The Aspergology Of L: The Savant Detective (Death Note Analysis)

[Music] when thinking of our favorite anime characters many names come up almost too many it's a testament to the medium as a whole though when we narrow down that list to who we think is the most intelligent only a handful of names come up what's smart about them what makes it so is it their ability to draw pieces of information together and create a new novel solution maybe it's how they use their wide array of knowledge in order to achieve their aims perhaps it's their intelligence quotient or their iq i've always found intelligence tests troubling as i believe that there's many types of intelligence although i do agree that there is a general type of intelligence but i don't think the whole discussion is that simple one categorization of intelligence i am partial to is by howard gardner in 1983 who pretty much coined eight different types of intelligence i probably quite like this one because it made me feel smarter than i am because i found one that i'm pretty good at so made me feel i guess less done these consist of linguistic logical mathematical spatial bodily kinesthetic musical interpersonal interpersonal and naturalist and each of these can correspond to different professions this in mind it illustrates a particular theory some people are just better in different environments yeah i know this seems kind of trivial but it does provide an avenue to sort of figure out where we fit best and how we can maximize our gifts and reach our potential what i find fascinating is when we relate measures of intelligence to autism and the tendencies that they have in many cases those who are diagnosed to be in the autism spectrum have typically ranged from below average to average intelligent than the normal patient population however in some cases though autism can be associated with extremely high levels of intellect and downright genius autism derives from the greek word autus which means self implying that autistics are self-absorbed in their own little private world this isn't to say that there's a causal link between the two i.e autism meaning that you are intelligent or vice versa more so that those who happen to be really really intelligent are actually also on the autism spectrum too this is commonly portrayed in the media with the with the mad scientists stereotype i am a mad scientist in fact these characters are actually based on real people who lived in our world and these people achieved amazing feats and are really bright albert einstein himself had asperger's syndrome and i believe so does elon musk and i think their names kind of speak for themselves applied behavioral analysis.com states that mri investigations comparing the brains of asd patients to neurotypical control groups unearth any number of differences in the activity within those areas commonly used for social communication and restricted and repetitive behaviors in the case of autistic surveillance those areas are particularly repurposed to perform other feats of intelligence in short the part of the brain responsible for social activity and repeated procedural behaviors is different to the standard patient population or in other words normal people force advance a person affected with a mental disability such as autism who exhibits exceptional skill or brilliance in a particular field those brains are focused and used for something completely different other than social activity if you've watched the queen's gambit the main character is a perfect example of a chess savant amongst those savants on the autism spectrum some can also have asperger's syndrome asperger's syndrome also known as aspergers is a neurodevelopmental disorder with restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests studies have shown that those with asperger's syndrome to be averagely intelligent at a minimum compared to those in the normal population and very intelligent genius level on the higher end it has also been known to have features of the autism spectrum disorder non-verbal learning disabilities and adhd there are quite a few differences between classic autism and asperger's which i won't fully dive into here but they are pretty closely related now there is one particularly intelligent anime character which i feel can fit into this bracket and that is l from death note when i was younger i thought he was just a bit quirky a bit funny and i thought he only had those traits just to make him memorable which it was but with time and doing my degree in psychology i started to understand how well some of these characters were written because they were actually based on real phenomena real things in our world probably one of the reasons why i like doing the videos that i do on this channel and obviously mental health conditions aren't really excluded from what writers can write about in their manga what in their art in their books whatever it may be in fiction in this video we'll break down elle's tendencies and behaviors to see how he could actually have asperger's syndrome we will use aspects from his social interactions language and more we will look into moments in the series that could suggest that al has asperger's syndrome and see how these things could suggest that his savant-like genius can be attributed to his autism and the aspergiology [Music] is in a social context the main observable behaviors that could indicate that someone may have asperger's syndrome is found in their interactions with others comprehension of expressions and gestures and the consistency of eye contact in a lot of ways aspergers can have limited social interactions and can be inappropriate when they are in a social interaction there can be an incongruence between what is being said and how it's being said and the expression made when it is given something funny or emotionally provocative can be said without much expression to actually accompany it while they are in a social interaction they find difficulty in maintaining eye contact and sustaining it so generally eye contact is pretty low in some cases studies suggest that the reason for this low eye contact is because they find it stressful or uncomfortable to sustain it the neurological approach actually supports this too as it implies that the lack of eye contact is a way of reducing the over stimulation that one gets from eye contact and this over stimulation is in a particular region of the brain which only people with asperger's will kind of feel will understand potentially as a consequence of the above points aspergers can typically not have that many friends or be socially isolated but it's of their own volition these are based on the diagnostic statistic that manual