When I was about 2 years old, my parents realized that I was learning how to walk and talk later than most other kids. They took me to a developmental specialist, and they determined that the diagnosis was Asperger's Syndrome, though that name is no longer being used and has been replaced by the more general blanket term of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). I remember my parents retelling the story, and the shocked and almost sad way my mom said "he has autism?" in her retelling. I think that even among people who sort of have an idea of what the symptoms are, there's a lack of understanding of the way these symptoms actually manifest themselves. Which is why watching 2019's Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu was such a surreal experience for me. It's a piece of media that made me feel understood, and moreover, made me feel like it cared about me. The show is one of those shows that I feel like I had a very different experience with than other people, even among other fans. So I want to share what I feel is a unique take on the series, and maybe help to bridge the gap of understanding towards what autism actually looks like.
Of course, I need to point out that Hitoribocchi itself is not explicitly about autism. The show is a cutesy comedy about a cute, shy girl who wants to befriend everyone in her class. All of the characters are quirky, and Bocchi is no exception, so I've seen it said that she's just quirky in a way that's similar to the other characters. But I feel that there's something different about Bocchi. The other characters are "anime" quirky. Aru puts on a front of being cute and capable despite being unfortunate, and Sotoka is an eccentric foreigner who tries to be a ninja, both tropes that are common among all genres of anime. But Bocchi doesn't feel "anime" quirky to me. Her behavior is distinct in my mind. She doesn't fall under any particular trope the way everyone else does. Sure, she's a "shy girl," but Bocchi is more proactive and capable of communicating than the kinds of characters I associate with the "shy girl" archetype, and she has other strange traits that don't align with such characters at all. I don't know if a reading of Bocchi as a character with autism is what was intended. But I will say that her behavior and thought processes are so extremely specific to my own experiences growing up with autism that it's basically impossible for me to not read her that way.
When I think of autism, the first thing that comes to my mind is an inability to read subtext. Whether it's failing to understand the unstated context of someone's reaction, taking everything at face value, or failing to pick up on body language, people with autism often struggle to pick up on the unstated. And as a result, we often have a tendency to be very blunt with what we want to convey. Bocchi consistently struggles with this throughout the series. In the second episode, Nako is upset at Bocchi, and Bocchi cannot figure out why. The reason is because Bocchi very bluntly told Nako that she asked to be her friend because she wants to make as many friends as possible, essentially saying that it didn't really matter who it was. Since Nako was happy that someone wanted to be her friend, it felt like a betrayal to her, and she was upset. Such is an example of Bocchi being very blunt, but her failure to understand why what she said would make Nako upset speaks to a common experience of autism. Bocchi is so confused about this that when Aru asks her to explain what went wrong, she ends up explaining everything that happened both the same day and the day before, from waking up in the morning to the present. Later in the episode, Bocchi asks Nako what's been troubling her, and Nako explains that there's a weird girl who's been following her and being proactive about trying to be friends, but that she's happy about it and finds it exciting in its own way. The obvious implication is that she's talking about Bocchi herself, and is subtly trying to convey how she's happy to have her as a friend but unsure of how to act with her. But Bocchi fails to pick up on that subtext and takes it totally literally, interpreting it as Nako actually being troubled by some strange girl following her around, and jokingly asking if she can make friends with this girl. Yet another example comes later in the episode, when Bocchi tries to befriend Aru. She says that Aru is cute, and Aru gives a typical tsundere "I-it's not as if I'm happy to hear that at all" in response. Most viewers will immediately be able to tell that she's actually happy to have been called cute, and Nako also catches on to this. But upon hearing the line, Bocchi is devastated by it, thinking that Aru is actually saying that she's not happy about being called cute, and thinking she messed up. Tons of similar examples exist throughout the show, and they are all reminders of things I struggled with at Bocchi's age.
One trait of hers that I found to particularly stand out is the way that she intensely plans things out. When she has something she wants to do, she does not just act on it normally. She comes up with detailed plans about how to approach the activity, and does her best to execute them. This applies to all sorts of activities, both mundane and grand. Many times, these plans are obviously silly and impossible. In the first episode, her plan to make friends with everyone is to "get rid of all middle schools" so that she doesn't have any classmates, and her backup plan is to be in a class for which she is the only student, and thus by default has befriended everyone in her class. In another episode, she's terrified of reading her haiku in front of the class, and her plan to avoid it is to spontaneously develop a fever. But sometimes, her plans are things she can actually execute. In one episode, Bocchi is walking to school and wants to walk passed some neighbors who are in front of her. Normally, a person would simply say "excuse me" and walk passed them. But Bocchi is too shy to approach them, so she comes up with the idea of stomping her feet really hard so that they'll hear her footsteps and let her pass. Immediately after that, Bocchi wants to avoid making small talk with a crossing guard. While most people would simply walk up and deal with her talking to them, Bocchi decides to hide behind a wall, wait for the signal to turn green, and then wait even more until there's a large crowd of people and the guard is in the middle of a sentence, before crossing the street. This way, she can definitely avoid small talk with her. This sequence was particularly familiar to me, as someone who also prefers to not talk to people if I don't have to and would come up with similar plans to avoid people.
