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Twilight of Spy × Family is one of the few main characters in anime who reconcile sorrow and responsibility with grace. The story of Twilight is one of loss and reinvention, driven by his composure and unmatched espionage.
War had destroyed his childhood, killed his parents, wiped out his identity, and gradually replaced his humanity with state-imposed obedience. Nevertheless, heartrending as his background may be, the anime world has given life to many characters whose tragedies have been much more profound.
Deserted children to cursed immortals, the ten anime characters that follow are the ones who have gone through immense suffering, just like Twilight experienced.
Anime Characters With Sadder Backstories Than Twilight
10. Shinichi Izumi – Parasyte: The Maxim
The life of the character Shinichi Izumi from Parasyte: The Maxim turns into horror when he is partly possessed by an alien parasite that gives him some power, but only ends up isolating him in the world of humans. He is the witness to the brutal murder of his mother and loses his identity as his human feelings are lost.
Shinichi is in a state of moral confusion, being neither human nor monster; he is half-man, half-monster, having no home. Twilight conceals his identity behind the mask of a spy, yet the very biology of Shinichi is against him, and his life becomes a constant internal struggle.
9. Rika Orimoto – Jujutsu Kaisen 0
The story of the character Rika Orimoto from Jujutsu Kaisen 0 starts with love and ends with a curse.
Following her death in an accident, her spirit transforms into a monstrous, cursed spirit attached to her childhood friend Yuta Okkotsu. Rika spends years as a frightening specter, guarding and torturing Yuta, instead of being peaceful.
Her death deprives her of innocence, and her afterlife is a world of suffering without a fixed end. The sorrow of Twilight turned him into a soldier; the love of Rika doomed her soul to agony and made her tragedy all the more haunting.
8. Nico Robin – One Piece
The character of Nico Robin belongs to One Piece. The World Government destroyed Robin's childhood by slaughtering her island of Ohara because she was researching forbidden history.
Being the only survivor, she grew up on the run, and she was declared a criminal at the age of eight. Constantly betrayed by adults who took advantage of her to earn bounty money, she was brought up believing that she had no right to live.
The war constitutes the trauma of Twilight, whereas the pain of Robin is caused by the process of survival as she has to bear the feeling of guilt for the extinction of her people and the loneliness of her life as a fugitive.
7. Kurapika – Hunter × Hunter
The tragedy of the character Kurapika from Hunter × Hunter is a result of genocide. The Kurta, his whole clan, had been killed by the Phantom Troupe on account of their scarlet eyes, which were considered trophies.
Being the only survivor, Kurapika devotes his life to vengeance and loses peace and morality to restore the stolen eyes of his people. The mission of Twilight is peace; the mission of Kurapika is retribution. Genocide, survivor's guilt, and revenge-infused obsession weigh heavily on genocide survivor Kurapika, thus making his background much darker than the secret agent.
6. Lucy – Elfen Lied
The character of Lucy from Elfen Lied, whose telekinetic arms are invisible, was born and treated cruelly since her discovery. Punished and cast away because she is different, she turns into a murderer, yet her violence is the result of a profound trauma. Isolation, experiments, and betrayal drive her beyond redemption.
Twilight conceals his emotions to live, whereas Lucy loses her humanity to the world, which never gave her any. Her narrative reflects the suffering of rejection and the irreparable harm of dehumanization.
5. Eren Yeager – Attack on Titan
The central character of Attack on Titan, a young Eren, sees his mother being brutally killed by Titans, which makes him feel an insatiable rage. He later discovered that the Titans were humans, learning that his own race was oppressed, and it one needed to commit atrocities to have freedom.
This revelation breaks his moral compass: he is a hero and a villain, striving to liberate by killing many people. Twilight lost his identity; Eren lost his soul and humanity under the weight of the paradox of killing millions to have peace.
4. Guts – Berserk
The character of Guts, from Berserk, is created in suffering. His childhood was a nightmare as he was born out of a corpse, raised by mercenaries, and continually abused.
The betrayal by his closest comrade, as an adult, results in the massacre of his allies, and he has to watch the r*pe of his love, Casca. The trauma of Twilight leads to his desire to save others; the trauma of Guts makes him feel isolated, and survival itself is rebellious. All those scars are the stories of betrayal and struggle with fate.
3. Homura Akemi – Puella Magi Madoka Magica
The misery of the character, Homura Akemi, from Puella Magi Madoka Magica cuts across time. She finds herself in the same cycle of tragedy where her best friend Madoka dies over and over again, even though she tries desperately to rescue her.
The emotional burden shatters her optimism, and love becomes obsession, and salvation despair. The sacrifice made by Twilight is one, whereas those made by Homura are infinite, which makes her one of the most unfortunate anime heroes ever--cursed to fail in love that she will never be able to save.
2. Thorfinn Karlsefni – Vinland Saga
The story of the character of Thorfinn Karlsefni from Vinland Saga is one of lost innocence. Growing up in Iceland as a jovial lad, he sees his father killed, and spends some years seeking revenge in the army of his murderer. War deprives him of sense, boyhood, and sanity.
Having avenged, he is in the end left alone in the emptiness and self-hate of having wasted his life's mission. Twilight has lost family, youth to war, and Thorfinn has lost morality, meaning, and identity, a wound that never really heals.
1. Hyakkimaru – Dororo
The tragedy of the character of Hyakkimaru from Dororo is the best. To gain power, his father sells his newborn's body parts to twelve demons. Hyakkimaru was born limbless, blind, and mute, but with the aid of prosthetics, he grows up and then hunts down demons to recover what was stolen.
Every win brings back some of his humanity as well as his capacity to experience pain, either physical or emotional. The pain of Twilight is mental, but that of Hyakkimaru is absolute, as his body, soul, and childhood were sold before he ever breathed. It is a wild goose hunt of wholeness in a world that refuses to accept his humanity.
Twilight from Spy × Family is a representation of loss, secrecy, and devotion, but his tragedy is real, and it is rooted in reality. The anime characters above are subjected to suffering beyond the limits of human resources: mutilation, genocide, betrayal, and repetitive cycles of despair.
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Since the cursed birth of Hyakkimaru to the eternal misery of Homura, their lives demonstrate how anime transforms tragedy into art —how people can rebuild their lives after losing everything.
The hurt of Twilight creates him as a hero of restraint, though these are characters that live as monuments to the pain itself, their strength created, not by choice, but by survival.
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