Absolutely. There's several theories floating around as to why. Some consider the "tropiness" of anime and the kind of over-exagerrated emotive characters as appealing to autists due to the kind of predictable structure along with making it very obvious for them to tell the emotional state of the characters. I think it basically boils down to an autistic tendency to want to collect and categorize things which in the case of anime girls there's absolutely no shortage of merchandising and various different outfits and the like, versions of the characters, that appeals to this tendency in the same way that autists will want to know about every single variety of locomotive engine.

The social cringe that is usually associated with anime weebs is also most likely a symptom of autism. They try to emulate the characters behavior they see because it gives them comfort to have a set of social expectations and rules on how to behave and most crappy anime is already so formulaic and samely it fits well into this desire, but the problem is of course being an escapist medium from what most westerners would consider a high pressure performance culture it in no way resembles how people interact with each other in real life beyond a superficial resemblance.

I believe BBC did a report on this link a while back.

https://youtu.be/30nfka8J8Y0

As for why there's a connection with the trans identification and anime I'm not really sure. It may simply be that autism is the common factor, I've also noticed a prepensity for autistic people to be gay. As well as a prepensity for anime fans to be gay. Really depends on the circles one moves with.

Most anime is rather harmless but there is a subset of hypersexualized commerical anime that seems like it is market tested to appeal to the lurid desires of men (and alternatively there exists a similar market to the harlequin romance novel appealing to women's unhealthy relationship fantasies) but I think that's merely a consequence of "sex sells".