for mental health disorders or the dsm-5 throughout death note ella's really been depicted as pretty socially awkward in a lot of his behaviors his social awkwardness is prevalent in him being less intuitive of social graces an example of this was when elle met the task force for the first time and instead of introducing himself and letting them know that they shouldn't give away their name so easily he shocks them by imitating a gun to indicate that they would be dead if he was kira what the hell was that i suppose he wanted to make a point but given the already uncomfortability of the situation and it was the first impression it felt slightly left field another symptom of social awkwardness is unusually tense focus on things like mathematical or logical things clearly l is hyper focused on nikita case to the point where sometimes he wouldn't sleep general l comes across as very different from most people and i guess that's due to his mannerism one of these being his eye contact in the show el eva struggles to make eye contact or even stares deep deadpan into the other character's eyes in a pretty awkward way i want to tell you i'm hell it's kind of like he's a zombie in a way as he somewhat looks like he's looking deep into your soul not just elle's eye contact but his facial expressions as well most of the time elle's face bears a pretty deadpan neutral expression with not much visible emotion in the same vein he might not be able to read emotions very well evident in the scene with isawa in this scene isawa is enraged that l tested him and even though it was for the advancement of the kira case aizawa couldn't see past this and was pretty upset instead of comforting him and using his emotional intelligence to calm the situation which came across as pretty sake to isolate him and his way of doing things that's too bad because i like you isawa i also hate the way you've always got to have the last word you insult me now you say something like that that's it i'm out of here some studies have indicated that although some aspergers can be very intelligent in some areas like more logical rational side of things they may lack it in regards to their ability to read emotion and act accordingly sometimes making them come across as cold or even rude it's not their fault nor does it mean that they are actually cold it just means that they have trouble and difficulty comprehending the emotions of others i think part of the reason is that people with aspergers take things literally so they could respond in the same way i think one of the clearer signs that el has asperger's syndrome is in his friendships or lack thereof during the series we learned that before l worked with light and task force his only company was watari his supplier butler other than him he was pretty much socially isolated and had no friends instead of hanging out and being social he would be working on cases he was the world's best after all this of course all changed when he met like yagami it's actually quite sad because we know that from watching the series that deep down el always knew that light was kira kira being the mass murderer that l is mindlessly obsessing over over catching to some degree it shows a level of idealism not really spoken about when people talk about elle's character the contradiction here being that he so desperately wanted to believe that light wasn't kira versus what he knows deep down and what he believes to really be true elle wanted his friendship with light just as much as he wanted to catch kira it's upsetting because it shows how much she valued light as a person elle considered light to be the first friend that i have ever had and i think this is telling for many reasons i don't know about you guys but people generally make friends with people they feel are similar to them and they share common interests with from this viewpoint we can understand why light was considered to be elle's first friend for two reasons one being their common shared goal of collectively catching and arresting kira and the other their shared level of intellect that being of two geniuses which is similarity and this is sort of evident in the fact that these guys got the highest scores in the entrance exams to get into the university the best university in japan so there's that if we pondered the idea light was never really shown to have any friends of his own other than the superficial one from that alone we could probably deduce that light probably had no real friends for the same reason if you watch my video and like psychopathy you would know that there might be a few different reasons for it all in all we can seem that elle's aspergic like mannerisms and savant-like intelligence could have resulted from his social isolation and lack of friendship i believe the reasons why he considered light to be his true first friend or his only friends only served to solidify this position i think it's quite sad in the way because there's a little bit of a there was a little bit of a cognitive dissonance between how he wanted to be with light versus what he knew deep down and i think it's probably one of the more tragic elements of death note but nonetheless it's pretty sad but yeah it's a shame i wonder what would have happened if light never was kira maybe it would have been completely different it would have been cool to see what it was like i guess the best way to see that was in in the oats of arc where they got pretty close but even then el always thought that light was clearer regardless of whether he lost their memories or not so you're able to commit these murders without being present but i don't mind waiting a little bit longer you can answer all of my questions when i catch you let's meet again soon this was my favorite section to research as it actually sparked my inspiration to make this video when looking into the main language and speech uh quirks of those with asperger's i found a variety of aspects which bear a striking resemblance to el and mira some of his behaviors they mainly boil down to two major facets so one being what is being said and the second being how it's being said or rather how language gets interpreted firstly those with asperger's tend to use very complicated and sophisticated vocabulary and just generally pretty advanced words in addition to saying them with a pretty modulated tone of voice primary explanation that i found for this is that using a variety of tones takes up quite a large cognitive load for those with aspergers just due to their general lack of understanding of social functions i guess this could be attributed to the neurological approach that i mentioned earlier in the video sort of detailing the unique brain structure