Elly

Last year for Autism Acceptance Day, my good friend @pikatrainer99 and I did a collab post about Goh and our headcanon of being him autistic. Here's a link to that post if you'd like to check it out:

Today, we'd like to talk about Sawyer from Pokemon XY, another character who we both headcanon as autistic, and who means the world to me.

Let's start with his special interest, Pokemon battles. In all of Sawyer's appearances, we can clearly see his desire to learn as much as he can about battling and to grow stronger. He greatly admires strong trainers like Steven Stone and Ash. I mean, just look at how excited he gets when he hears that Ash had won five badges!

And that's exactly what he does for the rest of the series. He spends so much time studying and training that he manages to catch up to Ash within a just season's worth of episodes! But we'll get to that later.

Before going into detail about his most obvious traits, let's go over some of the traits that we only see for brief moments, starting with his sensory sensitivities. In episode 73, we see him getting visibly overwhelmed when the crowd around him, Ash, and Clemont suddenly starts cheering. We also see him shielding his eyes from Spritzee's Dazzling Gleam attack during his battle with Valerie. Note that he's the only one to react this way to both situations. I don't know about you, but I have yet to meet a single autistic person without some kind of hypersensitivity to noise, bright light, smell, texture, etcetera.

We also see in the following episode that he sometimes unintentionally gets too close to people when he's excited, not noticing their discomfort. We see this after Ash wins his gym battle with Valerie, and Sawyer is so beyond amazed and eager to learn from him that he momentarily forgets how to act "socially appropriately". Ash and his friends are visibly uncomfortable, but of course, because they're all so kind and supportive, they don't judge him for this 🥺

We also see in the first episode of XYZ that he's an amazing artist. And I mean, AMAZING! He can literally draw Squishy the Zygarde Core exactly how it looks in its official artwork, despite only having seen it for the first time that day! While not every autistic person has to have a talent like this, it's definitely not uncommon. Growing up, Pika and I both used to draw a lot, and our drawing skills were one of the few things we took pride in because of how much praise we got for it.

Now let's talk about one of his most adorable traits, which is his habit of saying, "I've gained some EXP!" Clearly he's into video games and enjoys feeling like he's in one, because this is definitely not something you typically hear in real life. This kind of escapism is quite common in autistic people, Pika and I included. In a world that's not built for us, sometimes imagining ourselves in a fictional world that we love can be really comforting and even inspiring in some cases.

You've probably noticed that Sawyer is holding his notebook in all of the last three screenshots, which is also something I'd like to get into. Not only is his notebook a crucial part of his character, but it's also a security item. Pika and I both have security items of our own, namely our phones and our favourite Pokemon plushies, which helps bring us a lot of much-needed comfort. In episode 75, we see just how panicked Sawyer gets when he temporarily loses his notebook, which quickly leads to him becoming depressed.

We know that he values his notebook deeply because it contains all he's learned on his journey, as well as an autograph from Steven Stone. But if you look deeper, it becomes clear that it's even more to him than that. He holds his notebook close to his heart, both metaphorically and literally. He hugs it after receiving approval from Ash (which I'll also get to later) Heck, he even attached his Key Stone to it! He cherishes this notebook like it's his baby, and we find that so adorable and relatable!

Okay, now it's time to get into what's arguably the saddest part of his character: his constant need of approval from others. Pika and I, as well as countless other autistic people, are no strangers to self-doubt, especially in a world where we can't meet a lot of people's expectations. Sawyer likely grew up feeling this way too, which would explain why he's always seeking Ash's approval, since Ash is the one he looks up to the most. Throughout the series, Sawyer's constantly trying desperately to catch up to him. What's even more heartbreaking is that even after he beats Ash, he still needs reassurance from him that he's become strong 🥺

And to make matters worse, he's constantly masking his frustration whenever he fails to beat Ash. The autistic community is definitely no stranger to masking either.

It's not until the episode after his Kalos League battle with Ash when we finally see Sawyer breaking down. All those hours of training to catch up to Ash only led to him losing again in their most important battle yet. He was devastated, but he couldn't show that in front of Ash out of fear of being judged. Once he and Sceptile were alone, however, Sawyer was finally able to let out all the built-up frustration. And oh boy, was it emotional to watch...

But being the resilient trainer he is, Sawyer quickly dried off his tears and reaffirmed his desire to become stronger.

It takes a lot of strength to bounce back from something like this. I also went through a lot of inner turmoil around the time XYZ was airing. But seeing Sawyer bounce back like this inspired me to keep going, and make it through the rest of that year with Sawyer as my main source of comfort.

Needless to say, I see a lot of myself in Sawyer, and so does Pika. Not only is he relatable, but his story is also a great reminder that no matter how bad things feel in the moment, we can always make it out the other side. This is an important message for a lot of people, especially within the autistic community.

Just one thing that I’ve noticed about Yusaku so far in the series. Due to Lost Incident, poor kid suffers from PTSD and while this condition affects Yusaku on many levels, I think that what it does to his sleep is the most terrifying one of them all.

Aged only six, Yusaku was isolated, forced to duel, tortured with electric shocks and starved for half of a year. This heavily damaged his mental state and enforced a fear in him, that still haunts him ten years later.

At the very start of the series, Yusaku is seen sleeping in the class and it appears to be like any other normal school nap that so many smart anime characters are accused of (aka. “I sleep in the class but when the teacher asks me to answer a question, I will be 100% right even though I wasn’t listening.”)

