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I watched the Final Stage and Shinji turned into one of my fav characters. But what called my attention, more than his skills, was his description by his mom.

SPOILER

She said Shinji, since he was a kid, watched the details of road from the window. All the cracks, the water flow in the rain, the grass growing. By other side, he has some difficults in the school. When he's driving, it's like a natural activity like wash your teeth or take a bath. Some of these characters are common in autist people. The thinks different, like Lionel Messi playing football.

It's just for curiosity, cause I wanted to share it with someone and I couldn't hold it only for myself.

By that logic, Takumi is also autistic.

Try not thinking about him in a mental state. Instead, see him by his personality since it would make a bit more sense.

So does that mean ID is a dream?
And it is in fact, Initial Dream?

Takumi learned to drive with 13, it means he needed to study/decorate every corner, gear, and speed limits, unlike Shinji, who noticed Hakone details before drive (probably at 12), when he was a child. He saved it in mind.

What kind did Takumi decorate the corners with? glowsticks?

Takumi vs. Shinji was truly the Battle of The Autists.

Too autist.

Maybe that's the wrong term to use. Autistic. As a teacher, this word carries strong connotation. I'm not going to get into the educational definition or anything like that lest I bore everyone to death. But in short, yes those on the autism spectrum tend to have trouble fitting into normal society and take extreme interest in mundane or strange things. Which both Takumi and Shinji do. But are they socially awkward? I wouldn't say they are.

I think a better term to use would be sevant. Their focus on driving and technique is so sharp, that it is considered an art form by many of the other characters.

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That Autist.

Thanks for the correction and for share it. =)
I don't see Takumi like Shinji, but this other long topic and I don't want it. For me, watch Final Stage with this think made me like more the series. I'm translating the manga to Portuguese and it's like see all the character deeper again. What I missed in the series was the focus in the social relationships. I understand it's a motorsport series and one thing some friends disliked was from the Fourth Stage to the end the series get repetitive.

The overarching theme of the final battle of Initial D was Takumi facing a character that was just like him: a young upstart with ridiculous skill. Shinji didn't need a fancy team of professionals to be a top notch driver, and he didn't need a race tuned car to challenge "the best". Sounds familiar?

Takumi rode with Bunta on the roads before he was a driver. He knew Akina before he was driving on it. There's no reason to disbelieve that he studied Bunta's techniques while riding as a passenger.

They're the same character. Takumi needed to face an "impossible" opponent before closing out the series.

Shinji = Autistic ?
So Shinji is the Sheldon Cooper of drifting ?

Shinji's mom mentions how Shinji never got good grades in school, but that his teachers always said he was smart.
Given that, Japan's tendencies to sweep any sort of psychological disorder completely under the rug (if the US overdiagnoses mental issues, then Japan underdiagnoses them), and the way he acts in the series (the story goes out of its way to make him a little eccentric) it's not out of the question that Shinji could be on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum. People with high-functioning autism can have eccentricities, but be relatively normal otherwise, and some of them can also get more normal over time. Take it from someone who's experienced this far more firsthand than he'd have liked. (And is now stuck eternally facepalming at his younger self, but I digress)

Whether or not Shigeno actually meant for Shinji to have an actual psychological condition is another question though. It's possible he just decided Shinji would work better as a weird character instead of a normal one, and then threw in some standard weird-character traits until he got the character he wanted. I can confirm I never saw cars having wings or driving in happy or unhappy ways.

As for Takumi - yeah, he's pretty much normal.

He seems more socially repressed than anything else. Thanks, Bunta.

I'm doing the same when i am the passenger

You must be autistic, then!

Glad to hear it

When I was driving the back of the 911-partyvan we used to designate those special drivers under the ER code-name MR.

It's a very complex bio-organical neurologic algorithm that Doctor Zigma Froid discovered in the late 1990's ~ Shinji's cerebellum could very well have that same maternally-diagnosed condition which enables him to outperform the plot-armoured protagonist Tak.

This post has been edited by xiao on Jul 9 2016, 09:31 PM