My Hero Academia follows many time-honored conventions of the superhero genre, from superheroes employing trusty sidekicks to heroes and villains alike wearing stylish costumes to hide their identity -- or even bolster their combat effectiveness. Some MHA villains are known for their creative costume designs, but what about Toga Himiko, the blood-soaked yandere?
Toga's costume is an ordinary-looking schoolgirl outfit with some blood-sucking devices added, giving the petite villain a distinct look. It initially seems like she chose this outfit for sheer convenience, but there may be more to it. Perhaps she's sending a message to society at large with her villain costume.
Toga's Costume Mocks The Society That Rejected Her
My Hero Academia's Toga is the right age to be in school, but instead she is running around with the League of Villains. She was once in the school system, but soon after graduating from junior high, Toga stabbed a classmate to drink his blood and soon vanished from the public eye. Soon after, she joined the League of Villains, fighting back against the society that had rejected her and her blood-based Quirk.
Toga's personal theme is centered around conformity vs personal authenticity; her parents, disgusted by their daughter's Quirk, tried to force her to be "normal" and suppress her true nature. She tried but failed to do this as her "innocent schoolgirl" facade cracked, with no way to go back to how things were. Rejecting the "mask" that society tried to force on her -- and perhaps to mock and scorn that idea of conformity -- Toga chose a school uniform as her villain costume.
Reclaiming the classic idea of a school uniform and making it her own, Toga added bloodsucking devices to bolster her combat prowess further. Now she is an "ordinary" schoolgirl on her own terms. Notably, her villain costume is different than the uniform worn at her old school, to help make the distinction clearer. She likely resents her old uniform and wouldn't wear it again for any reason.
Toga As Uraraka Ochaco's Mirror in My Hero Academia
Toga clearly chose her villain costume before meeting any students from U.A., but it coincidentally emphasizes her thematic connection to them -- Uraraka Ochaco in particular. In many ways, Toga is Uraraka's dark mirror, both being impressionable adolescents motivated by a personal hero whom they wish to emulate. Uraraka lives an honest and brave lifestyle as a trainee hero who looks up to Midoriya Izuku, while Toga wanted to imitate and even kill Stain, her first crush. She also wished to learn more about both 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 girls' uniform at U.A. Both characters are far more than ordinary anime high school girls, with one augmenting the school system with heroics and the other mocking it as a rebellious villain. Toga and Uraraka have gone in totally opposite directions in their lives but are still markedly similar, and their uniforms help reflect that in My Hero Academia.
Toga is what Uraraka might have been if the latter didn't have supporting parents and Midoriya to keep her on the path of heroism. A desperate, impoverished Uraraka might have become a villain to steal money and fight her way out of poverty, and then she and Toga would have been two of a kind.
