My Hero Academia follows many time-honored conventions of the superhero genre, from superheroes employing trusted companions to heroes and villains who wear fancy suits to hide their identity, or even bolster their effectiveness in combat. Some MHA villains are known for their creative costume designs, but what about Toga Himiko, the blood-soaked Yandere?
The Toga costume is an ordinary-looking schoolgirl outfit with some added blood-sucking devices, giving the little villain a distinct look. Initially, it seems like she chose this outfit out of sheer convenience, but there may be more. Perhaps she is sending a message to society at large in her villain disguise.
Toga from My Hero Academia is the right age to be in school, but instead he’s running with the League of Villains. He was once in the school system, but shortly after graduating from high school, Toga stabbed a classmate to drink his blood and soon disappeared from the public eye. Soon after, she joined the League of Villains, fighting the society that had rejected her and her blood-based Quirk.
Toga’s personal theme centers on conformity versus personal authenticity; her parents, disgusted by their daughter’s gift, tried to force her to be “normal” and suppress her true nature. She tried but couldn’t do this when her “innocent schoolgirl” facade cracked, with no way to get back to the way things were. Rejecting the “mask” that society tried to impose on her – and perhaps to mock and disparage that idea of conformity – Toga chose a school uniform as her villain costume.
Taking the classic idea of a school uniform back and making it his own, Toga added blood-sucking devices to further bolster his combat prowess. She is now a “normal” schoolgirl on her own terms. In particular, his villain costume is different from the uniform he wore in his old school, to help make the distinction clearer. His old uniform probably bothers him and he wouldn’t wear it again for any reason.
Toga clearly chose her villain costume before meeting the UA students, but she casually emphasizes her thematic connection to them, Uraraka Ochaco in particular. In many ways, Toga is Uraraka’s dark mirror, both being impressionable teenagers motivated by a personal hero they wish to emulate. Uraraka lives an honest and brave lifestyle as a hero-in-training who admires Midoriya Izuku, while Toga wanted to imitate and even kill Stain, his first crush. He also wanted to learn more about Midoriya and Uraraka, and has transformed into the latter more than once.
By wearing a schoolgirl uniform, Toga visually echoes her heroic twin Uraraka, who wears the standard uniform for girls in UA Both characters are so much more than normal anime high school girls, one boosts the school system with heroic deeds and the other taunts him as a rebellious villain. Toga and Uraraka have gone in totally opposite directions in their lives, but they remain remarkably similar, and their uniforms help to reflect that in My Hero Academia.
Toga is what Uraraka might have been if the latter had no parents to support her and Midoriya to keep her on the path of heroism. A desperate and impoverished Uraraka could have turned into a villain to steal money and fight her way out of poverty, and then she and Toga would have been two equal people.