Which Anime Characters Are Suffering From A Personality Disorder?
By
PsychReel
In this blog, we will be discussing anime characters with personality disorders, and we will cover what is anime, what are personality disorders, which anime characters have personality disorders, and answer frequently asked questions.
Which Anime Characters Are Suffering From A Personality Disorder?
Anime characters like Yagami Light, Sasuke, Ryuji, Misa, Shougu, etc. seem to be suffering from a personality disorder and we will discuss it in detail in the section with a list of characters with personality disorder in the final part of this blog.
We’ll be talking about a bunch of anime characters and the kind of personality disorders they have but before we get to that we need to have a better understanding of anime and also have an idea about personality disorders.
What is Anime?
Anime originated in the Japanese industry, as a form of animation style. Like any kind of cinema or animated series, it caters to a large range of audiences interested in different genres.
Anime has been around for a long time now and its popularity has been increasing in recent decades. Most animes’ are adapted from Manga. Manga has been around much longer than anime. In simple terms, manga is a comic book of the Japanese entertainment industry.
Coming back to the characters of anime, like mentioned before, there are many genres in anime. Few animes like Naruto, Death Note, One Piece, Pokemon, Dragon Ball Z, etc. are quite popular for a long time.
In more recent times Attack on Titan, My Hero Academia, Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen are some which have been sending waves through the industry with great animation, like never seen before.
It is safe to say that right now, anime is in its best form. The characters in these anime series also have huge popularity.
These anime series also have characters who are written in great tragedies, but the details are amazingly complex and sometimes even glorified. Before we jump into anime characters with personality disorders, let us look at understanding a bit about personality disorders.
Personality disorders
What is personality?
Characteristics of a person, coping styles, and forms of interaction in the social environment emerge in childhood and usually crystallize into established patterns in late adolescence or early adulthood. These patterns form the personality of the individual: the set of unique traits and behaviors that characterize the person.
Diagnosis of Personality disorders
For a personality disorder to be diagnosed, the person’s enduring pattern of behavior must be pervasive and inflexible, as well as stable and long-lasting.
It must also cause clinically significant distress or impairment and be manifest in at least two of these areas: cognition, affect, interpersonal functioning, or impulse control.
Clusters of Personality disorders
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 5th edition differentiates personality disorders into 3 clusters, based on common central key features:
Cluster A includes odd and eccentric personality characteristics and that includes paranoid personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder, and schizotypal personality disorder.
Cluster B features dramatic or erratic personality disorders, including antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder.
Finally, cluster C includes personality disorders characterized by anxiety. This includes avoidant personality disorder, dependent personality disorder, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.
If you’re facing this, it may be a good idea to seek the help of a therapist or other mental health professional. You can find a therapist at BetterHelp who can help you learn how to cope and address it.
Types of personality disorders in brief
Paranoid Personality Disorder
People with paranoid personality disorder have difficulties in trusting others, stay suspicious, are scared to share personal information, misunderstand others, display hostile behavior, and are unforgiving in nature.
Schizoid Personality Disorder
People with this disorder do not crave social connections, in fact, they don’t even like to be a part of a family, or even establish close relationships. They often come across as cold, loners, and uninvolved.
Schizotypal Personality Disorder
People with this disorder display odd, inappropriate, and bizarre behavior. These people often claim to have psychic powers and display superstitious actions. They claim that they have special powers and other delusions as well.
Antisocial Personality Disorder
People with this disorder show impulsivity, deviance, and lack of remorse. They indulge in irresponsible and socially unacceptable behaviors. They do not conform to societal norms, they are also manipulative and display aggression.
Borderline Personality Disorder
People with this disorder suffer in maintaining interpersonal relationships, display erratic mood swings, and often indulge in impulsive and dangerous behaviors. They have a deep-seated fear of abandonment and go to lengths to stay away from real or perceived abandonment. They also have suicidal ideations at times and even indulge in self-harming behaviors.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder
People with this disorder are obsessed with themselves, constantly seek validation and admiration for small things they do and feel that they are very special. They display grandiosity, self-obsession, lack of empathy, arrogance, a sense of entitlement, and envy.
Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder
In this disorder, people show a sense of perfectionism, rigidity, anxiousness, constant feelings of dissatisfaction, and are extremely picky. They have a very rigid sense of behavior and discriminate things as right and wrong and nothing in between.
List of Anime characters with personality disorders
Yagami light – Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Now anyone who watches anime knows who Light aka Kira is. In fact, it is how most people get introduced to anime. Light has a notebook of death.
In the show, the impulse to use it starts off as a reaction to injustice but then slowly the intensity increases and the main character starts viewing himself as a god.
The killings start off with the criminals dying and later escalate to any person who comes in between Kira and his mission. He uses people mercilessly and discards them.
All the arrogance and other delusions developed in him makes him one of the main anime characters with a narcissistic personality disorder.
