After finishing Dungeon Meshi, I had a lot of thoughts. Most of them were thoughts I'd seen echoed by other people, but there's one thing I don't think I've seen anyone else say:
Obviously Kabru makes hating Laios his whole personality for a while, and the western elves think he'd be a dreadful dungeon master Lord of the Dungeon, and half of his party gets annoyed by his enthusiasm for monster cuisine. But I'm not talking about that.
Let's start with how almost literally everyone thinks he'd be the worst possible Lord of the Dungeon.
This isn't just Kabru being in his "hating Laios is my entire personality" phase; everyone assumes that Laios's desires being fulfilled by the dungeon would be bad for humanity.
To be clear, they're wrong. Sure, Laios is susceptible to the Winged Lion's temptation, but so is everyone. At least Laios's stint as ersatz dungeon lord didn't have a body count! (Unless you count the Winged Lion's clones.)
But that doesn't matter, does it? People hated him before he reveals his obsession with monsters, and they have no shortage of reasons. Laios keeps talking about monsters and asking unwanted questions, he can't hold a normal conversation, he can't read the room or understand social cues, he doesn't fit in anywhere.
Laios does his best to act normal (most obviously when he pretends not to notice the Golden Country spirit because no one else sees it), but it's not good enough. People can still tell that he's different. They hate him when he acts weird and they hate him when he acts normal. Don't take it from me; take it from Chilchuck.
The left panel is the whole reason this post exists. It states in plain English that Laios would still be ostracized even if he only said "reasonable" things. People's distaste and distrust of him isn't rooted in how he acts or what he says, but in who he is.
Pretty much anyone who knows what they're talking about accepts that Laios is autistic. Probably also Falin, maybe also other party members, but Laios is definitely the poster boy for Dunmeshi autism. And the reasons people hate him are pretty closely aligned with his autism. That's usually subtext, but Shuro says the quiet part out loud.
Shuro doesn't know about the monster-eating or think Laios is gonna destroy humanity. He just can't stand Laios's eccentricities. And he's far from alone.
We don't see a lot of Laios's childhood, outside his interactions with Falin...but the subtext isn't great. You don't need to be a seasoned dungeoneer to recognize that someone is "different"; any kid can do it. And from the sparse glimpses we've seen of the Thorden parents—Laios's nightmare, the little indications that he shaves to avoid looking like his father, etc—they don't seem to have accepted their son's differences, either.
I doubt anyone in the Dungeon Meshi world knows the word "autism". If you tried to explain it to the Thorden party, their reactions would probably range from "Are you sure that's a thing?" to "Come on, everyone thinks like that sometimes, right?" But you don't need words to recognize difference, or to loathe it, or to make different people's lives hell. To make them want to escape their lives, by whatever means are necessary.
Is it any wonder Laios identifies with monsters, when so many people already treat him like one?
