I've been working on characterization for Nanoha Takamachi, and doing all kinds of research. Labster was reviewing some of my work, and he noted that I had her introspecting on her emotions quite a bit. When I pointed out that it probably helped that my character, who is on the Autism spectrum, was mentoring her and gently nudging her along that path, Labster conceded that it made sense.
But then I thought about it a bit more.
Autism isn't something that's cut-and-dry. There's a reason why it's now referred to as a spectrum. And there are quite a few people out there that you wouldn't think are autistic... except that if you stop and think on it, you'll start to realize that the signs were right under your nose all along. And these will usually be things that you just brush off as personality quirks.
Quirks like the ones Nanoha Takamachi has.
I'll go over what I feel are some of the most telling signs that Nanoha Takamachi is on the autism spectrum. Please feel free to confirm, deny, and criticize. I want to be absolutely sure that I'm not the only person seeing this before I make it an actual part of her characterization.
First off, one of the classic examples of ASD that Nanoha exhibits: an unusual ability to hyper-focus, even to the point of ignoring bodily needs and functions. This is Nanoha to a T, and something that even led to her detriment in the off-screen Gadget Drone Incident where she pushed herself so hard that she permanently crippled her Linker Core. (This is something that gets glossed over - that injury was a permanent one. Had it not happened, Nanoha would have been even more powerful than we saw in StrikerS!)
And it was clearly implied, too, that she spent quite a bit of time recovering from that. Hurting yourself like that... while the details aren't clear, there's very few situations that occur that can cause a person to push their body BEYOND the point that it breaks. That goes beyond mere adrenaline surges. That is a monomaniacal focus on an objective that usually only people on the Autism Spectrum can muster.
That's because it's one of our specialties - shutting out something that's annoying us. (Yes, I'm on the autism spectrum myself. And as the saying goes, it takes one to know one.) And if we can't ignore it? We tend to go apeshit and let that be the driving force for our actions.
Another thing I've noticed, and I'm sure others have too, is that Nanoha is incredibly compassionate. To the point where it incites violence on her part.
This is yet another Autistic trait.
Now, I know some people might be thinking here. "Compassion? With Autism? WTF?"
But that's the thing. People who are on the Autism Spectrum? We're hypersensitive to all kinds of things. And this is especially so for our own emotions. This is why someone on the Spectrum having a meltdown is such a spectacularly horrible sight to behold. We become like the emotional equivalent of that train wreck scene in the film, Super 8. Yes, being on the Autism spectrum actually is that intense.
The ironic part is that the disorder commonly confused with Autism for lack of empathy is actually Antisocial Personality Disorder, or Sociopathy, which is so diametrically opposed to Autism that you might as well be comparing PCs to Macs.
The point is, a fair number people on the spectrum are very much capable of empathy. I'm one such person, and I can tell when something is bothering someone, clear as day. For most of us, the issue is communication. While I can tell something is wrong, I can't figure out what it is for the life of me - not without asking some very direct and potentially tactless-seeming questions. That, and how we communicate our emotions to others. Many of us seem emotionless because a lot of us never really learned how to properly emote. For a long time, just smiling was something that felt horribly awkward for me, and I had to spend HOURS practicing a smile in front of a mirror until I could do one that looked natural.
And poor Nanoha? She has so much trouble with communicating her feelings that sometimes that she feels the best route for communicating her feelings to people who just aren't getting her is through her fists. So to speak, anyways. Hence all the memage about people getting "befriended" by the girl.
To be fair, she got better with age. But when we're the age she was at in MGLN and MGLN-As? Yeeeaaaahhhh. Let's just say: love HURTS.
Another clear indicator is her troubles with getting going in the mornings. One of the more "d'awww" inducing things we saw in MGLN was how she would groggily grope around for her phone, trying to hit that snooze button for just five more minutes of blissful slumber. Thing is, though, this is a classic symptom of ASD. And you don't need to take my word for it. Just watch this short video about the connections between autism and difficulties sleeping: https://youtu.be/Q2a75v8wzgU
Another sign is how susceptible Nanoha is to anxiety.
Yeah, I know, right? Her? Anxious?
But this is another bit of character development that often gets swept under the rug. When Nanoha was five years old, her father, Shiro Takamachi, suffered some kind of accident and was put into a coma for thirty days. Now, a common thing in Japanese culture is that no matter what the situation is or how many hands you have available, everyone is supposed to have some kind of job doing something.