of those with asperger's as a consequence speech is delivered by what those that don't have asperger's to be considered as monotone however what is actually being said tends to be of a much higher quality in respect to the language choice itself it seems that this is a result of the independent interest of language itself leading to a deeper understanding of the language's lexicon i think many of us can learn from this as the benefits of a deeper vocabulary are insurmountable see i can say cool stuff like that the second area is the type of things being said and the interpretation of other speech it is widely known that those with asperger's have the proclivity to speak about their own self-interest or speak about themselves i believe this too stems from their unique neurology by no means does this make them selfish people in fact those with asperger's have actually gone beyond their condition and superseded their condition through their awareness and they make a conscious effort to learn and balance it out here's a clip of my friend harry who has asperger's and and how he dealt with this sort of situation and how he feels about it a very specific moment but i remember gradually coming to the conclusion that um i don't want to be treated a specific way so others won't want to be treated like that either and if they don't want to be treated like that they must it that must be because they if they must it feel the same thing i do when i'm treated er like that so therefore they have feelings given what we know about asperger's and their language tendencies it might be obvious now why they take a lot of things literally this is especially problematic with things like sarcasm and colloquial linguistic expressions as well as slang for example it's raining cats and dogs when sarcasm is used it involves a drastic change in tone and linguistic expressions and colloquialisms have an entirely different meaning of their own you guys in london that you slang as well you kind of know what i'm talking about that was a bad joke split are your crabs are safe from the soul bait farm you ain't my chicken nuggets in it that joke was bad drive far and really and truly it's like comparing it to learning a new language i mean if you try to imagine yourself learning a new language it's kind of like what someone asper just feels like when they're trying to learn all these expressions and all these things that maybe for us would make sense but for them maybe it wouldn't from these explanations you guys might have already drawn some comparisons to out the most clear cut being l's constant monotonicity i'll give you this strawberry if you keep it a secret okay in almost every scene in definite where else speaks it's with the same tone the only exceptions being when he is shocked or surprised i mean it's so prevalent that it's actually iconic in a way l is to some extent recognized for his mode of speech if not to others he definitely is to me and i think it leaves us with some hilarious moments i could actually fall for you branching off this is the actual things that he says not experiencing as you've helped police solve a number of cases in the past now you're showing an interest in the kira case i'm impressed by your abilities and your sense of justice this shows a high-level grasp of the english language and his ability to articulate his ideas in a clear and effective manner which is made especially more impressive due to the lack of vocal range that he speaks in so he's able to convey a very deep and succinct message without having the benefits of being able to express it with a variety of tones and ways of speech furthermore much of what he actually speaks about is in regard to the kira case and which we could technically classify that it is speaking in a self-interested and self-interested way we know that this is actually a self-interested topic as it does stem from l's obsession to the kira case and catching kira in order to solve the case which i believe is partly egoic reasons which is evident when he gets depressed when he can't actually find evidence that light is kira actually i'm depressed depressed what for well truthfully all this time i thought that you were kiera and my entire case hinged on that fact i guess i just can't get past the fact that my deduction was wrong for the time being anyway however the argument could be made that there is a co-morbidity between the situation and and what i was talking about and his self-interest the main purpose of l in death note is for him to be a foil to light a rival someone to battle with and when we see l on screen he is either with the task force or discussing elements in relation to the kira case because i suppose that's his job after all thus it's very difficult to tell that he is talking in a self-interested manner all the time and like we said it could be him just simply doing his job we don't really see much of when l was actually just having normal conversations with others and as we said it doesn't really happen often even when he's asking questions to lie in the cafe it's basically a subtle mode of interrogation to determine whether or not he could be killer based on this i think it's very hard for me to make an actual judgment because we don't have that much to go off purely from my opinion i do think that he does speak in a self-interested way solely from what we see on the show but i am open to being challenged on this the piece of cake as long as you agree to leave me and light alone even if i leave you too alone i'm still gonna be watching on surveillance cameras so it wouldn't make any difference you pervert could you stop it with your creepy hobby you can call me whatever you like last chance for cake i'd say that this is the most fun part of the video because we'll be covering a wide assortment of aspergic qualities and look at some of elle's behaviors in comparison i'll begin with a theme that has come up quite frequently in the video and that is obsession those with asperger's syndrome tend to have a very detailed memory for specific things and obviously topics that they're interested in as we stated before which of course can border into the realm of unhealthy fixation their memory can be so powerful in fact that it could be accountable for some of their deficits it seems that the trade-off for the excellent declarative memory is the inability to navigate through some social situations here's an example of a man called james who has asperger's with a photographic memory fit for trains and plants whether it's plants bus timetables or train codes james is able to call on his photographic memory he's got a good retention for backs and figures like he could tell you all the names of