Stellvia of the Universe/Tear Jerker

• Uchuu no Stellvia takes place in a world where war is such a distant memory that most of the teenage main characters don't even know what it is. This makes it all the more tragic when a confrontation with alien spacecraft turns suddenly, devastatingly deadly. The slow, haunting rendition of the opening theme playing in the background -- a more upbeat version of which previously played in-show during moments of triumph -- doesn't help. Neither does finding out later that the aliens were actually trying to help humanity, and only killed in self-defense. If the Foundations hadn't fired first, no one would have died.