In order to execute her plans properly, she will often write them down. She has a little "strategy notebook" which she keeps her ideas in so that she can refer to it in the middle of the day. And when she wants to talk to Nako, she writes a dialogue tree on her hand so that she can figure out the exact correct response to her. And when she can't come up with an idea herself, she refers to a book about how to make friends, or looks things up online. When I was in third grade, my parents bought me a bunch of books about or relating to autism, such as the classic "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. Like Bocchi, I would very often resort to these books to try and figure out what I was doing wrong, and how to interact with people properly. I didn't write down my interactions the way Bocchi did, but I did try to come up in my head with the exact route a potential conversation would take, and would come up with ways to respond to whatever potential responses I thought I might get. I would often plan any conversations I knew I might have in excessive detail, so that I could have some bearing on my ability to communicate with people. But if you've been in a conversation before, you will know that things never turn out as neatly as the script you write in your head. And this leads me to another thing that people with autism often struggle with: rigid thinking. This one is particularly personal to me, both because it was one of the things I most struggled with growing up and the one that has caused me the most ire with people who don't really understand what it means.
In particular, my relationship with my parents has greatly struggled due to their inability to understand what it means to have "rigid thinking." A lot of people think that it's basically just extreme stubbornness. Whenever I get into an argument with my parents, and none of us are changing our minds, they are often quick to say that I'm only holding to my position because I have rigid thinking and am incapable of changing the way that I think about things due to autism. Of course, I'm not the only person who's not changing my mind in that instance, so the rigid thinking would be shared by that logic. And if you've been in an argument before, you'll know that it's actually pretty unusual for people to change their minds. Simply being stubborn is not a symptom of autism. Lots of people are stubborn, and I will change my mind and have changed my mind before when presented with evidence that I feel is convincing, just like many people would. But Bocchi can show us what "rigid thinking" actually looks like in practice. Previously, I mentioned the case of Bocchi not understanding why Nako was upset at her. In order to try and mend the relationship, Bocchi looked up online how to properly apologize, and the source she used told her to "wear a modest outfit." Bocchi was unsure of what it meant, but felt that her gym uniform would work as a modest outfit, and decided that she would wear that while apologizing. Aru tells her that she doesn't have to do that, but she still wears it when she eventually tries to apologize. This is because her track was set, and once she had the plan that she had to wear a modest outfit, she was unable to change the plan. She read that you have to wear a modest outfit online, decided that she had to do that if she was going to get the best results, and from there, decided that she absolutely had to wear it. Even if Aru says she doesn't have to, that will still get her the best results. This way of rigid thinking is also why she struggles with her scripted conversation. Bocchi has come up in her mind with the specific ways conversations will take place, based on what she read in her book. She came up with a dialogue tree, and was set on that being how the conversation was supposed to take place. So once Nako gave a response that didn't match up with anything she had as a potential dialogue option, she shut down entirely, because she was unable to cope with the idea that things strayed from her set path. To have rigid thinking is to set yourself a way of acting, and being unable to change the script.
A common example might be that if you come up with plans to go bowling, but your friends change plans and decide to go ice skating instead, you can't help but keep thinking "but I thought we were going bowling" and constantly feel a nagging sensation that something's wrong, like you're doing things the wrong way even though it doesn't really matter. Bocchi shows this when Nako has to stay behind for supplementary classes after failing a test. Bocchi worked up the courage to ask Nako to go home with her, and they've been doing it every day since then. Bocchi has built up a script that she is supposed to walk home with Nako, but when Nako has to stay late and doesn't want to make Bocchi wait, Bocchi is unable to handle the change in the script. She starts walking home with Aru and Sotoka, but continues to feel a nagging sensation that she needs to wait for Nako so they can walk home together, and in the end, she ends up walking all the way back to school just to wait for Nako so that she can follow the script. Bocchi even goes as far as to literally have a notebook titled "script" that she feels she has to follow when Nako visits her house, and she makes Nako follow the script all the way through even when it's unnatural. For example, she came up with the idea that Nako would finish her tea and then she would ask if she wants another, and so Nako gulps down her tea so that Bocchi can ask if she wants another. This obsession with "the script" is what rigid thinking looks like.
