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.