Autism in Anime

      Being a weeb has become a popular autism stereotype. Many people with autism high functioning or otherwise commonly enjoy Japanese animation, or anime. I include myself in this having spent countless hours reading Japanese Manga, and watching anime, but looking at why autistic people are attracted to anime is not the purpose of this post. I wanted to discuss Asperger's representation in the popular medium of anime.


   There are a variety of characters that the Asperger community has claimed for their own from Japanese animation, such as the character Near , from Death Note, or Rem, from Re:Zero. There is no shortage of characters in anime showing Asperger like traits that would easily land them into that category. One of my personal favorites being Inaho Kaizka from Aldnoah zero. One of the shows that got me into anime with its protagonist. Many found him emotionless and uninteresting, but I was personally able to deeply relate to him. You could say he is one of the things that got me into anime.  Despite the general fan base preferring his counterpart Slaine, but that is also not the purpose of this post.


   The point is that none of these characters that I talked about above have actually been confirmed as autistic. Even some of the characters who seem like they were meant to represent an Aspergers person such as Inaho have been confirmed to be neurotypical.  The creators of this show have cited general quirkiness and alienating intelligence as the reason for their personalities. I have yet to find a single character from any popular or unpopular show that has been confirmed to have Aspergers.
 

   This can't be completely attributed to the show creators and mangakas not wanting to disclose that information for the sake of neurodiversity. The creator of Death Note, Tsugumi Obha ,and others have actively denied any chance of their character having any form of autism. Even the character Near showing many special interests( a token trait for aspies) and an inability to communicate with people has been confirmed to have no disorders whatsoever.

 
   I feel like this somewhat reflects Japanese culture. Anyone more educated in this subject, forgive me, because I'm going to try to figure out why Japanese culture avoids autism.


    My guess is that in Japan there is a decent amount of Aspergers people, or strange geniuses. Japan has a prolific hikimori culture of people who stay inside as nerdy hermits to avoid contact with others. That too is very aspergers like. I feel like they have the general feeling that being autistic makes you much less productive. The general stereotype that scourges this society is that Autistic people have little societal worth with cognitive delays, and communication problems making them impossible to use. This is obviously not true. Both High functioning and non high functioning people have demonstrated a lot of skill and extra talents from their autism.


    I don't think this way of thinking has really taken off in Japan though. So what Aspergers person would actually try to get a diagnosis, or tell someone. None of them would of course for the sake of their future career opportunities. Of course this will lead many mangakas to deny that their quirky bad ass has any sort of mental disorder. Or at least that's what I speculate.
 

Aspergers in Literature

Aspergers in Literature

 To my personal surprise there is very little Aspergers representation in literature. You may mention popular books featuring an Aspergers character as the protagonist such as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.  
     It's true that it gives some insight into the mind of an Aspergers character, but the example person that it gives is somewhat of a stereotype for us autistic people. The protagonist serves as an unreliable narrator who's thrown into a nuanced character drama without any understanding of the way people interact. He has difficulty understanding emotion and expressing it in a manageable way. On many occasions he doesn't have much understanding of empathy or sadness. He's also remarkably intelligent in the novel showing skill in math and science. He is the perfect example of the human robot stereotype for Aspergers people. Though these things are things which Aspergers people struggle with this story is definitely a very narrow look into the world of Aspergers.

   
So maybe an Aspergers writer would give people a better understanding of the world of Aspergers. The problem is that there are surprisingly few Asperger writers out there. Of course there are some sources that claim that Orwell, Twain, and H.G Wells were all aspies. I strongly disagree. I feel like it's becoming quite common now to place any awkward genius into the group of Aspergers, but that's a separate problem.
    The truth is that there are very few writers detailing how it's like to live life with Aspergers in a significant novel. We have looks into the way many minorities interact with different cultures which is good, but there is no literature detailing how we act in a neurotypical environment that is written by us.  I discovered this recently when looking into aspie writers and they are surprisingly few.
 
  Aspergers often corresponds with increased artistic and intellectual ability, so it should have no shortage of writers. Which leads to something that I consider a problem. The expectations of an Aspergers person. It's true that we're generally good at more left brained things like math and science, but that doesn't stop us from delving into the world of the abstract. We just do it in a different way than neurotypical people do. There is a disappointing shortage of aspie writers, and I hope that in the future us aspies will have diversified into writing.