This rigid thinking can sometimes manifest itself in OCD like behaviors and thought processes. Autistic people often have little rituals they feel the need to do in certain scenarios, or otherwise things feel off somehow and you're plagued with a constant nagging sensation. For Bocchi, an example of this comes when Nako visits her house. Bocchi specifically feels comfortable in her "serious outfit," a goofy oversized bear suit that she wears the entire time. Something about it gives her a sense of comfort when others are at her house, which is its own form of rigidity. When Nako and Aru visit Bocchi while she's sick, she initially comes down in regular pajamas, but runs back upstairs and returns in the bear suit, because it just doesn't feel right to wear anything else while people are over. Obviously, most people don't take it as far as Bocchi does, but I know of people who have outfits they wear for specific types of outings, including the "wear when others visit" outfit.
At its worst, this sense of rigid thinking is a source of paranoia for Bocchi. She constantly has it in her head that she has to be doing certain things in order to be friends with everyone. When Bocchi gets sick one day and can't come to school, she is constantly terrified that her friends will forget about her and stop being her friend due to having missed a day. In her mind, they are only friends with her because she is following the script correctly and interacting with them every day. But with her missing a day, she stops following the script, and feels that the result of that will be the girls all finding someone to replace her, which causes her to constantly text them asking to not forget about her. Of course, Nako and Aru are really wonderful friends, and they would never abandon Bocchi, and Nako even points out that Kai-chan didn't come to hate her (though I have some feelings about Kai-chan's place in the story), but the thought always settles in that if you do something wrong, the relationship will fall to the wayside. This is also something I personally struggle with a lot. I feel like I have to follow a script, and if I take my interactions too far in any direction, my friends will stop wanting to interact with me. In my head, I can logically deduce that this makes no sense. But nonetheless, I feel it, and that makes it harder to act.
Although these may not directly be symptoms of autism, Bocchi engages in other thoughts and actions that I associate with my experience of growing up with autism. At the very least, I feel that these are elements about myself that are weird and abnormal in a way that is unusual for neurotypical individuals. For example, I struggle a lot with responding to jokes. I can usually tell when something is a joke, but my gut reaction is always to respond seriously anyway. Bocchi does this when Nako sends her a note in class. It asks her to go up to the roof during lunch, but also has a goofy alpaca on it and the message ends with "alpaca." When Bocchi sends a note back, her response is a genuine, serious fact about how alpacas are scientifically classified. Something else I struggled with was just being abnormally gullible. A lot of people liked to play jokes on me growing up, getting me to say embarrassing things or making me think something that was obviously bullshit. No one is that mean to Bocchi, but Nako does do the classic "tap her on the shoulder while on the other side of her" trick, and she falls for it every time. She genuinely thinks that someone is behind her, and asks to be their friend. And she even plays her recorder at it, as if to scare it away.
So if it weren't obvious already, I see a lot of my past self in Bocchi. Watching Hitoribocchi was like looking into a mirror at my middle school self. It was surreal. The show captured the essence of so many extremely specific experiences of my adolescence when I was the age of its protagonist. I can emphatically say that Hitoribocchi is a terrifyingly accurate portrayal of my own experiences with autism growing up, hitting on thoughts, behaviors, and interactions I've had in ways that are so specific as to make it impossible for me to see her as anything other than autistic. When I call Hitoribocchi a power fantasy, I do not mean it literally. This isn't the kind of show that asks the viewer to put themselves into the protagonist and live vicariously through them. But I see so much of myself in the protagonist that it, in a way, has the effect of such a fantasy. Whether I want to or not, I see Bocchi as myself, and that creates the effect of it feeling like all of the good things that happen to Bocchi are happening to my past self as well.
