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I just recently finished watching this anime. It is very good, and very different for an anime since it directly addresses current issues with Japan, especially with Japanese culture and mental illness.

Two of the characters though stood out in my mind. Not Sato, who is the hikikomori, it is pretty clear he is suffering from mild schizophrenia.

But Misaki and Kaoru both probably have an ASD.
Kaoru, Sato's next door neighbor seems to be a very stereotypical male aspie. I wish I can go into all the details, but truth be told even his initial misogyny is pretty reflective of some of the younger guys on this board. He is known to play the same song repeatedly.

Misaki on the other hand in the anime seems to have an ASD. In the manga she comes off as having BPD. But in the anime, which is closer to the novel, its pretty clear she probably as an ASD. It is noted that she has a great deal of trouble socializing with other girls her age and is quite odd, she even suggests she has difficulty reading body language. For an entire year she went through a period of one sided lectures on psych topics to Sato.

The reason I mention this is because it does point out why it may be more difficult to diagnose men and women who have ASD. Misaki while introverted seems quite normal on her face. Kaoru on the other hand...is well blantently aspie, he wears his obsessions on his sleave. He is very obsessive otaku. Misaki on the other hand is more complex in her obsession. Even the way she went about her relationship with Sato is definately different, pegging it as a "Special project" and writing up a contract for it. It was almost like Sato was her obsession, it took getting to know her in the series to realize what was going on, everything was below the surface.

Maybe this is something that I picked up from the anime. Make no mistake, both Misaki and Kaoru went through hell in thier childhood. Misaki found abuse from her stepfather and Kaoru had very bad at peer relations (constantly bullied). Watching this though I did figure it was about the mental health problems of Japan, depression (there is a story arch of group suicides), schizophrenia, hikikimori, and well...autism spectrum disorders.

I might pick up the DVDs sometime in the future.

If you are interested its on the funimation video site. They have the entire series up.

Not saying that I will not one day buy it, it is just one of those series I caught through the web.

I think I understand what you mean, though I have only watched the first few episodes, I guess I might just check out this series again to see if I can complete it.