Death's son in the anime/manga Soul Eater has severely debilitating OCD. (His name is Kid - don't laugh.) In this first leg of the series this is almost entirely played for laughs, but I still count Kid as a fabulous representation of OCD because:
1. The character himself is a FUCKING SUPER-POWERED ACTION HERO who doesn't have his superpowers derive from his disability in any way shape or form. I love the way that his character completely subverts the Supercrip trope because yes, he has a disability and yes, he has superpowers, but one has nothing to do with the other. He truly is a character with superpowers who happens to have a disability, as opposed to a character with superpowers because of his disability. And if you ask me, the former is the type of character that I would much rather see on TV, rather than the latter.
2. The portrayal of the character's OCD quirks, as cartoonishly exaggerated as they are, are also true to life in a so-funny-that-it-hurts kind of way. (Disclaimer: I have OCD and for most of my life my brain has been pulling the exact same shit on me that this character deals with, including an obsession with bodily symmetry that I rarely ever see portrayed in movies/books/TV that include OCD characters, so a lot of the OCD jokes in Soul Eater hit very, very close to home for me.)
3. In the rare moments when the series decides to get Srs Bzns about OCD, it does it astoundingly well. Granted, this doesn't happen often - after all, this is a children's anime/manga about kids with magical powers who fight werewolves and vampires and make friends with talking animals and giant robots and quirky zombies and wisdom-dispensing sage-like tentacle goo monsters - but when Soul Eater DOES seriously tackle the issue of disability, it's insightful and poignant and manages to challenge a bucketload of tired cliches about OCD in a few short, pointed scenes.
4. Did I mention the context? This is a silly shounen series, about superpowered kids fighting supernatural monsters, and pretty much the last place that I ever expected to find a main character with a serious disability. But Kid is a starring character, not a character who exists merely to teach some other character a Very Special Lesson about disability. Kid's disability is portrayed as a part of who he is, not as something that any other character is supposed to learn a Very Special Lesson from. It's as if the mangaka actually created a fantasy world where people with disabilities exist and can even take a starring role in a heroic action story, imagine that! Also, did I mention FUCKING SUPERPOWERED ACTION HERO? Not a detective, not an accountant, but a FUCKING ACTION HERO?!
Obviously I love this character and this portrayal of OCD, so I'm going to stop gushing now. But I should add the disclaimer that YMMV, and the early parts of the story do seriously overplay milking Kid's disability for laughs.
But I think that Soul Eater deserves +10,000 Disability Karma Points for one particular scene early on in the series that brilliantly, ruthlessly skewers the portrayal of OCD on Monk and does it in such a way that made me laugh so hard I cried. That fact that this scene involves a werewolf makes it all that much more surreal and utterly beautiful in its ridiculousness.
no subject
1. The character himself is a FUCKING SUPER-POWERED ACTION HERO who doesn't have his superpowers derive from his disability in any way shape or form. I love the way that his character completely subverts the Supercrip trope because yes, he has a disability and yes, he has superpowers, but one has nothing to do with the other. He truly is a character with superpowers who happens to have a disability, as opposed to a character with superpowers because of his disability. And if you ask me, the former is the type of character that I would much rather see on TV, rather than the latter.
2. The portrayal of the character's OCD quirks, as cartoonishly exaggerated as they are, are also true to life in a so-funny-that-it-hurts kind of way. (Disclaimer: I have OCD and for most of my life my brain has been pulling the exact same shit on me that this character deals with, including an obsession with bodily symmetry that I rarely ever see portrayed in movies/books/TV that include OCD characters, so a lot of the OCD jokes in Soul Eater hit very, very close to home for me.)
3. In the rare moments when the series decides to get Srs Bzns about OCD, it does it astoundingly well. Granted, this doesn't happen often - after all, this is a children's anime/manga about kids with magical powers who fight werewolves and vampires and make friends with talking animals and giant robots and quirky zombies and wisdom-dispensing sage-like tentacle goo monsters - but when Soul Eater DOES seriously tackle the issue of disability, it's insightful and poignant and manages to challenge a bucketload of tired cliches about OCD in a few short, pointed scenes.
4. Did I mention the context? This is a silly shounen series, about superpowered kids fighting supernatural monsters, and pretty much the last place that I ever expected to find a main character with a serious disability. But Kid is a starring character, not a character who exists merely to teach some other character a Very Special Lesson about disability. Kid's disability is portrayed as a part of who he is, not as something that any other character is supposed to learn a Very Special Lesson from. It's as if the mangaka actually created a fantasy world where people with disabilities exist and can even take a starring role in a heroic action story, imagine that! Also, did I mention FUCKING SUPERPOWERED ACTION HERO? Not a detective, not an accountant, but a FUCKING ACTION HERO?!
Obviously I love this character and this portrayal of OCD, so I'm going to stop gushing now. But I should add the disclaimer that YMMV, and the early parts of the story do seriously overplay milking Kid's disability for laughs.
But I think that Soul Eater deserves +10,000 Disability Karma Points for one particular scene early on in the series that brilliantly, ruthlessly skewers the portrayal of OCD on Monk and does it in such a way that made me laugh so hard I cried. That fact that this scene involves a werewolf makes it all that much more surreal and utterly beautiful in its ridiculousness.