Bocchi is weird, but the show never treats her weirdness as anything alien. Everyone in Hitoribocchi is weird, and everyone gets judged for their outward oddities. Nako has a scary look that makes people think she's a delinquent, but deep down she's an extremely caring, kind, and thoughtful person. Aru puts up the facade of a capable thoughtful class vice president, but is ultimately a clumsy and "unfortunate" girl who has to fake it till she makes it pretty much at all times in spite of how horribly she fucks things up for herself. Sotoka is a gorgeous girl with the air of a classy foreigner, but on the inside is actually a huge dork for ninjas and wants to train to become one. And Kurai keeps the appearance of a strong and straight-laced person who can succeed alone, but is ultimately insecure and wants to be recognized for her strengths by others. Bocchi, in this regard, is no different. Bocchi is shy, awkward, and hard to adjust too. She barfs when she gets too nervous, she faints when she gets too happy, and she gets cramps when her anxiety acts up. She follows a script to the point of many interactions with her being awkward and unnatural, and her conversation skills always make things seem strange. People initially judge Bocchi based on her outward appearance. Nako thinks she's a weirdo, Sotoka thinks she's a ninja, her teacher thinks she's a secret gang leader, everyone sees her and gets their own interpretation of her based on those surface elements. But like with the other characters, we get to see what Bocchi is really like once you get to know her.
Bocchi is purely genuine. She expresses her emotions in no uncertain terms. She is not afraid to tell her friends that she loves them, and that she's happy when they do things with her. And she helps them in her own way as well. Bocchi is not made out to be alien for the features I associate with autism, she's just as weird as anyone else, because everyone has their own brand of weird. And her friends don't accept her in spite of her weirdness, but because of it. Bocchi is not boring to be with. She's a caring friend, and being with her keeps you on your toes. This is a good thing, it's the essence of Bocchi, and her friends come to love her for it all the same. And watching the show felt like these characters were accepting my past self for all of my own weird tendencies. In that way, it's a power fantasy. This is a fantasy in which my past self makes lots of friends, and gets treated the way I desperately needed at the time. And it's one where those friends actively improve at being friends with her. At first, Nako and Aru struggle to be with her. They mess up often, and accidentally make her upset. When Bocchi gets excited to walk home with them, the two start fighting in front of her, and Bocchi (correctly) interprets it as them getting along. The two of them deny it in embarrassment, but that makes Bocchi upset that she's the only one who's happy that they're all going home together as friends. And this causes them to grow closer, as Nako more fully and openly accepts Aru as a friend and starts bringing a third lollipop for her. When the two visit Bocchi while she's sick, even though Bocchi had expressed her fear of being forgotten in no uncertain terms, Nako made a joke that it was the first time they were meeting, and it devastated Bocchi, who took it literally. Nako and Aru both initially express frustration or displeasure at some of Bocchi's behavior, even when they still ultimately love her. But as the series progresses, the two get better at interacting with her. And by the series midpoint, they are the exact supportive friends that she needs, and that I needed at her age. They no longer begrudge her oddities or get frustrated at her, they actively listen to what she has to say and help her to do what she needs to without doing it for her entirely. When she wants to ask Sotoka to be friends, they don't question her strange idea to throw origami shuriken at her. They help her make it, let her hide behind them, and translate the message for her. Every time she decides on another person to become friends with, her friends are there to act as supports throughout her interactions, never getting in the way but holding her up when she needs it.
Maybe empathy is the real key to a great power fantasy. So many power fantasy stories aim to allow the audience to insert into the protagonist by making them as bland as possible. But not only does that make for a boring story, it also has the opposite effect, and makes it harder to insert myself and live vicariously. Before a show can be a good power fantasy, it has to be a good story. Hitoribocchi is a good story. It's characters are as lovable as it gets, its comedy is spot on, and its heartwarming moments land. Hitoribocchi builds empathy with its cast through thoughtful characterization, endearing interactions, and a sense of emotional weight to everything it does. This is the reason for the show's success. You don't have to have shared my and Bocchi's experiences to empathize with this story, because it's already well made on its own merits. But as someone who does share extremely specific experiences with the protagonist of this story, I feel as if I was primed to "get it" in a way that might be different from many others. Hitoribocchi is my autistic power fantasy because it builds a great and heartwarming story around an accurate portrayal of an autistic character, and represented me so thoroughly that my self-insertion wasn't even a choice. I'm not trying to convince anyone that Hitoribocchi is supposed to be enjoyed this way. I have no doubt that this wasn't how it was intended. I doubt that autism was even on its creators mind, let alone any kind of self-insert fantasy. I'm sure that most people will not be able to enjoy the show in that way, and that's alright. But I wanted to shed light on a perspective on the show you might not have considered. Regardless of anything, this was my experience with Hitoribocchi, and it's one that I consider to be precious. If anyone wanted to understand what my struggles with autism looked like, I would recommend this show, and the journey of its adorable protagonist: a secret gang leader, the principal of a comedy school, the one and only Hitori Bocchi.
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