#adiren is bipolar

[goatlilly]

Adrien Has Bipolar

Everyone knows Adrien Agreste to be Miraculous Ladybug’s resident sad-boy: aka, he’s depressed. However, while Adrien clearly exhibits common symptoms of major depressive disorder on multiple occasions, there are also numerous occasions where he seems completely fine, and others where he acts downright energetic and perky. His behavior is kind of erratic sometimes, and some might chalk it up to bad character writing, but there is actually a real-world diagnosis for his behavior, and I don’t see nearly enough people discussing this, so I’m going to write you all an essay explaining exactly why I think Adrien has bipolar disorder.

            Okay, so for any of you out there who are unsure what bipolar is, it’s essentially a mood disorder that causes an individual to experience abnormal emotional highs and lows, usually spanning over long periods of time and causing shifts in the individual’s energy levels. These shifts in moods are generally described as either manic/hypomanic or depressive episodes. During a manic or hypomanic episode, a bipolar individual will experience a low-level increase of energy, often having trouble sitting still or thoroughly thinking things through. Hypomania can cause someone to be irrational, irritable, impulsive, and impatient as some of its negative downsides, while on the more positive end they will experience heightened levels of productivity and self-esteem. Mania is similar, but on a MUCH larger scale, causing all listed downsides and positives to be dialed up to a ten. For example, a hypomanic individual might think they can handle taking ten more credits in college when they’re already taking twelve credits, while a manic individual might think they could adopt five kids while still taking college classes and adding ten extra credits. Being hypomanic makes an individual feel hyper-competent, while mania makes them think they have superpowers. The depressive episodes for a bipolar individual are pretty much the same as depression might be for a normally depressed individual, having the effect of decreasing someone’s productivity levels, energy, and their motivation. These episodes are the opposite of mania, resulting in heightened levels of sensitivity and sluggishness, as well as a higher-level requirement and desire for sleep and solitude and generally low self-esteem. Using the prior example with college credits, a bipolar individual going through a depressive episode might suddenly decide that 12 credits is actually too much, and they should drop at least two of their classes, or they may even go to the extreme of thinking that they should just drop out altogether. So yeah, typical depressed behavior. The key difference here is that these depressive episodes are usually somewhat out of nowhere, and don’t tend to last as long as a typical depression would.

            Alright, that was a long explanation, but now we can get into the meat and potatoes of this thing, that being a deep dive into why I think Adrien has bipolar. And why it was probably written into his character completely by accident.

            So, first things first, let’s look at instances of Adrien being depressed, since that’s what started off this whole thing in the first place. There are some more obvious ones like in Glaciator 2 or Kuro Neko, (we’ll touch more on Glaciator 2 later,) where Adrien demonstrates clear depressive symptoms, wallowing in his room, refusing offers from others for help and generally shutting down, but there are other instances such as in Siren, Senti-Bubbler or Hack-San where he demonstrates Irritability and behaves higher levels of sensitivity than he normally does. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a very sensitive individual in general, but it felt a little more pronounced in these episodes. I’d almost go as far as to say that Adrien seems depressive at the beginning of Dark Cupid as well, but that was such a short scene that I don’t feel like it can really be used to support my argument. Anyways, he’s clearly had a few depressive episodes, but they aren’t all that frequent. Some might say he’s just good at masking, but honestly, I don’t think he is. Every time he’s been sad, either as Adrien or as Chat Noir, it’s been pretty apparent. He seems genuinely fine in most scenes, sometimes being almost downright giddy.

            Which leads me to the evidence of him being manic. The most prominent instances of this are pretty early on, manifesting in stone-heart, Copycat and Kung food. In all three of these episodes, Adrien appears to have more energy than usual, taking impulsive risks and bearing a very inflated opinion of himself compared to usual. Another instance where his behavior screams manic is in Gamer 2.0, when Chat is kind of just screwing around during the whole fight, refusing to listen to ladybug and acting a bit stupider than normal, especially since this is in season 3, and Chat Noir largely mellows out in this season compared to season 1. There’s of course also the episode Glaciator 2, and this is the episode I think is probably worth further discussion. So, let’s do that now. Yay! In the episode, Adrien starts off as manic, interacting with Ladybug in a way that shows a great lack of awareness on his part, generally seeming to say whatever pops into his head without much consideration and irrationally thinking that he has a chance with her in the moment despite being rejected multiple times. Once Ladybug tells him off, it doesn’t take long for all the energy to go away, and he transitions into full depressive mode. He stays pretty depressive for most of the episode, transitioning into irritability and then trying to act normal when Marinette calls him over but only coming off as something close to an impression of what he’s usually like as Chat Noir. At the end though, he goes back into manic mode, thinking again that he has a chance with Ladybug if he just acts like his true self, which, like… what does that even mean? I’m sorry, I just can’t with this boy sometimes.

Also… I guess I should bring up Chat Blanc too. This is one of the most distinct moments in the series were Adrien exhibits mania. Normally I would have thought he’d be mostly despondent as Chat Blanc—that or scared. Instead, he’s full of energy, moving in circles around Ladybug and talking her ear off, saying that everything will be fixed if Marinette just gives him her miraculous, acting out impulsively, irrationally, and almost most significantly, completely out of control. I realize that he was akumatized at the time, but it should be noted that one of the most universal things you’ll hear from individuals who experience mania is that while it offers a heightened sense of Euphoria and capability, it is during manic episodes that they are the most unstable. When mania hits, it’s hard to stay in control, and a part of the brain is aware of that fact. So much energy is buzzing through someone, and if they’re in a state of emotional fragility when the episode hits, it isn’t unusual for them to start self-destructing. The energy needs somewhere to go, so it often comes out in destructive ways.

See, that’s the thing. I really don’t think that Adrien’s character was supposed to be Bipolar. His entire character is about that concept of destructive energy, being that he, you know, has the power to destroy things. There’s an inherent bipolarity to the way that Adrien acts when he’s in costume as opposed to when he’s not. He starts out suppressing his emotions as Adrien, then over stresses them when he’s Chat Noir. When he’s Adrien, he’s the perfect person who thinks he’s not all that cool, and when he’s Chat Noir, he’s a flawed teenaged boy who thinks he’s a lot cooler than he really is. His entire character is like one gigantic Allegory for living with Bipolar. Regardless though, I do think that Adrien is bipolar, whether he was meant to be or not, and as someone with bipolar myself, I can’t help but relate to him.

So yeah. Thanks for reading. I know this was super long and stuff, so if you made it all the way to the end then you’re a real champion. Anyways, let me know what your thoughts are on this. Does Adrien seem bipolar to any of you, or is it just me grasping at straws because I finally found some vague representation of my disorder that isn’t entirely inaccurate? (Honestly, it’s sad how bad the media depiction of bipolar is in general.) If nothing else, I hope you at least come away from this with a decent understanding of bipolar disorder.