The Rumour Come Out: Does Patchouli Touhou is Autism?

Patchouli touhou is autism is the most discussed in the media in the few years ago…

Ok but seriously though, I fairly strongly believe Patchouli has some form of High-functioning Autism, and that it informs pretty much every aspect of her character over most, if not all, of her appearances thus far. It manifests itself in a few different ways, with a few particularly strong signs:

Hyperfixations

Patchouli has a strong tendency to build hyperfixations. Her magic is the most obvious example, but to play devil’s advocate, magic in touhou seems to demand a lot of attention and focus anyways. If it was just that she’s a magician, I don’t think I’d believe it (After all, I’m not conviced Alice or Marisa have autism), but I think Patchouli approaches magic in general, and several more specific topics, in a way that’s more clearly a hyperfixation than just “a thing that’s hard”.

One of her earlier, and longer running fixations has been the Oni, as a general species. Patchouli first came across them in IaMP, where she encountered Suika. A lot of people noticed / started investigating Suika and the Oni here, but Patchouli didn’t quite let it go the same way everyone else did. In Patchouli’s Article in Aya’s newspaper, Patchouli investigates and throws a Setsubun festival (an anti-Oni festival), which Touhou Wiki’s notes clarify happens after IaMP. As explained below, she clearly hasn’t let go by the time of Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, believing that game’s events to be Suika’s fault, a conclusion literally no one else comes to.

Patchouli’s win quotes in both IaMP and SWR both show this off as well, although to be fair most characters quotes are a little bit formulaic in these games. Still, each game clear has a pretty strong focus. In IaMP, all of her win quotes relate back to her usual 7-elements magic, and which one her opponent falls under, while SWR shows how much attention she’s paying to the incident. Where most characters are still talking about their usual lives (For example, Sakuya talks about her job as a Maid, Komachi talks about death in general, and her ferrying job in particular), Patchouli’s win quotes are all descriptions of the associated weather with her opponent, suggesting both that it’s a bigger focus for her than for most, and that she’s not prone to small talk in general.

Inflexibility

As her IaMP profile states: “She does everything by the book, but still makes a lot of mistakes.”. The way I take it, this means she tends to build a rigid plan based off her pre-existing knowledge, then struggles a lot when something unexpected comes along and interrupts or alters it.

Her Scarlet Weather Rhapsody story is this best example of this: Patchouli spends stages 1-3 doing a commendable job examining the environment and incident (people are being followed by out-of-season weather), uses her observations (weather is being caused by people’s ‘temperaments’ are being drawn out of them, and gathered in one place.) and existing knowledge (people’s spirits got gathered up in one place before, in IaMP), to develop a theory (that oni, Suika is doing something again!), and complete fails to take into account new information that pops up (The actual culprit, Tenshi, admits to her face to being the culprit).

The Marisa/Patchouli route in Subterranean Animism is another great example, with Patchouli consistently showing up with information after Marisa has beat the boss, though you could make the counter-argument that she just doesn’t care about Marisa very much.

Patchouli’s choice of magical focus, I think bears mentioning here as well. The Wu Xing is literally all about sorting anything and everything into one of 5 phases (+2 couresy of Patchouli herself).

Facial Language

Common to the experience of the Autism spectrum is difficulties with non-verbal language. Patchouli has some pretty consistent tendencies in this area that I think extend beyond the usual notions of ZUN art or youkai strangeness.

Patchouli has her own, distinctive flat expression that seems to be pretty consistent across different mediums and portrayals of her. Patchouli’s profile in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody states “Gloomy just means she isn’t very sociable. Her spirits aren’t so gloomy.”, which is a pretty direct statement. It’s even stronger, I feel, in touhou’s various manga. It’s quite consistent, looking almost entirely the same between her family-of-sorts, in neutral company, and mostly unchaged when out and upset. It’s not an absolute, 100% guarantee, but then it’s not like no one with Autism ever displays emotion, they just can less control and display it differently than others.

Making eye contact with others is another issue common among people with autism. Patchouli has an unusually consistent tendency to bury her face right into the book she carries as well, as we see in these examples:

Note especially the middle example: Patchouli isn’t even facing the camera.