the steam trains and a lot of the flowers and plants as well though not all types of aspergers are the same in some unique cases of high functioning autism they're those with savant-like qualities autistics advance are children and adults who have an autism spectrum disorder and who display remarkable abilities or skills in one or several domains in simple terms they are pretty gifted in very specific areas the movie rayman is based on a man called tim peake who actually memorized 12 000 books including the bible and was an expert on 15 different subject areas including geography music literature and sports amazingly kim could read two pages simultaneously with one eye corresponding to each page and in eight seconds he could memorize two pages pretty crazy and this intense focus may be attributed to some elements of adhd attention deficit hyperactivity disorder which is common amongst those with asperger's amongst the unique quirks are unusual body language and posturing the general consensus seems to be that people with asperger's take things so literally that their body language can appear out a world that could be a byproduct of other people's body language meaning that they act in a way independent of others thus coming across as awkward or unnatural another fascinating yet isolated point is their preference for individual sports over team sports i suppose this too is based on their difficulty with social communication all of this in mind let's look at the parallels without straight off the bat i wouldn't hesitate to call el es savant l is a genius in deduction according to some of the novel at eight years old around the time when he entered wami's house l proved to be a genius by exhibiting his analytical and intellectual skills by doing things ranging from completing puzzles to com successfully investing in stock at the age of eight he was smart enough to stop the outbreak of world war three at the time of the of the winchester mad bombing by stopping them l doesn't just have an extremely high iq probably reaching around 200 he's shown his abilities through his cases i think it's safe to say that l was extremely bright pretty much savant-like moreover i'd say that there's a few similar instances of l showing signs of unique asperger's behaviors with some observations a scene worthy of note is elle's tennis game with light and how good he was champion level we get we don't hear of l taking part in any team sports i think it could be the obsession that drives him to do so well the same logic can be applied to his deductions to the extent that he gets depressed and from not being able to prove that light was clearer interestingly people with asperger's are more prone to depression and anxiety due to potentially the flat effect not showing emotions makes them seem down so i suppose from maybe observations people don't take into account the fact that they don't show much emotion maybe assuming that they're more depressed than they actually are now i believe that there is a quality about l which is pretty iconic which could be attributed to his potential condition and that is the way that he sits throughout the series l is known to sit even on a chair with his knees close to his chest typically with his thumb on his lip pretty much like the way i'm sitting right now this is not intentional i just kind of know this now while i was speaking i was kind of like a bit more like that though so i'm not completely the same light actually points this out and l is pretty aware of it saying out of the way here no one's going to give you a hard time about the way you sit i don't sit like this because i want to i have to sit like this in this show there is no real explanation for why else it's the way he does the only reason given is what he stated if he doesn't sit like that my deductive skills would immediately be reduced by roughly 40 i've looked online to find any research which supports the idea that l-sitting posture actually increases cognitive abilities and i found one thing supposedly there is a slightly significant correlation between the sitting position and blood flow to the brain blood flow is more restricted to other parts of the body thus more ascent to the brain theoretically leading to an increase in intelligence but i suppose it's a bit muddy so personally i think that this is a unique quirk elle developed as a result of potentially having aspergers and any type of high high-functioning autism it's been ringing non-stop all day i find it very distracting i wonder if it's a church maybe a wedding or perhaps a what are you getting at ryuzaki come on cut it out let's get back inside i'm sorry nothing i say makes any sense anyway if i were you i wouldn't believe any of it overall from the short amount of time that passes during l screen time on death note and what little details we know about his personal life i'd say it's pretty hard to fully say that l has asperger's syndrome on the other hand though from what we do know about him and what we can infer there is a lot of strong evidence to provide the case that he does have asperger's his social isolation lack of friend coupled with the behaviors he exhibits in regards to his non-verbal and verbal behaviors but a striking resemblance to someone that has asperger's not only this but elle has savant-like intelligence in regards to his logistical and deductive reasoning skills which is related to high-functioning autism this is made very clear when l is able to suspect that light is killer after a few short weeks he only lacked the sufficient amount of evidence to arrest him unfortunately his genius borders on unhealthy compulsion if this wasn't the case i'd be less likely to believe that elle had asperger's but here is another clear sign other repetitive behaviors like eating sugary foods sitting in an awkward manner are characteristic of someone having the condition this video was made to explore the extent to which elle could have asperger's syndrome and in my opinion i would say that he does what do you guys think do you have anything that we can add to the discussion there's anything that i missed out thank you for watching my breakdown of l i hope you enjoyed it took a little while to write and make but again as usual good fun more on the way as per usual and i've been silenced and have a great [Music] kill day pumping from my veins now i'm feeling the thrill call me itachi you won't see me undeniably

Channel: SirLantz

Views: 36,798

Keywords: mental, health, condition, anime, manga, psychological, breakdown, analysis, depression, adhd, anxiety, light, yagami, aspergers

Id: IzQ4gtGPcSc

Length: 25min 10sec (1510 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 24 2021