Holy crap man. Several of these I never really made the connection with, but when you list them off here, it makes total sense.
[Spoilers] I can agree to all of that, but the self harm point was a lot more towards Sayuri’s character than it was to Mai’s. While yes she did attempt suicide (or attempted to attempt suicide in the Toei adaptation), but that was more because of what happened to Sayuri.
Self harm was in reference to the “demon” hunting. It became obvious that Mai knew what she was doing.
I remember some guy on 4chan was it (not to be trusted, I know) said that Haruka showed severe signs of PTSD. Considering her background, yeaaaaah. So, super cheerful, only to hide her angry side seems like a classification in that direction.
Well, I always said that Little Busters was a game where all the heroines have some sort of mental problem. At least, all except Kud 
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Walking around screaming Wafu is far from the picture of perfect mental health.
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Haruka having PTSD is directly shown in Kanata’s route, where Kanata finds her in a broken state as kids.
Also, Kanon, wafu is literally the same thing as gao and uguu, so Kud is the least unstable one, only getting trauma through her bad end iirc.
It’s got nothing to do with mental health. It’s a verbal quirk and nothing more. Adding verbal quirks to anime characters is common practice and we are well aware of Key frequently using those (“Ahaha”, “Hae”, “Au”, “Uguu”, “Gao” etc.)
And pls be careful with Kanata route spoilers…
Wafu ain’t the same as Gao and Uguu.
Ayu is effectively a 10 year old and Misuzu, well, that’s not exactly hidden, she’s definitely not a picture of perfect mental health.
Kud has no excuse, she’s long past an age where she should be running around shouting woof woof.
What if I told you she’s actually keeping that quirk around on purpose? During her route, we learn that Kud has accepted her role as the “funny foreign girl”. She’s fine with people finding her weird and laughing about her, because as long as they do, they’re peaceful and they don’t fight amonst themselves. Remember her first title? “Exotic (self-proclaimed) macot”. She’s simply acting according to the image which other students have of her and “wafu” just might be part of it.
And you kinda didn’t comment on Sayuri’s “Hae”. She’s perfectly healthy in the head and her mental age is actually way higher than that of her peers.
Yeah and I’m sure if I go pick up Kud Wafter where it’s just Kud and Riki and no other people to be the ‘mascot’ for, she won’t wafu once.
Horse shit, she’ll be screeching it like a broken record even with ‘no reason’ too.
It’s kawaii after all, gotta keep it around.
I didn’t comment on Sayuri because it needed not commenting on.
Hae is a perfectly reasonable verbal tick, not a deliberate sound like Gao or Wafu.
lol at Sayuri being perfectly healthy in the head though.
Imma go ahead and ask Aspi or Biz to throw this conversation in it’s own thread when they get the time.
While you have a good point, what serious mental issue could it denote? If we think about it from outside the fourth wall, the writers probably put it in there just to make her cute I highly doubt they put it as a way to show her having mental issues. So while I would count it as extremely weird in a real-world sense, I wouldn’t consider it as anything more than that.
To rephrase my point, Kud is the only one that the writers had no intent to show as someone who has mental issues, IMO.
And yes, please move to Kud discussion~ (we are back to the cursed topic, it seems)
Just chucked some posts in here because I thought this topic would be more fitting.
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Unless Kud Wafter is a story about Kud and Riki blowing up their school and living somewhere far away on their own, I don’t see how there’s ‘no reason’ for Kud to act funny. Being the funny foreign girl, or a mascot is not her role within the Little Busters group, but at school. So as long as there’s high schoolers around, she’ll keep acting. That aside, being kawaii is a basic function of a mascot.
Even if, in Kud wafter, she would have ‘no reason’ to act like that, I doubt that the game producers could just cut out a part of her character concept. After all, I’m pretty sure many Kud fans are only in the boat because she’s a cute wafu loli with a high-pitched voice (just listen to that opening, man. And people are digging that stuff…). They wouldn’t remove something that sells well even if they could explain it properly ingame.
What if Riki really liked the “wafu” part? Just the thought he might have would be reason enough to keep it around.
And lastly, even if she’s not behaving like a kid on purpose, it’s still not an actual mental defect. People not acting their age isn’t all that uncommon.
It’s not that I don’t get where you’re coming from, but I do find it rash to question Kud’s sanity over such a minor quirk.
Elaborate, please. What exactly is so weird about her?
Sayuri is mature enough to approach a social reject unbiased, she’s skilled at interacting with people and is knowledgeable in social and political matters. Most high schoolers look like driveling brats in comparison.
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I can see you’re taking this seriously, but responding seriously to Kanon’s ramblings might be your first mistake ^^;
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While taking Kanon seriously might indeed be a mistake, it’s also part of my role.
Just like how Kanon is playing the fool, I have a reputation of being overly serious to live up to ^^
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Man you guys are all like ‘SHE WAFFLES BECAUSE SHITS KAWAII AND JAPAN EATS THAT SHIT UP’.
And that’s right, this ‘mascot’ shit is a weak handwave at best, because they will always depict Kud screaming Wafu at the top of her lungs. Because that’s what Kud is. Take her entirely out of the mascot situation and she will still god damn Wafu.
And that’s dumb and terrible.
