As someone who fell completely and utterly in love with anime not long before I got my autism diagnosis, I think it’s fair to say that watching anime causes autism. Pack up the research folks, it’s not vaccines that cause autism, but it’s the consumption of anime as a medium that causes autism. We’ve cracked the code and it’s all part of Japan’s masterplan to take over the world.
Or maybe there’s a different reason why so many neurodivergent people seem to take an interest in the sort of storytelling that comes out of anime and manga. Perhaps there’s more to it than meets the eye. It’s a topic of discussion that I’ve had my eyes on for quite a while and what better way to finish autism awareness month than by combining two things I love talking about: Anime and autism.
Trying to find actual research on this topic was difficult. I found several bloggers who had tinkered with the concept in much a similar way that I’m doing right now, but the only thing I found that could be considered research was a research on the link between autism and visual stimming by Rose et al(2024), which I will link to at the end of this blog. This paper spends time addressing the different ways that the ASD community is looked at, both as non-contributing as well as culture defining. It then puts a lens to stimming, which is a concept I only recently learned about. To explain stimming in my own words, it’s the act of stimulating your senses. It’s kind of what fidget toys were meant to do, but lately it seems to have taken on a more broader meaning. With animation as a form of stimming, this article goes into the connection between the two. It’s an interesting way to look at things and I quite liked reading through it – barring the wall of sources which is inevitable but still annoying to read through in actual research – and see what the authors think. They speak of not falling in line with the trend of masking and making people on the spectrum appear more neurotypical and I’m a big proponent for that. But the link that I’ve seen between autism and anime is a little bit different from theirs, and it’s something I want to go into today.
Some of the first anime I watched were shonen action shows. For those who are normally only here for my autism-related posts and know very little about anime, let me explain. Shonen is quite simply the Japanese word for “young man”. That basically makes shonen manga and anime their version of young adult novels. Stories that are easy to pick up by teenagers but can regularly still be enjoyed by an older audience. Think of your Hunger Games, Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, but they’d be comics and cartoons instead. Popular shows in this genre that made it to the west include Dragonball, Pokémon, Digimon and with a recent Netflix adaptation; One Piece. All these stories are light in their subject matter for the most part, although One Piece can be enjoyed on multiple levels, but we’ll get to that later. This of course isn’t the only genre of anime there is, but it is the way a lot of young men first encounter the genre. And I still like quite a few shows in this genre to this day and watch them regularly with the aforementioned One Piece being an all time favorite of mine. A lot of the appeal of these shows – especially to those who are neurodivergent – are the directness of the story and the characters. Sometimes when I was younger and I would watch a dramatic scene in a live action movie I couldn’t really get invested all that much. With anime it was different. Let’s actually go back to One Piece for that for a little bit.
One Piece tells the story of a young man becoming a pirate, sailing the world, amassing allies and enemies and fixing injustice along the way. As time goes on it gets out of hand and they basically become freedom fighters dealing with a corrupt world government, but we’ll not get into that today. I want to focus on one of my favorite arcs in the story here that happens early on. Nami – the crew’s navigator and the inspiration for my cat’s name – has been working for a pirate crew to pay back a debt her town has to him. After betraying the main cast and then in turn being betrayed by Arlong – this pirate captain – and losing all the money she’d spent a decade of hard work on, she breaks down and cries, asking Luffy and his friends to help her. Luffy agrees and beats the crap out of this Arlong figure. This scene had me crying my eyes out so badly I couldn’t even see the screen anymore. To this day I cannot watch this scene without crying and for years I wondered why anime would get such a primal emotional reaction from me. After my autism diagnosis I think it clicked for me. The way emotions are portrayed in cartoons, drawings and comics are often exaggerated. Big watery eyes, tears rolling down a character’s face and almost forming a puddle at their feet, twisted facial expressions, over the top laughter, very visible and clear anger. They literally and figuratively paint you a picture of what the characters are feeling at that moment. It’s not that they’re more accurate than the emotions that human actors portray, but a lot of people who are neurodivergent struggle with human emotions and facial expressions. When they’re drawn and made more exaggerated, they’re much easier to understand and you don’t need to piece things together, losing out on the moment. For me personally, the key to neurodivergent people being drawn to anime lies in this exact thing. It is much easier to relate thus it the emotions hit much better.
Another factor of anime being so successful in calling up emotions – at least for me in particular – is the sound and music design. Either Japanese musicians are built differently or they’re doing something that relates more with me personally, but when that soundtrack hits at just the right moment you know damn well that I’m bawling my eyes out on command. If you combine the stimming of colors and sounds with the very direct storytelling and the often over the top emotions, you get a very pleasant thing to hyperfixate on. And because anime is a medium, not a genre, there are many different types of shows to choose from. I think the big reason why I believe the stimming part of anime to be less relevant than the emotions on display is because I strongly feel that manga – the comics that anime are often based upon – has the same effect. I still vividly remember sitting in the bus on my way home from an internship and struggling not to cry at the manga I was reading because I knew that some of the students I taught were also on that bus and I didn’t want to look weird. It’s truly a magical way of storytelling that really resonates with me in ways I never expected when my friend told me to watch this strange cartoon in which girls had cat ears. Don’t ask.
But that is my thoughts on this subject in a quick summary. None of this is based on proper research and all of it is based on my own experiences, so it’s likely very different for other people. There’s a good reason we refer to autism as a spectrum in modern times and there are many people on the spectrum who have no interest in anime and manga whatsoever, but would much rather watch live action movies. As deep as we could get into this topic, at the end of the day stories and art are meant to entertain us. They’re meant to convey meaning, emotions and values from one person to another. (important note, I said person, not AI). And for me, anime does that best of all. If you find this subject interesting and would like to chat about it, I would love to have a conversation in the comments down below. There are some other subjects that are related to this I wanted to talk about, but it felt like the post would get too long, so let me know if you want to read those in the future. I’ll at the very least talk about how March comes in like a lion gives us a masterclass on displaying mental health and anxiety in such a clear way that anyone could feel the emotions themselves. Also as mentioned before, I’ll put the source I used below. Thanks for reading!
Rose, M. C., Galbraith, P. W., & Thomas-Parr, G. (2024). Stim culture: Outlining anime’s appeal to the autistic community. International Journal of Cultural Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779241293159
Opal Kaharis 