Forum - View topicNEWS: Hagane no Onna Creator Decries How Show Depicts Autistic Child
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Emerje
 Posts: 7413 Location: Maine |
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Soooo, care to tell us what incident(s) specifically lead to her publicly disowning the TV series? Must have been something pretty serious.
Emerje |
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Haterater
 Posts: 1728 |
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Hope to learn more about this. Seems like another incident of not bringing the creator to oversea their work in another medium.
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Teriyaki Terrier
 Posts: 5689 |
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I think there is more to this story and if I had to guess it would be because something happened in that show she really does want people to think she either condones or thinks is all right/comedic.
Given the topic at hand, making a joke about said topic could very well anger those the topic is about and might also anger the other crowd entirely as well. You make a mistake in US, and eventually it's forgiven (depends on the mistake) and hopefully forgotten (also depends on the mistake) about eventually. In Japan, which is more conservative (not always, sometimes and not every where) depending on the mistake, it might be forgiven, but forgotten is a whole different ball park. Personally, even though I've never even heard of the author, I can't really blame her. This is not the publicity you want, nor anyone really wants, I'd imagine. This is the publicity you want to distance yourself from and make it clear that what you believe in and you rejected every notion of this taking part in this topic. |
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reanimator
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It would be nice if anyone who read the manga and the TV drama to make comparison. How is the TV show so offensive or insensitive that author wants to remove her name from the credit? I figured that manga artists are happy to see their names on TV, but this isn't the case.
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 3036 Location: Email for assistance only |
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Based on the link and a rough translation of the 2nd episode summary, the episode depicts an elementary age boy with Asperger's Syndrome who has caused trouble in his previous schools/classes. There's then some kind of fire on campus and he's blamed for it.
I could see how this could be a sensitive issue, especially those who have experience with people who have Asperger's, like I do with a close family member. However, I'd have to watch the episode to see how it was depicted. There's even a disclaimer at the bottom of the page talking about how Asperger cases vary from individual to individual. |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14889 |
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Well, it's not a trade secret that Japanese TV isn't exactly known for sensitivity.
Remember, this is a quite homogeneous society. There's usually not enough "minorities" (whether by race, religion, sexual persuasion, physical/mental condition, etc.) for their complaints to matter in a large industry like TV. |
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Seca
 Posts: 149 Location: WA |
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Because I was really curious, especially with the terrible track record with media representation of the disabled in Japan, I found the episode and I've watched it. Now my Japanese is only good enough to catch words, phrases but I can usually get the jist of what's going on in shows yet what I understand was enough to piss me off.
The character in question is a 4th grade boy that has Asperger's syndrome and even with my basic knowledge of what that disorder entails I could tell they were off. I did some quick research to make sure I had it right and it pretty much confirmed that the writers for the drama had little idea of what Asperger's was and were just going down the list of symptoms for it without doing any more research. They have him repeat words and short phrases over and over again at times, do dangerous things because he took someone's words literally (in his first scene he's sitting on the edge of the school roof to see if he can see the ocean from it, then later throws a fire extinguisher on flames because after he completely freaks out seeing someone light a cigarette that from what I can get the person more or less tells him that he just needs to throw 'it' on a fire to deal with it.) Have him obsessed with trains, as well as unable to jump rope at all (which I can only assume is to show he's clumsy yet it's the only physical thing he's shown having trouble with). He also seems to fall into one of the unfortunate stereotypes for those with mental disorders and is incredibly good-natured so far as not even being angry at the boys that bullied him who pushed him down making him injure his hand during the episode. And then they had a group of the mothers of some of his classmates get him kicked out of school for being a danger to the other children. And of course his mother acts ashamed of him and is willing to have him removed from the school. The teacher of course saves the day and he gets to stay in the end. Honestly I don't fault the mangaka for doing what she did, in her place I would probably do the same thing. And as this is the second season of the drama then I wouldn't be surprised if the stories in the drama aren't in the manga as it sounds like it's similar to Gokusen where only the first season follows the manga but all seasons after that go off in a different direction because they change the school location. |
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
Posts: 3036 Location: Email for assistance only |
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Thanks for writing that up Seca because it helps put the opinions into perspectives. Some of that seems really ridiculous.
