L, Near, and autism

[fenm]

Some people have stated that some of L and Near's personality and actions suggest they have varying degrees of autism/Asperger's. I don't know enough about ASD to judge, but I wonder if others have any thoughts about this?

Comments

[serria]

Personally, I don't think L has any sort of autism. The first time I read the manga, it seemed like the obvious interpretation, but now I think L is just so full of intelligence and bullshit that he deliberately acts weird and, on occasion, naive, just for fun. Not to mention that L is so incredible at emotional profiling, whereas someone with autism has a natural disadvantage to distinguishing that sort of thing especially on such a high level, and L is also very expressive when he chooses to be. He's certainly not normal, per se, but if he has any psychological disability, I don't know what it is but I'm pretty confident it's not autism/Asperger's

[lorraine24]

I couldn't agree with you more as far as L is concerned. I'm not sure about Near either. I've always seen Near and Mello as the two extreme sides of L's personality (which is what I think the writer intended), so I've never given it much thought.

[fenm]

I agree about the extremes thing. Mello is the side of L that kicked Light in the head ("You booted me in the head!"), and Near is the side that sat around stacking sugar cubes.

[transient_words]

THIS.

I don't have anything else to say, really. But I'll be linking to your comment every time someone brings this up again.

[kurosaki_akane]

Sadly, I know nothing about autism, and Serria has summarized it pretty well, so there isn't much that I could add about the matter. The only thing I'd like to point out is that geniouses tend to be, generally speaking, 'different' than the rest. In Spain, we have something similar to a saying-- "there's only one step from genius to insanity," I guess because the behaviour from many known geniouses is naturally quite eccentric.

[vampiregirl919]

I don't understand how Near and L have autism symptoms. I can understand that Near has a Peter Pan complex and L having an addiction to sweets. Is it because they are ober smart and they both have weird habits?

[ilikesocks811]

it sounds kind of reasonable they excel in their individual skill sets but are somewhat socially awkward i am no where near an expert on Aspergers but from what i know it seems to fit

Autism?

[milkydot]

For L I can say that he is just probably brought up weirdly because he never had any friends or went out to have some good old fashioned fun. L however can respond to things normally but he is just emotionless because he never experienced emotions before (<-- that's my theory about L... Not a very good one..) Now Near... He probably has something wrong with him because he is very anti-social, he never goes out, and he also does not have any real friends (well, IDRK about Mello....)He is also a genius. Smarter than L if I have to say.