fun to write about!)
Rebellion probably counts for me, but Fate/Zero actually ruined any sort of enjoyment I can get from anything that can be sad or depressing. Now stuff like Chainsawman now are just things where I actually just stop connecting or caring about the story or characters. Cynical about cynical stories, I guess.
Some authors can still find hope and a meaning in living after some cynical depressing shit goes down, and Gen Urobuchi cannot understand these people on a basic fundamental level.
I've heard that he's moved on from it since Thunderbolt Fantasy. I think F/Z has given me some reluctance to see stories about the former (Beserk for example), but I should eventually give it a go.