The person I know with Asperger's is high-functioning. He never had any kind of speech impairment as a child, it was one of the areas he excelled at. Fixation on certain, limited hobbies can be present. It looks like they chose trains for the episode, where the person I knew it was Star Wars and movies in general. He knows (and has from an early age) everything about Star Wars. Minor, major, book-only characters, all of it. It's usually the communicative and relating areas that are most difficult. The person I know is very well spoken but he doesn't "get" people and empathy is more learned than naturally felt. A lot of anger problems arose from this as a kid, including self-destructive behavior. I guess I'm amazed at what seems to be a high awareness for autism spectrum disorders in the US and how the education system has developed to help children with this disorders (special classrooms, early-age therapies, etc.) that this kind of storyline would even exist in Japan. Do they not have these kinds of accommodations for children with special needs there? |
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chrisb
 Subscriber Posts: 644 Location: USA |
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The show is AWESOME, but I can understand the creator's anger. I'm not very familiar with Aspergers, but from what I have read and the little of it I have seen there are cases where it can be very difficult for a child to understand how to respond to bullying (not understanding how to respond emotionally) and physical clumsiness can be an issue (the whole jump rope thing.)
I saw the episode and while it was a very sensationalized and pretty inaccurate in its depiction of a child with Aspergers, I thought it was also very sensitive and portrayed him as a victim. I believe they tried, but didn't do enough research. He is also very intelligent when it comes to trains (didn't think he was obsessed, it is normal for people with Aspergers to have a repetitive interest in a certain thing) and tries his best to reach out emotionally to his fellow classmates. I don't understand why the creator is upset over the depiction of his parents, his mom was amazing. She wasn't ashamed of him, she said she understood how the other parents felt, but was heartbroken that her son was shunned like a monster. For those interested here's a detailed summary of the episode. I see that another kind poster has put a description of the episode from a RAW. I saw the episode with subtitles and figure I'd add anything she may have missed. Sorry about not remembering the characters' names. I'm new to the series: spoiler[Hagane (awesome and very hot teacher) transfers classrooms, gains a somewhat evil yet perfect teachers' assistant, and is now in charge of a class where half of the students are from one school and the other half from another school. They are very rude to each other and are always at odds. A handicapped student comes in, but the school decides to not let the other kids know about his disability since they believe they won't understand. The "kind" half of students welcome to handicapped student (especially one young poor girl who constantly defends him) and the other half (cruel) despise him. There is an athletic competition coming up and the student with Aspergers has trouble with jump rope and the cruel kids take him behind the school and bully him, warning him not to ruin their chance at winning the athletic competition. Right after the handicapped student sees the teacher's assistant smoking a cigarette and has a panic attack. When he was little he caused a small fire in his house and has been afraid of them ever since. The teacher's assistant puts the cigarette out and tells the student not to tell anyone what he saw and if he ever sees a fire to just use a fire extinguisher. Later, a large dumpster fire happens behind the school (caused by the TA smoking) and the handicapped student tries to put it out but not understanding how an extinguisher works, throws it into the fire. The students start freaking out, thinking the extinguisher is going to explode. Hagane comes along and quickly pulls out the extinguisher with her hands. The TA is now very nervous that the handicapped student will reveal that he was the one who caused the fire and starts to despise him. The students' parents hear about what happened (I believe the TA told them) and they are now worried that their children are in danger around this violent/incompetent kid. The parents agree to let the classroom vote on whether he should stay or not. (Not to sure about this part) One of the mean girls visits her old friend from her old school and now that the mean girl goes to public school, her friend looks down on her and is disgusted by her. Mean girl is crushed. Poor girl sees the handicapped student practicing jump rope on the playground so that the kids won't be mad at him. She breaks down and starts to hug him. He says he doesn't want her to fight and that he loves her friendship. Hagane sees this and says that he may be able to handle his disability better if only people would reach out to him. She decides to tell the students about his disability right before they vote. The votes are split down the middle and the only student left to vote is from the mean group. She votes to let him stay. (I believe she is the girl who's old friend told her to get lost since she's from public school.) The kind kids celebrate and are now friends with the handicapped student and help him get better at jump rope. Hagane is proud and happy, but realizes she has her work cut out for her with this new group of students. The episode ends with the teacher's assistant slamming his fist against the window as he looks at the student who knows his secret. The cruel kids see a student who appears to have OCD and say "he's next."]
