100 years ago, titans suddenly appeared on Earth. Soon, human civilization veered on collapse due to the titans. Humans then built a giant wall to defend themselves. Within the giant walls, humans lived in peace, but, 100 years later, the giant wall is broken.
This anime contains 102 potentially triggering events.
In season 1, Levi (a grown man in his thirties and an infamously strong soldier) severely bears Eren (a 15 y/o boy) in a public courtroom in order to convince the jury that Levi can control him. He later explains to Eren why this was necessary, especially given Eren’s powers of regeneration, and Eren forgives him (but still flinches upon seeing Levi). I think it’s important to note that when Levi knocks out Eren’s tooth by kicking him in the face, neither of them know about Eren’s regeneration ability
Levi Ackerman was abused and Historia Reiss was neglected by her mother. The main characters are child soldiers. The main antagonists were manipulated children who brought down Wall Maria and witnessed the death of their friend at age 10-11, and they’re said to have wiped out another city before the Paradis mission. Zeke Jaeger was emotionally abused by his parents.
As above, shifters generally transform by either biting their hand or slashing their palm with a knife. One shifter's Titan form regularly punches hard enough to mangle its own hands. In Season 2, two characters' hands are cut off (but eventually regrow). Season 3 has a few (short, non-graphic) scenes where fingernails are pulled out.
This is an anime about a war with humans verses what are basically giant house/building tall zombies. You can guess what kind of injuries may happen, without me putting it in graphic details.
Mina’s head is crushed during the attack on Trost in season 1. Zofia is crushed by a rock during the massacre of Liberio. Udo is trampled to death by a panicked crowd during the same event.
MANGA SPOILERS: During the Rumbling, many people are crushed to death, and a child's head is graphically squashed.
Levi breaks his leg bone in S3, also another character looses half of his arm. Alongside that, there are plenty of bones broken in the mutilations from when titans eat humans and when they fight the titans.
However, there are not broken bones noises.
s1 Ep 5. (SPOILER) At the very beginning of the episode when the titans attack, a child drops his doll and cannot retrieve it. Guess she was destroyed by the titans but that's not showing.
There are several moments where a titan is revealed suddenly and with dramatic sound effects, although personally I was not too bothered by any of these.
In the first season when Eren and Levi's squad are in the woods they mention that a character named Petra and another one peed themselves on their first mission. It is mentioned never shown.
season 1: possible spoilers for episode 5; my brightness was kinda low so idk about visual but there’s audio. A blond haired kid throws up because he’s stressed about an incoming titan attack. It’s about 5 seconds long and sort of comes out of nowhere once the camera pans away from eren but it’s pretty tame.
season 1 episode 15, around 14 min - a soldier throws up when hearing a repulsive story relating to cannibalism. audio , also pretty tame
season 3 episode 2 around 10:40 - it cuts to armin throwing up right away, audio only
season 3 episode 16 around 20:38 - a girl soldier throws up after hearing captain erwins plan, off screen audio only
season 3 episode 19 - around 5:00 , armin throws up idk if it’s visual because i moved my screen fast but there’s definitely audio. this one is pretty bad
The show's premise is that humans are fighting for survival against titans (giant humanoid monsters) that devour humans on sight. Titans are often shown eating people in graphic detail.
When in the last season the main character meets his grandfather who becomes violent while in a mental hospital. Just shouting and screaming somewhat violently but never physical.
slight spoiler warning? I'm unsure if Armin getting almost swallowed in the 5th episode of the first season counts, but it does have a trapped and enclosed kind of feeling to it. it happens at around 19:38, lasting until 19:46, and comes back up again at 21:10, and lasts until around 22:00, with Erin getting his arm bitten off and swallowed after fighting to keep the jaws of the titan open
One character lesses her weight very fast in just a couple of days in a local prison, it's shown that they gave her enough food to eat well while she was in prison, suggesting that she didn't eat purposely.
However, this doesn't develop in a ED but it can be triggering for someone.
Not in the traditional sense, but there are very "dynamic" sequences which can be disorienting for people who are sensitive to this stuff. Mainly when they show characters use their 3D gear, and the picture is from their pov.
I can't think of any times that there were jokes about someone being fat, but I do know that a character (in at least one version of the sub) is called a fatass.
No, officially in the Japanese/original version they don’t use any pronouns, but when translated to other languages that usually uses pronouns, Hange sometimes could be miscalled by female pronouns. But again, it’s a subtitle/dubbed problem, not the show’s fault.
SPOILER---------------------- no but certain groups are segregated the same way as jewish people were during ww2. It is not antisemitism though, not even a religious thing (more like racism), but the symbolism is very similar.
Ymir, a lesbian, is confirmed to have died in an off-screen death near the end of season 3 after she leaves her love interest at the end of season 2 and sends her a letter telling her that she will die soon. I would not put this into the "bury your gays" trope though, since death is a common theme within this show.
There is a flashback in which a child slave is forced to marry an old king, but it is rightfully treated as something bad and part of the characterization of the King as part of a cruel world
In one scene an older man gropes a visibly uncomfortable teenaged boy, but that is correctly depicted as a disgusting act done by a disgusting man who is immediately punished for his actions
Eren, the main character, cries quite frequently. He is ridiculed for it once. He is not made fun of, but he is called pathetic for it. (In fairness, that instance of him crying is for a very very pathetic reason, so it's not in bad taste.)
One could describe a certain "curse" that makes characters age faster and die after thirteen years of having that curse a chronic illness.
Also one little girl's mother gets left behind during the evacuation of a village due to her "bad leg" which could be a chronic illness.
The Curse of Ymir could be considered a terminal illness, since it dooms Titan shifters to die exactly 13 years after first gaining the ability to transform
In the beginning a background character falls into the water, what happens to him is not shown, presumably he climbs back on land and gets eaten by titans or rescued woth another boat