I too tend to wear my heart on my sleeve when watching something, and anime is no exception. I’ve found myself crying on many occasions in response to emotional ‘moments’. Haibane Renmei was a good example – those last two episodes had me in tears on a pretty darn regular basis, and when Reki finally got her Day of Flight… I was a wreck. I don’t think one needs to necessarily have experienced the situations or emotions that the characters are going through to ‘get’ such moments, and neither do I think that one needs to picture oneself as one of the characters. All one needs is sufficient empathy to put oneself into the shoes of the characters onscreen. That was certainly the case with Haibane for me. I didn’t recognise myself as either Reki or Rakka – I simply understood how both of them must feel, and that was enough.

One thing I would say – Rakka’s emotional understanding of Reki’s situation actually did come from personal experience. It was her own experience of being trapped in the circle of sin, and being saved from it by another (the crow) that allowed her to see into Reki’s heart and manage to break through the shell that Reki had built around her. So we as an audience, though we might see ourselves as ‘the saved’ or ‘the saver’, should remember that Rakka is actually both. I think that’s a wonderful character point, a fabulous piece of writing by Yoshitoshi ABe, and one of the reasons that Haibane Renmei remains one of my favourite anime series.

Kanon for example, cried at some stages there. Fullmoon wo Sagashite, cried there as well. When thinking back on Gundam Seed and hearing “Find the Way” I usually get a little tear in my eye.

So yes, I did cry when I watched Aeris die and I hated Sepiroth for killing her and wanted to do all sorts of things with him to kill him slowly.

Deaths in all ways will have an effect on the people. In which way we react is up to us all. We grow stronger and come out of our shell, we go even further into ourselves to block out the reality or get so sad we follow the one who died.