tragic.

I'm just going to piecemeal this character by character and see where it goes. I'll start with an honorable mention: Maki being on the cover of Vol. 6 in an arm sling. That's visibility. Also whatever Kauro’s deal is, I doubt she's neurotypical.

• Asako: Any character with any supernatural abilities or a "sixth sense" is de facto neurodivergent* even if in a fantastical way. Asako is able to hear spirits = neurodivergent. Asako also hides her ability due to fear of stigma (as we see in Ch. 38 when Yoshiki comes out to her). Plus, Asako becomes partially deaf after “Hikaru” ‘touches’ her.

• Tanaka: He's blind so like.... obviously. He needs special sunglasses to see And those sunglasses are only available to him via a morally bankrupt company that he hates. It's a pretty common experience for disabled people where their access to accommodations and support is controlled by ableist institutions that don't really care about them. Plus, he has a service animal!

He also has an "inappropriate" social affect and demeanor—laughing at the wrong time—and says he's “Not great with people.” He has a special song he constantly listens to and sings. Extremely ND coded there. (I love this man, so much. Absolute icon!)

Then there's the fact he's a Majirimono, which we could consider a de facto disability and acquired neurodivergence: Impurities become attracted to them, other people forget about them. Even more so, Tanaka lacks a sixth sense like Kurebayashi Rie, which too can be understood as a disability in his life dealing so much with impurities. He disables himself further for his job, such as by losing his left arm in Vol 7.

• Kurebayashi Rie: Same as Asako, her sixth sense makes her ND. But, like Yoshiki being a character to explore internalized homophobia, Kurebayashi is a character who we can look at to explore internalized ableism. And my girl Rie got it internalized bad, honestly worse than Yoshiki does.

Her investment in living a ‘normal’ life applies to being queer—living outside of the traditional heteronormative family structure—but also to disability/neurodivergence. She feels guilty for what happened to her son, the struggles he has to deal with being a Majirimono. She believes a life with fewer struggles is a better life. But Tanaka doesn't feel the same way, saying he doesn't have regrets about how his life has turned out, that his life is still meaningful and not just tragic—a major theme of disability advocacy, that happiness and disability can coexist.

Worries of being a burden also a big disability theme.

• Yoshiki: In another post I wrote, I argued that Yoshiki has traits similar to moral scrupulosity, which is a subtype of OCD. He has hyper-responsibility, feeling like he has to deal with everything on his own both in terms of dealing with all the supernatural stuff as well as feeling guilty for not being able to fit into normal society while simultaneously feeling guilty for the need to hide himself.

People reducing Yoshiki’s character (and his relationship to “Hikaru” and the story as a whole) just to his internalized homophobia and little else will be the death of me! It's my specific version of people calling TSHD yaoi or BL.

Yoshiki also displays black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking, also called splitting, something common in ND people. He bounces back and forth between wanting to help “Hikaru” and not wanting to impose human values on him as well as thinking “Hikaru” is a dangerous, evil monster who kills people and needs to be dealt with. And then beating himself up for contradicting both of the moral standards he holds himself to. Acceptance of ambiguity is a major theme of TSHD and something Yoshiki struggles with, making it a fitting narrative foil.

Yoshiki is also experiencing grief. Grief, especially in the form of bereavement, can be disabling. There are also a lot of norms for what counts as grieving "properly" or "normally". There is the aspect that Yoshiki can't grieve for Hikaru because no one knows he's dead and he can't mourn his unrequited crush while in the closet. In a way, he masks his grief to appear ‘high functioning’.

At the same time, grief is usually seen as irrational. People don't make good decisions while in mourning and most stories focus on how grief enables poor decision-making. Yoshiki does make poor decisions, but it's notable that Yoshiki is also able to make good decisions as well. A simpler story would have letting “Hikaru” go back to the mountain be the healing catharsis of acceptance after being in denial—the common idea of the stages of grief. But Mokumokuren rejects this script: it wouldn't actually solve anything and Yoshiki recognizes that “Hikaru” isn't Hikaru so he avoids those particular problems. That's part of the intrigue: Despite the fact “Hikaru” is a dangerous monster and Yoshiki is becoming a Majirimono with its own set of problems/limitations, Yoshiki’s unique relationship with “Hikaru” allows him to process his grief and other feelings in an abnormal way that looks horrific but is nonetheless helpful in the long term. This applies both to Yoshiki being in the closet and embracing queerness more as well as embracing the abnormal more generally, including disability. It is not just about coming out of the closet but also learning to live with disability—disability pride.

• “Hikaru”: Apparently there's been some occasional discourse around this scene either being about internalized homophobia or sexual assault:

If you ask me, both of these interpretations fall victim to an over reliance on metaphor, where it starts to obscure the literal events of the story. Interpreting this moment as SA doesn't apply to the rest of the story because the story would become almost incoherent. But only focusing on the internalized homophobia also erases parts of the story. The fact this moment is different from when he willingly stuck his hand inside of “Hikaru’s” chest is important to the story and not just about internalized homophobia. (It is also not like someone with internalized homophobia can't be sexually assaulted. And consent can be withdrawn at any time for any reason including internalized homophobia. Just a reminder. In a realistic context, this scene would factually be assault if we stick to the metaphor.)

What's more, this debate is heavily focused on Yoshiki and less on “Hikaru” as a character. The reason this moment happens is because “Hikaru” loses control of his emotions because he's feeling rejected and not used to experiencing things. “Hikaru” also has an instinct to consume souls, and he is not always in control of that instinct, unknowingly acting on it even when he wouldn't actually want to, regretting it as soon as he regains full awareness. Once again, these traits can be interpreted as disabilities of emotional dysregulation, poor impulse control, or even having dissociative episodes.

Now, it is worth mentioning that the risk of violence for disabled/ND people is usually overstated by ableist rhetoric, which erases how disabled/ND people are more often victims of violence than perpetrators. But it is true that certain disabilities/neurodivergences can involve higher risks of harm to self and others in certain situations. But the question of what that risk means or how to respond to it, are very much open political questions. Ableist institutions respond with violent measures of their own: imprisonment, maltreatment, exclusion. The Neurodiversity Movement is often concerned with finding more ethical ways to respond, of minimizing risk for all people. This is basically the heart of “Hikaru's” arc throughout the story: Finding a way for him to belong while not being a danger to other people, and not excluding him or writing him off as an evil monster. The point of radical neurodiversity is not that difference can be tolerated because there is no harm in being different; it is about acknowledging that difference is a matter of life and death and deserves the utmost respect. Because like “Hikaru” or the impurities, there is no getting rid of difference, only learning to live with it in the most sustainable ways possible. Otherwise people (and monsters) get hurt.