Well first off ‘better cut me up them wrists’, former suicidal tendencies are always a fun start.
Next up is the complete and utter disregard she has for herself, Mai this Mai that Mai Mai Mai Mai. Mai is her reason to go on, she herself isn’t important in her mind.
Girl ain’t normal.
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Litbus characters could all be diagnosed. The whole thing is based on regrets that were so big, the regretful persons defied death. We don’t know what the fake world exaggerated and what it kept true to life, but one thing for sure is that all the characters are shown to have a little something wrong with them. Kud has little to no self worth, struggles immensely at school, confides in animals for happiness, and tries to change herself dramatically - even changing the way she speaks and acts on a daily basis - to fit the will of the other students (more than your average student does.) She’s probably been doing it for so long that the changed Kud became a totally natural figure for her to play as. She is a mask of herself.
The Wafu thing could be totally left out of this, but it’s also possible that the Wafu is either an expression created to maintain her changed personality, an expression created to remind her of her old self so that she doesn’t forget herself, or both. I honestly think it’s just a typical cute tick the writers threw in.
No no no. You need to go over her route again. Sayuri is friends with Mai because they are incredibly similar to each other - and Mai isn’t mentally stable. That was one of the biggest parts of the Mai route. Mai and Sayuri rely on each other because no one else understands them in the same way.
It’s dumb and terrible, yeah, but unlike the previous “verbal quips” that actually meant something, Kud’s, I believe, doesn’t. So, yeah, really dumb, but not crazy.
And yeah, didn’t wanna comment about Sayuri, but remembering those stuff just makes me all uncomfy about it =/
And hey, i never knew this existed. I don’t have enough Psychology background to do any serious diagnoses, but nice touch. +1 on CHEAP TRICKS on DSM
While there seems to be a wide variety of things that we can attribute to be problem that the gang has to deal with, I do have a strong feeling towards misdiagnosing people or characters I care deeply about.
The biggest thing I like to point to is our admin giving a diagnosis of Paranoid Personality Disorder. While I am no MD I can say that she is not PPD. Taking a good look over the DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), I realize that her paranoia is not unfounded or last long enough to warrant such a diagnosis. For me, I believe we have to look at the differential in order to get a clearer picture.
[spoiler]
- The first thing we can start with is her image of herself. She constantly sees the world as evil and herself as “bad”. This is one of the first clues that this is not PPD, PPD people generally believe they have done nothing wrong and are not responsible in anyway for the “bad” things that happen to them (bad is subjective).
- Another issue that arises from this is that PPD people don’t generally take risks. Haru-chin has more than her share of impulsive actions (ex: newspaper sword fight); PPD people are generally cold and calculated to there approach. They would only act on impose out of extreme necessity like in a life or death citation.
- Haruka’s odd speech patterns is another thing that PPD suffers would not do unless they were co-morbid with a speech problem.Generally PPD people would do everything to speak as normally as they can to avoid people from thinking negatively of them. This lack of regard for the opinion of others is very uncharacteristic of PPD
*[/spoiler]
I do have to give @Aspirety credit when he said that it’s a personality disorder, it’s just, I believe it is the wrong one to use in this circumstance. Let’s take a look at some symptoms, shall we?
- As I mentioned before, Saigusa is known to be impulsive. Be it taking spoiling stories (manga) or randomly dragging Riki into her issues, or running for no good reason from the discipline committee, or throwing food at the wall we can say that she lacks self control in certain areas.
- Next, she has a hard time accepting loss. Going the extra mile to keep existing relationships, for example calling Kurugaya anego or constantly making chiffon cake for Riki and getting in trouble for it.
- Paranoia about relationships is a symptom that is hard to gauge, but we do have evidence of that in the beginning of the route where Haruka questions Riki’s motive for staying with her.
- Suicidal behavior or thought can be also be a symptom. If any of us remembers the bad end Haruka clearly commits suicide after losing the only person to have cared about her to her sister.
- Childhood trauma from neglect and abuse. we can clearly see thing when she tells Riki everything doing the flyer scene as well as subsequent flashbacks to that time.
- Mood instability, that moment where she was happy to spend time with Riki, then, becomes distraught and shut in after her parents arrive. Another example that can be argued for this is when she gets hauled in by the discipline committee and goes from defensive to angry.
- Finally, we also have the above mentioned problems in my dispute of PPD. They too give us some insight into her diagnosis.
So with all that, I think Haruka’s problem points strongly towards Borderline Personality Disorder. While I’m not able to call it 100% (plus you need a head doctor to make a concurrent call to give a diagnosis) all the symptoms listed are found in those with BPD. For BPD the criteria are as followed:
- Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
- A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation
- Identity disturbance
- Impulsivity
- Suicidal behavior
- Mood disregulation
- Chronic feelings of emptiness
- Transient paranoid thoughts or disassociative episodes
- key cause (pun unintended) is believed to be early childhood trauma
Frankly, match five of these symptom is enough to support a diagnosis according to the DSM-V and each one can be argued for. However, because we can’t ask the noisy one herself questions to confirm or deny such accusations we can only give educated opinions instead of real diagnosis.
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Of course, this is all conjecture, but it’s still fun to try and reason out. Very well explained, @I21j_I21j_Hunter ! I concede to your superior reasoning