Nanoha's mother, her brother, and her sister (actually cousin, but that's more of a Triangle Heart thing), all had things they could do. But not Nanoha, because she was too young to really take on any kind of additional responsibility beyond her own needs. So what does a helpless child like that do?
She waits.
In her case, she waited by her father's bedside for THIRTY. DAYS. (This is and of itself is yet another sign of ASD - the stubborn refusal to do anything else but wait at her father's bedside.) And no one had the heart to dissuade her from that.
That kind of thing leaves a mark on a kid. Usually in the form of anxiety of one form or another. For Nanoha, this takes the form of feelings of inadequacy - that if she isn't good enough, then she is likely to lose someone important to her. Hence her tendency to drive herself to ruin. And we actually get to see a bit of this characterization referred to during StrikerS, where an older and wiser Nanoha tells Teana Lanster about how she overexerted herself at Teana's age, and suffered dearly for it.
Another clue is one tends to fly under the radar because of Japanese culture: Nanoha's tendency for orderliness. Now, like I said, this one tends to fly under the radar... but that's because of a stereotype. People think "Japan" and they automatically think of neatly ordered and tidy spaces, right? Well, the fact of the matter is that even in Japan, there's quite a few slovenly people. We even see it in anime from time to time, and from people you would least expect. Witness Aisaka Taiga in Toradora. The girl comes from an affluent family... but her behaviors are utterly slovenly. Her own apartment is full of trash, she'll blow her nose and wipe it on whatever is at hand, and so on and so forth.
But definitely not Nanoha. Her room is absolutely PRISTINE. How many nine year old kids do you know that has a room that is that tidy without Mom and/or Dad being the ones to pick everything up? Her family simply does not have time for it. They're all busy working in the family's patisserie shop. The cleanly state of that kid's room? That's all Nanoha there.
The one Big Sign of Autism that I don't see on Nanoha is a tendency for clumsiness. Us autisics tend to have a lot of issues with motor control and hand-eye coordination. But here, I have my theories as well.
In the show, we see that the family does have a dojo, one in which they practice their family style of sword play - the Takamachi Twin Kodachi Style. Everyone but Momoko and Nanoha practice this style. Momoko because she married into the family. But Nanoha? Why wouldn't she practice? She is definitely Shiro Takamachi's daughter, after all.
Simple answer: She can't get the hang of it. (Although she does very much enjoy watching the rest of her family practice, and finds it calming to do so.)
Granted, there are people on the autism spectrum who do practice dance or martial arts or something of that sort... but these people will tell you quite readily, it was a labor of love that required incredible focus and no small amount of time devoted to it in order to become any good with these skills. Granted, Nanoha did eventually have to learn Strike Arts - the formal Midchildan hand-to-hand combat style - when she joined TSAB. But that was something that she likely had to put a lot of time and effort into, and by order of her chain of command. It probably helps that she had Fate as a sparring partner the whole way through. And Fate, much like Nanoha, isn't known for pulling her punches.
Insert mental imagery of Fate going all git gud scrub at Nanoha... albeit in a loving and supportive way.
One other note I'd like to part on here is how incredibly mature Nanoha is. A lot of people get caught up in that it's anime and that a child is being portrayed that they often brush aside the various precocious quirks that scream "FAR TOO MATURE FOR BEING NINE!" And those that do notice tend to feel that she scans as an adult with her mentality. Which is really how she is - she's like a tiny adult, except she's hampered by lacking an adult's experience and wisdom.
Recall in ShadowJack's In Which I Watch threads for MGLN and MGLN-As. He always made a joke about how these characters are children by having their eye-level at the bottom of the panels. But the thing is? There's a subtle clue there about these kids in that joke. In the work I'm doing, my character will remark: "...children that have seen and experienced the things those two have? They can still have a child’s desires and needs. But at the same time you can’t sit them at the children’s table anymore. You would be gravely mistaken to treat them with any less respect than you would afford an adult of your peer."
ShadowJack's visual joke suddenly seems a bit too on the nose now, doesn't it? The perspective of the panels are set for an adult, even though they can barely fit into said perspective.
Children on the Austism Spectrum - especially at the high-functioning end - are incredibly intelligent and highly perceptive individuals. While social matters can go flying over their heads, most everything else they catch in the steel-tooth bear traps that their minds are and assimilated into their intellect. And this tends to lead to these children being far more mature than most people think they ought to be. Add in the emotional trauma Nanoha had from her father being in a coma? That not gasoline you're pouring onto the fire there. That's oxy-acetaline.
