While there are certainly a number of anime characters who manifest the mysterious anime cough of imminent death, anime series featuring sickly characters as main or major characters are a little more sparse. Even rarer still are anime series that give the characters a real illness rather than just have them cloaked under the cover-all explanation of “sick.”
Whether you like to see how characters spend what could be a very short life or wish to see a bit of joy as they overcome their illnesses, here are a few anime recommendations prominently featuring sickly characters and illness.
Best Anime With Illnesses
Clannad
While Tomoya in Clannad is the picture of physical health (with a few underlying mental health issues), it is his companion and later love interest Nagisa that is the chronically ill one. Throughout the series, she is described as sickly and has been since she was a child. Her illness was even so bad prior to the show that it held her back a year in school.
You watch her struggle to adjust when her illness keeps her from forming strong connection to classmates, only to see her supported by Tomoya and the friends he helps her make. However, as the series goes on, Nagisa’s illness does not get any better and she remains vulnerable and weak. Yet, even when it comes to doing something that puts her life at risk, she still seeks the joy salvaged from having done it.
Your Lie in April
While often seen as a romance show, Your Lie in April is more a coming-of-age tale for its chronically depressed main character who stopped being able to play music after his abusive mother’s death. One day he meets an energetic and musically passionate girl that turns his world upside down. Unfortunately, as the pair grow closer, you learn that she suffers from a serious illness that frequently has her going to the hospital for treatments.
If you are hoping the series has a happy ending for everyone, then you may wish to look elsewhere. It is one of the better anime tearjerkers out there.
3D Girlfriend
Much like Your Lie in April, 3D Girlfriend features a blooming romance and a coming-of-age progression for the main character. Unlike Your Lie in April, the illness of the character remains unknown for a good portion of the series. The character it afflicts maintains a normal life as much as they can, but over time, their condition begins to worsen.
It serves as one more drop of drama in the sea that is various issues that are forced upon the couple in this show. It also goes to show that everyone, no matter what they look like or how perfect they seem, has their personal battles.
The Ancient Magus’ Bride
While The Ancient Magus’ Bride doesn’t have illness as a front and center element, it does play a rather large part in the series. The main character Chise is a being that attract magic, but her body is too weak to actually handle it. As such, it made her rather sickly her entire life. Eventually, if she does not learn how to control it, it will also result in her premature death.
The antagonist of the series is also a sickly being. He is an immortal, but his he can’t say the same for his flesh. Much of his existence is trying to prevent his body from rotting and fighting off various sicknesses. Trying to cure this has pushed him to do a number of cruel experiments on people, which is what landed him firmly as the antagonist.
Looking Up At The Half-Moon
If you wish to see an anime about people hospitalized for actual illnesses, this is really your only option. It follows a boy hospitalized for Hepatitis A who meets a girl at the hospital who is hospitalized for a heart condition. They fall in love and you explore a romance between people with uncertain expiration dates.
Gunslinger Girl
Each young girl in Gunslinger Girl was a child that was orphaned or cast off. They were then cybernetically augmented to make them excellent assassins. However, these enhancements have a rather short lifespan. When that lifespan runs out and the body begins to reject them, the girls die a rather excruciating death not unlike the deterioration from an illness.
If they don’t die on a mission, they have a more pathetic fate waiting for them later. It is that which gives the series an air of melancholy.
Full Moon o Sagashite
Music anime series tend to lean on drama for plot, and what bigger drama could there be in a music anime than a girl whose voice is threatened by throat cancer?
She even stops a surgery that would remove the cancer and possibly save her life because it might take away her voice. When two shinigami appear and tell her she has only one year left to live, she is spurred forward to become a professional singer in hopes that her songs reach a special someone.
Mawaru Penguindrum
While Mawaru Penguindrum isn’t about illness and has a sort of intricate plot outside of that, the plot is all surrounding a sickly character. The series all surrounds twin brothers who take their sickly sister to an aquarium where she collapses and is revived by a mysterious entity. They promise to keep her alive if the boys can bring them a mysterious item.
Somali and the Forest Guardian
Unlike many other series on this list, illness as a theme in Somali and the Forest Guardian isn’t as on the nose and obvious. While the titular forest guardian isn’t sickly, he is near the end of his life. He is resigned to simply exhaust his lifespan and disappear from the world until he finds a little human girl. Now the story becomes a race against his time left as he tries to return this girl to any humans he can find in a world where humans are actively disliked and rare.
Of course, this becomes a bit of a found family series where the child and the guardian bond and form a father-daughter-like relationship. However, that just makes his limited life sting a little more.
Angel Beats
Everyone in Angels Beats is dead. It’s not a spoiler, they establish that in the first episode. While several died in accidents and other unclear ways, a large portion also died after being sick. The whole afterlife in Angel Beats is meant as a way for people who couldn’t enjoy their youth in life to do so in death.
Throughout the series you get a good portion of their back stories. It is what makes Angel Beats so unique. The shenanigans can have you laughing away one episode while the hard-hitting back stories of the characters can leave you crying away the next.
Do you know more anime series that are about characters with illnesses? Let fans know in the comments section below.
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