Ryōhei Arisu Is Autistic

ryōhei arisu is autistic

usually, since im autistic myself, all I would have to say is dude trust me but ive gathered some evidence anyway

major alice in borderland spoilers

1. we can see him have meltdowns in episode 1 and 4. In episode one, the meltdown is brief and stopped pretty quickly, as everything is happening very fast. karube decides to put all the pressure on Arisu to save them. Karube is leaning over Arisu who has back himself up against a wall when he starts to feel overwhelmed, he gets up and thrashes to get out all the baddness~ (similar to stimming)

in episode four when he had just lost karube and chota in a very traumatic way he gets picked up by Usagi and when he wakes up and he works himself up into a very bad meltdown, he keeps repeating that he has to apologize to them and he's repeatedly banging his head on the ground. keep in mind that everyones meltdowns look different- autistic people with abusive family, like arisu, often have small, quick meltdowns so they won't get abused for having an intense meltdown (my meltdowns are 100% unnoticeable)

2. Arisu happy/focus stims in a lot of unnoticeable ways, i think he probably has learned to subdue his stims because of his family, he probably even has tried to stop stimming completely but it's almost impossible to do so. Here's one point where he happy stims (pushes his knees up and rocks, i stim like that so it was cool to see)

3. Arisu exclusively wears comfortable clothing, he wears plain (maybe with a little writing or a simple pattern) t-shirts most of the time he has a thin jacket over, he wears capris pants or shorts. at the end of the season he wears a button up shirt but it looks soft and with a nice texture. He never wears anything with a rough or uncomfortable texture- like jeans- and never wears anything constricting they're always loose fitting

4. his special interest is video games. this doesn't need much of an explanation I mean it's just what it is, he spends every chance he gets playing video games, like when he's walking and no one is answering him so he starts playing a game- he also gets excited when Usagi asks what an online game is- he wants to info dump and is about to but quickly stops as she looks uninterested

5. he also has a tough time in social situations and cannot always read social cues and doesn't know social norms- when he is with karube and chota- people he has known since he was a lot younger- he is much more relaxed and himself. When in a new group of people or around a new person he often goes temporarily nonverbal- shaking his no and nodding yes primarily. Like when he is with Hatter- he rarely responds to him only saying 2 very quick sentences while the rest of it is him staring and shaking his head (there are actually a lot of instances where he does this im not gonna name everyone of them)

and when he goes to talk to the two girls he is very blunt and doesn't read social cues- yelling out "i wasn't trying to hit on you!!" very loudly as they ran away from him- he can also be very blunt about a lot of things and it often gets him berated or the shit beat out of him. He means no harm with this bluntness, seeing nothing wrong with saying these things. Of course- if it's chota or karube, they dont mind his bluntness- like when Chota has a burned leg and they were theorizing the possibility of the universe they were in was VR. arisu says that VR cant make such a bad injury, chuckling to himself, seeing it as a joke he made. No one else laughed. Also a social norm that he doesn't seem to think about- when Usagi gave him her water bottle to drink he immediately offers it to the two strangers theyre with without asking her first (also an example of his hyper empathy which he shows a lot of throughout the season). he also has "odd" reactions to things in general. Compare his reactions to everyones reactions to everything in the season- you'll see what I mean

6. he can also go into hyperfocused mode (a side note: I believe he has a eidetic memory- as you can see in episode one where he is in hyperfocus mode and he remembers the evacuation map perfectly- which I know eidetic memories haven't been proven to be a thing per se but as they study it- it is commonly found in autistic people) which you can see during the games or when someone is telling him important information- for example episode one:

7. this one is short but it stuck out to me a lot- he is extremely touchy with karube and chota. he is always hugging them and reaching out to grab them, stuff like that but he looks extremely uncomfortable when someone else touches him and he doesn't touch anyone unless he absolutely needs to like life or death situations