Boom.
So, am I right or am I wrong? Kindly discourse over this. For now, I'm signing off and hitting the sack.
But then I thought about it a bit more.
Autism isn't something that's cut-and-dry. There's a reason why it's now referred to as a spectrum. And there are quite a few people out there that you wouldn't think are autistic... except that if you stop and think on it, you'll start to realize that the signs were right under your nose all along. And these will usually be things that you just brush off as personality quirks.
Quirks like the ones Nanoha Takamachi has.
I'll go over what I feel are some of the most telling signs that Nanoha Takamachi is on the autism spectrum. Please feel free to confirm, deny, and criticize. I want to be absolutely sure that I'm not the only person seeing this before I make it an actual part of her characterization.
First off, one of the classic examples of ASD that Nanoha exhibits: an unusual ability to hyper-focus, even to the point of ignoring bodily needs and functions. This is Nanoha to a T, and something that even led to her detriment in the off-screen Gadget Drone Incident where she pushed herself so hard that she permanently crippled her Linker Core. (This is something that gets glossed over - that injury was a permanent one. Had it not happened, Nanoha would have been even more powerful than we saw in StrikerS!)
And it was clearly implied, too, that she spent quite a bit of time recovering from that. Hurting yourself like that... while the details aren't clear, there's very few situations that occur that can cause a person to push their body BEYOND the point that it breaks. That goes beyond mere adrenaline surges. That is a monomaniacal focus on an objective that usually only people on the Autism Spectrum can muster.
That's because it's one of our specialties - shutting out something that's annoying us. (Yes, I'm on the autism spectrum myself. And as the saying goes, it takes one to know one.) And if we can't ignore it? We tend to go apeshit and let that be the driving force for our actions.
Another thing I've noticed, and I'm sure others have too, is that Nanoha is incredibly compassionate. To the point where it incites violence on her part.
This is yet another Autistic trait.
Now, I know some people might be thinking here. "Compassion? With Autism? WTF?"
But that's the thing. People who are on the Autism Spectrum? We're hypersensitive to all kinds of things. And this is especially so for our own emotions. This is why someone on the Spectrum having a meltdown is such a spectacularly horrible sight to behold. We become like the emotional equivalent of that train wreck scene in the film, Super 8. Yes, being on the Autism spectrum actually is that intense.
The ironic part is that the disorder commonly confused with Autism for lack of empathy is actually Antisocial Personality Disorder, or Sociopathy, which is so diametrically opposed to Autism that you might as well be comparing PCs to Macs.
The point is, a fair number people on the spectrum are very much capable of empathy. I'm one such person, and I can tell when something is bothering someone, clear as day. For most of us, the issue is communication. While I can tell something is wrong, I can't figure out what it is for the life of me - not without asking some very direct and potentially tactless-seeming questions. That, and how we communicate our emotions to others. Many of us seem emotionless because a lot of us never really learned how to properly emote. For a long time, just smiling was something that felt horribly awkward for me, and I had to spend HOURS practicing a smile in front of a mirror until I could do one that looked natural.
And poor Nanoha? She has so much trouble with communicating her feelings that sometimes that she feels the best route for communicating her feelings to people who just aren't getting her is through her fists. So to speak, anyways. Hence all the memage about people getting "befriended" by the girl.
To be fair, she got better with age. But when we're the age she was at in MGLN and MGLN-As? Yeeeaaaahhhh. Let's just say: love HURTS.
Another clear indicator is her troubles with getting going in the mornings. One of the more "d'awww" inducing things we saw in MGLN was how she would groggily grope around for her phone, trying to hit that snooze button for just five more minutes of blissful slumber. Thing is, though, this is a classic symptom of ASD. And you don't need to take my word for it. Just watch this short video about the connections between autism and difficulties sleeping: https://youtu.be/Q2a75v8wzgU
Another sign is how susceptible Nanoha is to anxiety.
Yeah, I know, right? Her? Anxious?
But this is another bit of character development that often gets swept under the rug. When Nanoha was five years old, her father, Shiro Takamachi, suffered some kind of accident and was put into a coma for thirty days. Now, a common thing in Japanese culture is that no matter what the situation is or how many hands you have available, everyone is supposed to have some kind of job doing something.
Nanoha's mother, her brother, and her sister (actually cousin, but that's more of a Triangle Heart thing), all had things they could do. But not Nanoha, because she was too young to really take on any kind of additional responsibility beyond her own needs. So what does a helpless child like that do?
