In the near future, a Virtual Reality Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (VRMMORPG) called Sword Art Online has been released where players control their avatars with their bodies using a piece of technology called Nerve Gear. One day, players discover they cannot log out, as the game creator is holding them captive unless they reach the 100th floor of the game's tower and defeat the final boss. However, if they die in the game, they die in real life. Their struggle for survival starts now...
This anime contains 37 potentially triggering events.
You can kinda answer this either way– Kirito is mistaken for a woman in the second season, and uses this to his advantage to befriend a female player. He is not *actually* trans however, did not intend to be perceived as female, and had no further motive than befriending her.
In the first episode they throw rocks at a wild boar. And then I think they kill it. It’s in the virtual reality world so technically it’s mot real but still upsetting to see.
A young girl's pet dragon dies on screen after being clubbed in mid-air by a large, hostile ape.
Deaths in Sword Art Online, being set in a virtual reality video game, are sometimes emotionally impactful but rarely gruesome in the first half of Season 1, consisting of the creature or person being instantly annihilated, shattering into shiny blue polygons that simply float away and disappear.
It's a fairly big plot point in the first season that an animal companion is killed. The main character and her owner work together to revive it though.
Honestly this is the main reason season 1 of sword art online kinda sucks, Asuna is raped several times, and other characters are put in situations that force them to do something sexual, for instance a character is lifted up upside down so her skirt will fall down. And in season 2 Sinon is assaulted, though it is not as traumatic as the others
Someone is hanged and dies, but it later turns out to be an act. That person is okay but they are visibly hanged by the neck with a rope from a building. Since the setting is a virtual reality, he turns into pixels, to show as if he died.
Yui's death, while upsetting, is ultimately reversed in the following arc, seeing as she is an AI program, she is easily restored and her code turned into a game object by a protagonist
Oooooh yeah! Before the author new how to write, this was his cheat code, throw naked woman into shower/bath for no reason. Not including the movie, I don't believe there is any nudity but it comes close... a lot
A character is attacked with a syringe in Season 2, though the attack is unsuccessful and is blocked by a piece of plastic stuck to the character's chest
A protagonists's love interest outright says that they will kill themselves if that protagonist were to die, stating that they cannot live without the other.
There are several shots of people jumping off of Aincrad, they cannot survive that. And given the situation they are put in, that reaction is understandable, definitely not a good reaction though
[Spoilers] During the GGO arc, Kirito is misgendered due to his feminine-looking avatar; he unfortunately takes advantage of this to befriend arc heroine Sinon
Agil survives the events of the first arc (and even then I’m pretty sure the first real deaths are of ethnically Japanese characters) and becomes a somewhat recurring character afterwards
While Kirito doesn't technically wear a dress he gets in a semi-formal outfit in season 2... basically a female disguise and because of that there are some moments of comedy
The Alfheim Arc involves Asuna’s father arranging a marriage between her (who is 17 at this point and considered to be mentally younger due to being in a comatose state for two years) and his much older business partner (age not clear but at least old enough to be a high level executive) without her consent …literally as, again, she’s also in a coma. There’s also a joke in the first episode implying an older man is grooming a teenager in a video game
On the first episode of the first season Kirito gets a paper cut, and that is the most blood I have ever seen come out of a paper cut. And near the end of season one there is quite the violent sequence between Kirito and Sugo. And if you thought that was bad just wait for Alicization.