And judging from Naoki’s reaction this is something that Yusaku does on a regular basis. 

Considering he helps Kusanagi hack during the night, it’s completely understandable that Yusaku gets extremely exhausted from all the work, both as a hacker and Playmaker. But what do those two situations have in common? Let’s compare them with another one.

The only time that we see Yusaku sleep on his own after the Lost Incident, he suffers from a night terror, reliving the torture over and over again. When Yusaku was held captive he was sleeping all alone so it kinda makes sense that when he sleeps alone, it triggers him to relive those horrible moments of the torture. In school, he’s surrounded by people and in the hot-dog truck he has Kusanagi, so he’s no longer alone. There’s another situation that supports my point.

I know this happens just before Tower of Hanoi arc and an uneasy feeling is a result of knowing something is going to happen. But either way, Kusanagi doesn’t act all that surprised when he sees him which may suggest that’s something that Yusaku does often when he cannot sleep. I mean the fact that he always knows where Kusanagi’s truck might be is because that’s something that Kusanagi tells him (like “In case you won’t be able to sleep again, my truck is three blocks from your apartment and you can come.”) since he probably knows that Yusaku has night terrors regularly.  Heck, maybe that’s how the two of them met like Yusaku was undergoing treatment at the same facility where Jin was treated and doctors told him that he has trouble sleeping. The two of them then might’ve then talked and realized they have the same goal so Yusaku joined him and during first few weeks, Kusanagi saw it himself how long can Yusaku stay up due to being afraid to fall asleep.

-Picture from Melodies Memories Melodies and Snow Halation PV-

Anyone else noticed their similarities?* It’s a rhetorical question for those who knows both games.

I don’t usually compare between different games since they are all unique, but let’s face it, Idolish7 has a lot of things in common with Love Live.

Moving on… *(Idolish7/Love Live)

1-Both are rhythm games with similar settings.

2-Both main Idol groups have multiple members, with different personalities, backgrounds and ages.

3-The members of the main group have similar character traits.

The center(Riku/Honoka) being a cheerful always-smiling character, with the closer member(friend) being a serious-but-actually-very-cute character (Iori/Umi). A foreigner(Nagi/Eli), the cute one(Mitsuki/Kotori), the mature one(Sogo/Maki), the childish one(Tamaki/Nico), and the adult(Yamato/Nozomi). And while Idolish7 does’t have a Hanayo, nor a Rin, remember they have only 7 members, while µ’s have 9.

4-Both of their rival teams consist of 3 members.

5-While most of the main group’s songs are more cheerful and bright, their rival team’s songs leans more to the techno and sexy side.

6-Both of the main groups started out small.

7-Their rival teams were introduced as the most popular group in their area.

8-Somehow both main groups won a very important tournament against the famous rival group.

9-There’s a pair of characters that are widely shipped together.(Sogo and Tamaki/Nico and Maki).

10-Both  groups have an Otaku in them. (Idolish7 has Rokudo Nagi, a anime Otaku while µ’s has Yazawa Nico, a Idol Otaku)

11-All members of the team have birthdays that falls on different months.

12-The main characters have the same theme/hair colours.

Red - Riku/Maki

Black(Gray) - Iori/Kotori

Purple - Sogo/Nozomi

Light Blue(Cyan) - Tamaki/Umi/Eli

Orange - Mitsuki/Honoka

Green - Yamato/Hanayo

Yellow - Nagi/Rin

(Extra) Pink - Tenn/Nico

13-All their songs are ranked by the same difficulty; Easy, Normal, Hard and Expert.

14-Although Love Live has an extra rarity called UR, they have the same basic card rarity names. N, R, SR(As do many other card games).

15-Both friendship points work the same way,

16-You get 10 friendship points when you get help from a friend, and 5 when it’s not a friend.

17-The cards are sorted under 3 basic tiers. The red (Shout/Smile), the blue (Melody/Cool) and the green one (Beat/Pure).

18-Currently, most of the characters in both groups have graduated from school.

19-The Orange and Yellow themed characters are in the same group(Pythagoras Fighter/Printemps). The Light Blue and Purple are in the same group(Mezzo/Lily White). While the Red and Black themed characters are not in the same group in Love Live, they are part of the team that sets up the stage(Maki composes the music while Kotori creates their costumes.)

20-The first songs that were officially animated aren’t their game’s first starting songs. (Animated ones being Memories Melodies/Susume→Tomorrow, and starter songs being Monster Generation/Bokura no Live Kimi to no Life)

21-The number of seats filled in both groups’ first performances is meagre.

22-The manager of Idolish7(Tsumugi) is the daughter of the Company’s President. The manager(Kind-of) of µ’s is the daughter of the School’s Headmaster.

23-Many of the characters has very little(if zero) Romantic Developments. Despite Idolish7 having a female Manager, the Romantic Developments of most characters are to the minimal.

24-You can scout(Gacha) for side characters that has never been mentioned in any of the main stories.

25-Idolish7 and µ’s team members did not fully get a long at the beginning.

26-Both of the games’ story mode are fully voiced, and you have to clear specific songs to read some parts. Both stories currently have two seasons(Story in Idolish7′s case, anime in Love Live’s case.). 

27- There’s a performance in which both centers of each team were in grave condition. (Riku has a weak body/Honoka was really sick when she performed Snow Halation)

—–

So yeah, we can’t deny that they aren’t similar, but the thing is, they are really different at the same time.