They do, but they aren't as good about it as we are here in the US. People with psychological or mental disorders in general aren't taken care of very well. I have to give the Japanese entertainment world some credit for trying to bring these issues to light and they do shows how society shuns and looks down on these people, even if their portrayal of certain disorders aren't very accurate, if at all. |
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Seca
Posts: 149 Location: WA |
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And that's the problem with it. It doesn't really help anyone to give an inaccurate depiction of what any mental disorder is. There are better ways to have dealt with this storyline and it's really easy to see that the writers were too lazy to do the kind of research necessary to do it in a way that didn't sensationalize the issue, which to me shows a great lake of sensitivity. Because even positive stereo-types can be harmful and victimization isn't all that great of an alternative from being seen as a menace as it still creates a sense of inequality between those with disorders and those considered "normal". And I wouldn't have minded the jump rope issue if it wasn't the only thing he seemed clumsy at doing. This is an issue of consistency which makes it easy to tell this didn't seem to be a real attempt to understand the disorder. He should have shown some sign of trouble with other things connected to jumping rope if he had that symptom, seeing as these symptoms come from a part of the brain not completely functioning as it should and it would affect other activities related to what function it controls. But he didn't from what I could see which is why it stood out so much and made the depiction seem so fake. |
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Reaper gI
Posts: 299 Location: UK |
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Asperger's is just the lack of empathy for the most part, obsesion over something and maybe savant ability. It's the least severe in terms of other problems (clumsiness and maybe speaking a bit funny) I was surpised when my flatmate last year had a diagnosed case, as he seemed fairly normal. So it manifests as being an otaku (you get social interaction problems as obsession over stuff) who's often very good at either maths, music, or other arts, who might talk funny or be clumsy. |
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UtenaAnthy
 Posts: 694 |
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Actually, it's more like people with Aspergers find it hard to read others' emotions, I have aspergers and I am certainly capable of feeling empathy, I care about other people, and I know a lot of other people without aspergers who display much less empathy than I do (case in point: I was bullied by numerous children who did not have aspergers at school while I was firmly opposed to bullying, I'm not saying I never said anything mean to another kid, but I was not someone who considered it a worthy life goal to make others suffer for my own personal amusement, those kids who bullied me seemed to think that making me scream and cry and scaring me was fun), I know other people with aspergers and they clearly do feel empathy (and also I'd be careful with the learned rather than naturally felt assumption, all of us have to learn empathy to some extent, and as far back as I can remember (like 3-4 years old) I was capable of caring about how my behaviour affected someone else), to summarise, people with aspergers may find it harder to know what someone else is feeling by reading subtle emotional cues, but on average they care just as much as someone without aspergers when they do know. The natural state of someone with aspergers is not to not care about others at all. |
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
Posts: 3036 Location: Email for assistance only |
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This is true, I was just speaking of the person I know quite personally and the varying degrees are going to affect each person with Asperger's differently. Having Asperger's shouldn't be equated with being a sociopath who is incapable of feeling empathy, just the person I know generally doesn't unless he's decided to care about the person deeply, he's very selective while being aloof to most others. A lot of it might have to do with how these kinds of disorders were handled in the past compared to now. Unfortunately, in the early 90s, a lot of childhood social disorders were simply handled by putting the child on Ritalin and calling it good with no real therapies involved. The occupational and behavioral therapies available as early as 18mo can help a child so much more now. |
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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I have a close family member who is diagnosed as Aspergis, and he is a model student and a credit to his school. I'm not saying all Apsergis sufferers are like that, but this depiction is a bit extreme, and besides the boy in that story is being blatantly victimised by that TA and the well over reaction of those parents. If a child was that disruptive in a school he would have been Statemented as such and sent to a special school for mentally disabled children, if it were here in the UK. However the synopsis seems to imply he's not that bad and is just being victimised by a discriminating community, which I find more distrurbing than anything that boy is depicted as, and that teacher is rightfully a heroine. I don't know how it works in Japan, but it is the right of anyone employed on a TV, or Film production to withdraw their name from the credits, or at least change it to a pseudonym, here in the UK, and in the US as well.
[EDIT]Fumbly fingers[/EDIT] Last edited by Mohawk52 on Fri Jun 24, 2011 8:29 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Ashen Phoenix
 Posts: 2950 |
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Took the words right out of my mouth. This sounds like a fairly serious issue here. I'm very interested to know the specifics of how the show depicted an autistic child poorly, compared to what the original creator did. |
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