10 Heartbreaking Deaths In Anime
3. Rintaro Watches Mayuri Die Repeatedly - Steins;Gate
Steins;Gate is an immaculate beast in that it offers a grounded sci-fi story mixed with enough emotional trauma that you’d swear Jules had been consulting during production.
After main character, Okabe Rintaro, and his meme-in-a-skin-suit best friend, Daru, accidentally discover a method of sending messages, and eventually memories, into the past to alter the future, Rintaro discovers that he is the only one of his group of friends that retains any memories of past timelines once the changes take hold. Hijinks ensue as the team begins to send messages back to change their lives. The changes vary greatly from stopping the death of a parent, to full on changing the gender of one of the characters.
Their experiments are eventually discovered by a secret organization looking to keep a lid on time travel, and Rintaro and company are attacked. During the conflict, Mayuri, Rintaro’s childhood friend is shot and killed. Devastated, Rintaro uses their newly minted “Time Leap” machine to send his memories back to earlier that same day.
With his future knowledge, Rintaro successfully avoids the attack but is forced to watch Mayuri die in a different way at the exact same time. Rintaro continues to Leap in an attempt to save Mayuri but fails over and over. After watching his friend die countless times before his eyes, Rintaro learns that Mayuri’s death has become a fixed point in time and is the result of the team’s messing with the timeline.
Not only is this death felt over and over by Rintaro, the hopelessness and desperation radiates from every frame of animation. Adding to the turmoil, a method to stop Mayuri’s death is discovered, but it comes in the form of reversing all the changes made by the team during their experiments. That means the loss of a parent, the loss of a gender identity, and, for Rintaro specifically, the loss of another person that he loves.
The initial trauma is echoed again and again throughout the remainder of the series and it is some of the most emotionally exhausting, yet brilliant viewing that has ever been written.