Exploring Autism with Anime
featuring our beloved Yui
This article was submitted to a psych magazine, hence the tone at the start might feel different
I love anime. It has become a part of my being and has helped me make sense of the world. I tend to dislike gore and violence in media which has pushed me to explore anime genres like "cute girls doing cute things" (CGDCT). The defining anime of this genre is K-On! by Kyoto Animation, in which we follow five high-school girls making a light-music (read: pop music) band. It does not have an overarching plot, nor any cool action sequences. What makes K-On! special are its characters and their interactions while they live their fun normal lives.
The protagonist - if there can be one in this type of show - is Yui Hirasawa. She's introduced as a klutz, with the entire first sequence of the first episode dedicated to her clumsy efforts to reach school. She does not have a mind of her own and joins the Light Music Club on a whim. By anime logic, she's overpowered at playing the guitar.
How do you relate to such a character who seems to be the most trope-filled main character possible? By making her human.
Even if Yui isn't autistic, she's certainly monotropic. What does that mean? To summarise, monotropism is a theory trying to explain autism in a neurodiversity-affirming manner. It posits certain people have trouble allocating bandwidth to multiple interests or people, getting confined to an attention tunnel. Yui may be exceptional at guitar but she struggles in her exams, having to repeat a test in the show.
But Sam, many people struggle with studies. How is it an autistic trait?
Yui manages to study for the retest and gets a high score. Yay! But now she's unable to play the guitar and it takes some time to get back her skill level, indicating she can only really focus on a few things at a time. Yui's abilities aren't typical either - she has natural perfect pitch. And she gets carried along practising the guitar late into the night, showing how she's unable to disconnect from the flow state, from the attention tunnel.
There are other examples of Yui "stimming" (self-stimulating - a thing many autistic people do) in the anime. She plays with Mio's calluses for an extended amount of time, and she's overly physically affectionate with her junior Azusa.
There does arise a question though - how much of Yui's behaviour is autism and how much of it is her bubbly personality? There is no clear answer from the creators. More than that, people are more than their diagnoses. Nonetheless, she's a comfort character to many people across the world. She's a comfort character to me. Through all her awkwardness and oodles of talent, she unabashedly strives to live her best life. As Yui herself says, "Fun things are fun!"