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Toga Himiko is thrown into battle against several MLA operatives, but her main opponent is the former journalist Kizuki Chitose (Codename: Curious; Meta Ability: Landmine). This match-up is interesting not just because we get Toga’s backstory, but because of the themes that it brings up and the contrast between Toga’s elusiveness and Curious’s dogged pursuit of a good “scoop”.
Toga’s deviance began in her childhood and eventually led to her seriously injuring a classmate in middle school and drinking his blood. Her parents had always been weirded out by her, especially considering the allusion that child Toga had a habit of killing animals and sucking their blood with the strangest look of pleasure on her face.
It’s considered a huge red flag if a child displays cruelty to animals, so the implication here is quite damning: Toga Himiko was never “sane”. Toga’s interest in blood mingled with the things she admired or loved, so for her, these violent acts draw blood and hence, elicit a kind of beauty she cannot live without, but are also an expression of love on her part.
She ran away from home afterwards, avoiding the public eye and hence becoming the kind of social outcast that ends up resenting society. After her crime, Toga lived an elusive life as she tried her hardest to avoid the press, the cops and her parents. A nod to this is her mid-fight repetition of the phrase “Don’t get caught”, which was probably the words she had to live by if she were to survive as a young girl with a seemingly detestable Quirk and even more detestable sensibilities.
Have you ever heard people in relationships jokingly say that they want to live in their partner’s skin? The saying “you are what you eat” also comes to mind here, as Toga’s Quirk enables her to transform into the people whose blood she ingests. However, this particular habit which is tied to her Quirk is also something she does particularly to show “love”, and if one considers blood to be life essence, Toga’s ingestion of blood is in some way an attempt to keep the people she loves with her, but she also transforms into them, quite literally living “in their skin”.
This is confirmed when Toga evolves during her battle, donning the appearance of Uraraka Ochaco (Hero Name: Uravity; Quirk: Zero Gravity) and gaining the ability to use the abilities of the people she transforms into. Using the nimble agility she honed in a life of evasion, Toga touches all of her opponents, uses Uravity’s ability to raise them very far off the ground and with a determined look she says, “I want to become more like what I love!”, before letting them fall to their deaths.
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