Rui Kamishiro – His Story, His Neurodivergent Traits, His Fear of Abandonment, His Self-Acceptance, and His Development: A Thread 🧵
Honestly, I didn’t really know where to start. I think it’s easier for me to go in chronological order of Rui’s life rather than release order to properly explain my thoughts. I hope it won’t be too messy…
(Disclaimer: English is not my native language, and I’m an emotional wreck while writing this thread. If you have any thoughts or corrections, feel free to share! I’d love to talk about Rui with you.)
Let's start with Rui's childhood, specifically by referring to RMD (chapters 3/4/5, with the translation available on YouTube by Arvon Oven):
We are introduced to a seven-year-old Rui who immediately displays behavior that is atypical for a child his age.
We are introduced to a seven-year-old Rui who immediately displays behavior that is atypical for a child his age.
He passionately talks about a moth he is observing, while all the other children his age are completely disgusted by the insect. He then delivers a monologue about its anatomical structure, its biology, and the ways it survives predators through different defense mechanisms—
until the insect eventually flies toward the other children, terrifying them and making them scream.
The truly interesting thing about this scene is that it directly shows that Rui, as a child,
The truly interesting thing about this scene is that it directly shows that Rui, as a child,
fundamentally struggles to put himself in other people's shoes and to predict how certain people might react. The highly scientific aspect of his analysis is, of course, there to emphasize that he is gifted for his age and that his hobbies are unusual.
However, he is so absorbed in the insect that he completely fails to notice the obvious disgust of the other children and is only disappointed when the moth flies away. This detail is extremely important because this difficulty in understanding others' thoughts and reactions
(which is also a major reason why ND people struggle with communication) is essentially the core explanation behind most of the events in RMD and Wonder Halloween.
Later, we are shown a scene where Rui is at school, and his teacher announces that he has won a robotics competition despite his young age. At first, the reactions are positive, but then his teacher asks him to give a speech.
At that moment, Rui decides to talk about the mechanical functions, the engineering behind his robot, and his future improvement plans, which leaves the entire class—including his teacher—completely perplexed.
Naturally, when someone is asked to give a speech in this context, people usually expect them to talk about how they’ve always loved tinkering, how their parents' profession might have influenced their passion, their future dreams, or the support they received.
People expect a fundamentally emotional speech, but Rui instead lists the technical characteristics of his project as if he were explaining a thesis he had just written.
Once again, the scene reinforces the fact that he has a hard time understanding what people expect from him in terms of communication and emotions. To him, it makes perfect sense to explain the flexibility system of his robot, even though his entire audience is completely lost.
Moreover, at his age, he obviously lacks the ability to simplify his explanations (which, let’s be honest, probably wouldn’t have interested most of his classmates anyway). This only intensifies the awkward atmosphere in the classroom, and eventually, a child blurts out,
"We don’t understand anything!"—which completely crushes Rui’s spirit. You can feel that he has a genuine desire to talk about what he loves and to share his passion.
The comment from his teacher about the jury calling him a genius for his age only makes things worse, as many children begin to feel jealous of him since he is constantly praised for his intelligence.
Even before the window incident occurs, the other kids are already quite cruel to him, making remarks that highlight how different he is—too lost in his own world, too smart to be understood.
Rui is highly sensitive to how others perceive him, even more so than the average seven-year-old. The fact that he is continuously marginalized and labeled as "different," not just by his classmates but also by adults,
means that even the smallest negative remark completely ruins his mood for the day. He is well aware of his communication difficulties on top of the issues related to his passions. He even tells his mother that no matter how hard he tries to communicate with others,
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