Don Bluth/Tear Jerker

Thank God Don Bluth liked happy endings, otherwise depression rates in children would have gone way up.

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• An American Tail
• The Land Before Time
• The Secret of NIMH

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• All Dogs Go to Heaven: The very end after Charlie has died for the second time and is allowed a chance to say good-bye to Anne-Marie. The whole good-bye is sad enough but the "I love you, too" is just...
  • Judy Barsi is in this movie, too; once again, the aforementioned Reality Subtext makes the ending even worse.
    • The end credits song "Love Survives" was created in tribute to her; knowing this makes the song even MORE of a Tear Jerker.
  • "You're not my friend! You're a - BAD DOG!" always gets to this troper for some reason.
  • The ending scene hurts especially when Charlie tells Anne-Marie he's going on a trip and she asks if she'll ever see him again. It's like a parent trying to explain to their child that they're going to die soon.
• In Anastasia, after Anya and her grandmother are reunited, the camera cuts to Dimitri blowing a kiss through the window and walking off.
  • Also, when Anya finds out about the con, Dimitri's face is a combination of desperation, regret, and wanting her to see that it's not like that now.
  • "Once Upon a December." The poor princess didn't get to have her palace and her dresses and her life...
  • And once Anya and Dimitri sort their differences and stay together in the end, these tears of sadness become tears of joy. The story might screw up history bad, but still... It is all part of the whole tragedy of it all. You can debate till the cows come home whether Nicolas was a bad ruler, whether monarchy is overrated and needs to be done away with, and exactly who it was who screwed up Russia's future, but the simple fact is, Anastasia did nothing wrong. Rather like Marie Antoinette, her only crime was being born in the wrong family, at the wrong time in history, and being blamed by the (rightfully) angry common citizens for all their troubles. The "Once Upon a December" sequence highlights the fact Anastasia was not just a princess, but a person who lost her whole family through no fault of her own, and only wanted to have it back. Granted, there's a bit of the wish fulfillment for a 'golden age' and 'lost grandeur' in there too, but even so... The deeply tragic Real Life subtext makes the whole movie a bit of a I Wish It Was Real moment. All politics aside, the Romanov's didn't deserve what happened to them.
  • A related moment to nominate: after Anya and her grandmother are reunited and reminiscing about their family, looking at a picture of them. The dowager empress's words about their lost loved ones not wanting them to grieve were especially poignant.
  • This troper's realisation 10 years after watching it for the first time that the three women who gather around Anastasia are her sisters. Gutpunch, much? Not to mention seeing her little hemophiliac brother Alexis approach her, and her getting to have that last dance with her father...
• This Troper just about lost it while watching Titan A.E. when he thought Goon died saving Stith from the bomb Preed planted in her wrist communicator. When he tore it off of her arm and ran off with it before trying to toss it I could literally feel a part of my soul die. I was overjoyed to see him still alive later.
  • Finding out for sure that Cale's father was dead was even worse.

"It's not okay, It's not OKAY!"