Toru Hagakure: The Unseen Hero

Toru Hagakure: The Unseen Hero

Introduction

Toru Hagakure is one of the My Hero Academia community’s most meme-able characters. In case you aren’t aware, she’s an invisible girl, and so people like to point out that she actually has the most screen time in the series, but since she’s invisible, you just can’t see her.

But what if there was more to Toru than just being a meme? What if she could actually become a real character in her own right? What if I told you I have a foolproof plan to find out what she actually looks like?

Quirk

Toru Hagakure in her U.A. school uniform from the anime My Hero Academia
Toru Hagakure: School Uniform

Before we get into the details of my secret plan, let’s first take a quick look at Toru and her quirk: Invisibility. To the right is a picture of Toru in her school uniform. As you can see, she’s one of the most attractive female characters in the entire series, so it’s no wonder the community has rallied around her.

But how exactly does her quirk work? As far as I can tell, there are two different types of quirks in the MHA universe (oh, and a quirk is just another name for a super power for the uninitiated). The first type are quirks that need to be activated by the user, such as Bakugo’s explosions.

The second type, however, and the type which Toru has, is a passive quirk which is always active. This means that Toru is always invisible, and is unable to “turn off” her quirk. Another student with a quirk like this would be Ojiro (the guy with the tail) because he can’t get rid of his tail on command.

Now that we understand what her quirk is and how it works, how can it be used? Well, as you might expect, invisibility isn’t exactly the best quirk for an offensive hero, so Toru isn’t likely to be that kind of hero even if she does receive some type of martial arts training like Uraraka did.

Toru Hagakure using her ultimate move from the anime My Hero Academia
Toru Hagakure: Ultimate Uniform

Instead, Toru is likely to be a hero who can scout out potentially dangerous situations without being detected by the enemy. She could also incapacitate her opponents before they realize she’s there, but that comes with more risk. Because of the nature of her quirk, she’s unlikely to ever be a “top hero.”

However, even though she isn’t an offensive hero, she, like the rest of her classmates, still needs to develop an ultimate move. So what would Toru’s ultimate move be? If we’re assuming that she isn’t going to magically develop more powers, then there’s only one thing I can reasonably think of: stripping.

For now, Toru’s hero “uniform” is simply a pair of gloves and a pair of sneakers, meaning the rest of her body is unclothed. So how would she make her quirk even more effective? By removing the gloves and sneakers to be completely invisible, that’s how.

Other than that, I honestly can’t think of anything else she could do unless she develops a secondary ability such as one that allows her to turn objects or people she touches invisible along with her.

The Real Toru

Now on to potentially the biggest discovery of the entire MHA universe: Toru’s true appearance. But before we get to that, I need to mention that this section will be covering material from the manga, and so is considered anime spoilers as of right now (episode 55).

I’m not sure exactly when what I’m about to talk about will be revealed, but it should happen during the current arc of the anime. If you don’t want anything to be spoiled, then I suggest you skip down to the conclusion or stop reading this post here.

Now that you’ve been warned, the first thing is that as we learned at the very beginning of the series, quirks don’t always manifest at birth. This means that Toru could have been visible for the first few years of her life, but that’s not really what we’re interested in, now is it?

The key to discovering what Toru currently looks like lies with one of the League of Villains members, Himiko Toga. We’ve been introduced to Toga’s quirk already in the anime, but it hasn’t yet been explicitly explained to us as her quirk, so I’ll break it down for you.

Toga uses needles, knives, or anything else, to draw blood from her opponent, much like the hero killer Stain. However, unlike Stain’s quirk which paralyzes his opponents when he ingests their blood, Toga is able to transform into anyone whose blood she ingests.

We saw this already during the provisional hero license exam when she turned into Uraraka, although we haven’t yet learned that it was Toga. However, it’s important to remember that Toga was unable to use Uraraka’s quirk while she was transformed into her.

By this logic, if Toga were to ingest Toru’s blood, then she could then transform into Toru. And, since Toga can’t use the quirk of the person she transforms into, this means that Toru’s invisibility wouldn’t be active, thus revealing her true appearance.

Toru Hagakure wearing a U.A. cheerleader uniform from the anime My Hero Academia
Toru Hagakure: Cheerleader Uniform

Now all that’s left is for the author of MHA to actually write this into the manga/anime. I would say that it could have already been done, but I have a feeling I would have heard about it by now considering how much the community seems to enjoy Toru as a meme, if not a character.

Conclusion

So what do you think Toru actually looks like? I like to think she’s actually your standard tsundere with blond twin tails, but maybe that’s just wishful thinking. Leave a comment to let me know. And while you’re down there, click the heart button if you liked this post.

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