This is one of the most famous anime series based on the manga of the same name, which has the main character as the protagonist and also antagonist.
Misa Amane – Borderline Personality Disorder
Another character from the series Death Note is Miwa Amane. She is one of the main characters in the anime who idolizes Light aka Kira and is ready to do anything for him.
Throughout the series, she engages in unsafe sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, etc. She is extremely impulsive and also engages in self-injury and suicidal behaviors, making her one of the characters who display the signs of borderline personality disorder.
Katsuki Bakugou – Antisocial Personality Disorder
Well now anyone who watches anime in the current decade has seen or heard of ‘My Hero Academia’. In this series, most of the humans have some kind of trait that makes them more evolved than the present human race.
Katsuki Bakugou is one of the main supporting characters of the series who has some serious anger issues. He is extremely proud, egoistic, arrogant, and impulsive.
He always bullies his childhood friend and a lot of his resentment probably stems from his own inferiority feelings.
All these characteristics displayed by him point towards antisocial personality disorder. However, he is also shown to have some concern towards his friends and has a soft side to him.
Shougo Makishima – Antisocial Personality Disorder
Makishima from the series psycho-pass can be another example of antisocial personality disorder. His main characteristic is the lack of empathy.
Though he is interested in people and their behavior, he has zero empathy and can kill anyone without remorse.
Shuu Tsukiyama – Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Shuu Tsukiyama is an antagonist from Tokyo Ghoul. He has a constant admiration for himself and thinks of himself as someone special and gets extremely angry if he is not treated that way.
He is hostile, impatient, and a predator. The kind of characteristic displayed by him point towards a narcissistic personality disorder
Tatsuhiro Satou – Paranoid Personality Disorder
Tatsuhiro Satou from the series Welcome to the NHK is an extremely anxious and fearful character. He frequently doubts himself and more so doubts the people around him.
He had been alone most of his life due to that fear and any act no matter how innocent, he believes has a motive and conspiracy to hurt him.
He also feels like people around him are talking bad about him and cracking jokes on him. All these together with the feelings of isolation pushed him to a suicide attempt as well.
Sasuke Uchiha – Antisocial Personality Disorder
Now, this is a sensitive one but dear fans, please do not be offended. Sasuke Uchiha is one of the main supporting characters and also the antagonist for the major part of the Naruto Shippuden series.
It is quite obvious what made him that way, unresolved trauma and resentment towards his brother Itachi Uchiha who killed the entire Uchiha clan except for Sasuke and abandoned him.
He had to grow up alone and grew up with hatred towards his brother. His life goal was to kill Itachi Uchiha and restore the Uchiha clan. He cut his entireties and believed that it would make him stronger.
Ryuji – Obsessive-Compulsive Personality disorder
Ryuji, the protagonist from the series Toradora, is actually one of the nicest boys in anime!
He is portrayed peculiarly in the sense that he compulsively cleans up any mess he finds. The reasons for this compulsivity are shown through his childhood experiences.
He has been taking care of the household, cleaning, cooking in a methodical way ever since he can remember. He also develops a sense of pride in his cleanliness and is an overall ‘good boy’.
Conclusion
We discussed what anime is, what are personality disorders, clusters of personality disorders and mentioned a lot of anime characters who suffer from personality disorders. This can be due to the way these characters are written in such depth and full of a past that depicts how they became what they depict in the show.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs): Which Anime Characters Are Suffering From A Personality Disorder?
What anime characters have split personalities?
Some of the anime characters with split personalities are Zenitsu from Demon slayer, Akashi from Kuroko No Basket, Zetsu from Naruto, Twice from My Hero Academia, etc.
Who are some psychopathic anime characters?
Hisoka from Hunter x Hunter, Shuu Tsukiyama from Tokyo Ghoul, Shou Tucker from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Light Yagami from Death Note, etc.
What anime characters are INFP?
Gaara from Naruto, Nagato/Pain from Naruto Shippuden, Armin Arlert from Attack On Titan, Kaneki Ken from Tokyo Ghoul, etc., can come other Infp personality characteristics
What personality type is Deku from My Hero Academia?
Deku aka Izuku Midoriya has a personality type of ENFJ-T according to the MBTI personality inventory.
Does anime affect mental health?
Anime can affect mental health both in a good way and in a bad way. Some of the animes’ can be very intellectual which makes them very interesting to watch.
To a mature person who can separate imagination from reality, anime can be very entertaining and interesting. Also, anime has a long history of bringing mental illness into character development.
This has a good effect where people know what mental health problems are, but at the same time, not many authors portray mental health properly in their characters.
Which anime characters have suffered the most?
Ken Kaneki from Tokyo Ghoul, Atsushi Nakajima from Bungo Stray Dogs, Subaru Natsuki from Re: zero, Ash Lynx from Banana Fish, etc., have been shown to have a rough life and a lot of suffering on their path.
References
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.)