That song is amazing and I shed tears to it.
Anyway.
Since this is apparently meant to be a general discussion for the entire series… well let’s go then. A first entry of possibly a few other things I either noticed or wanted to ask/address and didn’t really know where to put it.
First, an observation. This could be put into a character discussion but frankly… do we really need separate discussions for individual characters if most of those topics tend to be dead? And for some we need two for spoiler-free and spoilerish discussions, both of which are then dead? I’ll leave that to the staff. In any case, there isn’t even a topic for this character yet.
Let me list a few aspects of a certain psychological disorder (I won’t list everything, only things that seem relevant to me):
- impairment of social interactions (in at least two areas, like: failure to develop peer relationships, lack of modulation of behavior according to social context, weak integration of social emotional and communicative behaviors)
- abnormalities in communication (in at least one area, like: delay of the development of spoken language, not accompanied by attempts to compensate with gestures; stereotyped and repetitive use of language)
- restricted, repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests or activities (in at least one area, like: abnormal interests or abnormal intensity of interest; compulsive adherence to specific routines or rituals)
Those are common behavioral characteristics of children with autism (according to ICD-10). This list would be enough to consider giving the diagnosis (though there’s also a portion about the behavior before the age of 3 which we don’t know anything about AND of course one should never just look at a list of symptoms to make a decision, but you get my point).
The character I am thinking of is Maria. Heck, just rereading EP1 I realised how much she just parrots what others say (which is also common, often seen as a sign of stunted/delayed language development), the whole “Uu”-thing (aside its emotional significance from EP4, she uses it just too much for it to be a conscious decision, it seems more like a habit… or a stereotype behavior), her inability to make friends (and somewhat: the lack of care on her side), the strong fixation on magic/witches (with all those rules like “magical defense bestowed upon ye by Scorpion” [get over… … away from here?]). Although I guess a case could be made that her behavior might be closer to the Asperger-syndrome than having the ‘full’ autism.
Intended by Ryukishi or not? Just me connecting things that weren’t meant to be connected?
Psychotherapy in Japan is, from what I know (which is little) a touchy subject, even today. Considering we’re in the middle of the 80s, it was probably even worse. So in a way it is not surprising that no one in her environment really addressed it, since it was just such a taboo topic. So Rosa has got a point: with this behavior she will have tremendous problems in society. And if this is really autism, the chance of it just “going away” is pretty slim. Though beating and deceiving her daughter is a pretty bad way to ‘fix’ this.