She waits.
In her case, she waited by her father's bedside for THIRTY. DAYS. (This is and of itself is yet another sign of ASD - the stubborn refusal to do anything else but wait at her father's bedside.) And no one had the heart to dissuade her from that.
That kind of thing leaves a mark on a kid. Usually in the form of anxiety of one form or another. For Nanoha, this takes the form of feelings of inadequacy - that if she isn't good enough, then she is likely to lose someone important to her. Hence her tendency to drive herself to ruin. And we actually get to see a bit of this characterization referred to during StrikerS, where an older and wiser Nanoha tells Teana Lanster about how she overexerted herself at Teana's age, and suffered dearly for it.
Another clue is one tends to fly under the radar because of Japanese culture: Nanoha's tendency for orderliness. Now, like I said, this one tends to fly under the radar... but that's because of a stereotype. People think "Japan" and they automatically think of neatly ordered and tidy spaces, right? Well, the fact of the matter is that even in Japan, there's quite a few slovenly people. We even see it in anime from time to time, and from people you would least expect. Witness Aisaka Taiga in Toradora. The girl comes from an affluent family... but her behaviors are utterly slovenly. Her own apartment is full of trash, she'll blow her nose and wipe it on whatever is at hand, and so on and so forth.
But definitely not Nanoha. Her room is absolutely PRISTINE. How many nine year old kids do you know that has a room that is that tidy without Mom and/or Dad being the ones to pick everything up? Her family simply does not have time for it. They're all busy working in the family's patisserie shop. The cleanly state of that kid's room? That's all Nanoha there.
The one Big Sign of Autism that I don't see on Nanoha is a tendency for clumsiness. Us autisics tend to have a lot of issues with motor control and hand-eye coordination. But here, I have my theories as well.
In the show, we see that the family does have a dojo, one in which they practice their family style of sword play - the Takamachi Twin Kodachi Style. Everyone but Momoko and Nanoha practice this style. Momoko because she married into the family. But Nanoha? Why wouldn't she practice? She is definitely Shiro Takamachi's daughter, after all.
Simple answer: She can't get the hang of it. (Although she does very much enjoy watching the rest of her family practice, and finds it calming to do so.)
Granted, there are people on the autism spectrum who do practice dance or martial arts or something of that sort... but these people will tell you quite readily, it was a labor of love that required incredible focus and no small amount of time devoted to it in order to become any good with these skills. Granted, Nanoha did eventually have to learn Strike Arts - the formal Midchildan hand-to-hand combat style - when she joined TSAB. But that was something that she likely had to put a lot of time and effort into, and by order of her chain of command. It probably helps that she had Fate as a sparring partner the whole way through. And Fate, much like Nanoha, isn't known for pulling her punches.
Insert mental imagery of Fate going all git gud scrub at Nanoha... albeit in a loving and supportive way.
One other note I'd like to part on here is how incredibly mature Nanoha is. A lot of people get caught up in that it's anime and that a child is being portrayed that they often brush aside the various precocious quirks that scream "FAR TOO MATURE FOR BEING NINE!" And those that do notice tend to feel that she scans as an adult with her mentality. Which is really how she is - she's like a tiny adult, except she's hampered by lacking an adult's experience and wisdom.
Recall in ShadowJack's In Which I Watch threads for MGLN and MGLN-As. He always made a joke about how these characters are children by having their eye-level at the bottom of the panels. But the thing is? There's a subtle clue there about these kids in that joke. In the work I'm doing, my character will remark: "...children that have seen and experienced the things those two have? They can still have a child’s desires and needs. But at the same time you can’t sit them at the children’s table anymore. You would be gravely mistaken to treat them with any less respect than you would afford an adult of your peer."
ShadowJack's visual joke suddenly seems a bit too on the nose now, doesn't it? The perspective of the panels are set for an adult, even though they can barely fit into said perspective.
Children on the Austism Spectrum - especially at the high-functioning end - are incredibly intelligent and highly perceptive individuals. While social matters can go flying over their heads, most everything else they catch in the steel-tooth bear traps that their minds are and assimilated into their intellect. And this tends to lead to these children being far more mature than most people think they ought to be. Add in the emotional trauma Nanoha had from her father being in a coma? That not gasoline you're pouring onto the fire there. That's oxy-acetaline.
Boom.
So, am I right or am I wrong? Kindly discourse over this. For now, I'm signing off and hitting the sack.
