To be honest, I don't think that the writers were intentionally trying to portray Nanoha as autistic. It just sorta wound up happening and they never realized what they were doing. (And the funny thing is that quite often the best characters are the ones that develop so organically that they wind up taking on lives of their own before the author even realizes it.)
As for why they never realized it... Keep in mind, this is the same culture that always prided itself as a champion of child welfare.... All while child abuse actually ran rampant and was covered up by their tendency to cover up anything that's unsightly. And the same applies to the mental health system. Which, like child abuse, is only now starting to have some light shed on the ugly truths.
When it came to things like ASD and ADHD, the Japanese have always been all like WeDon'tDoThatHere.gif. And yet, it runs rampant among their children, utterly ignored as they're forced though Japan's cookie-cutter style education system where overachievers like Nanoha are praised as being "Good Kids".
That said, I think that writers unconsciously made Nanoha autistic. Yeah, it wasn't intentional... but this is probably because they looked at children who have undiagnosed ASD and said to themselves "That's exactly what we need!"
As for why they never realized it... Keep in mind, this is the same culture that always prided itself as a champion of child welfare.... All while child abuse actually ran rampant and was covered up by their tendency to cover up anything that's unsightly. And the same applies to the mental health system. Which, like child abuse, is only now starting to have some light shed on the ugly truths.
When it came to things like ASD and ADHD, the Japanese have always been all like WeDon'tDoThatHere.gif. And yet, it runs rampant among their children, utterly ignored as they're forced though Japan's cookie-cutter style education system where overachievers like Nanoha are praised as being "Good Kids".
That said, I think that writers unconsciously made Nanoha autistic. Yeah, it wasn't intentional... but this is probably because they looked at children who have undiagnosed ASD and said to themselves "That's exactly what we need!"