Sad Kaomoji
Dejected, downcast and worn-out kaomoji, with the character doing the work named in each one. These are the faces before the tears start; the ones with tears are on the crying page.
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The two accents are the whole trick
Take (´･ω･｀): almost all of its sadness lives in the two marks at the edges. ´ sits before the left eye and ｀ sits after the right eye. Each one slopes toward the middle of the face, so together they read as brows pulled down and in. Nothing else in the face is sad: the eyes are neutral dots and ω is a small closed mouth that also turns up in cheerful faces.
The proof is that reversing them reverses the mood. Put the grave first and the acute last — (｀･ω･´) — and the same eyes and the same mouth now read as brows lifted and set, a face squaring up rather than sinking. That single swap works on any face built with the pair, which is why it is worth learning before any specific face.
Which eye characters carry it
Sadness prefers small, still eyes. ･ and ・ — the half-width and full-width middle dots — give a face that is looking without reacting. Hyphens close the eyes and read as resignation rather than sleep — add a z and the same shut eyes mean rest instead, which is the difference between this page and the sleepy faces. ◞ and ◟, two quarter-arcs from the geometric shapes, curve downward over the eyes and read as lowered lids; in (◞‸◟) the whole face is three characters and every one of them points down.
Mouths that pull down
︵ is a rotated presentation form of a bracket, which is why it makes such a good downturned mouth — it is literally a curve designed to sit on its side. ﹏ is a wavering line, a mouth that cannot hold steady. ヘ and its hiragana twin へ bend the mouth into a hard sulk, and Д is a Cyrillic capital doing duty here for its shape alone: a mouth held wide open in a groan.
The postures
orz is not a face. It is a small figure seen from the side, kneeling with the head on the floor: o is the head, r the arms and back, z the folded legs. OTL is the same posture in capitals, and _|￣|○ draws it out of box-drawing and full-width punctuation instead of letters. Use these where a face would be too small a gesture. The kneeling posture has its own Japanese name, dogeza, and the dogeza page carries many more of these figures than the three here.
Nothing on this page is leaking; the moment a tear appears the conventions change, and those belong on the crying set. Reverse the accents on any face here and you are most of the way to the angry ones. The kaomoji index covers the shared parts, and the Japanese sad-kaomoji page works through the same faces with the labels in Japanese.