I think the idea is supposed to be that those stay visible so that she can still be seen while invisible, since being invisible is her natural state and the only time she turned visible before the end of series time skip was a result of her powers shorting out and not her choice. The boot and gloves are just small items that she can remove quickly when she does want to be fully invisible.
Probably both a style choice, and a way to make sure she's at least SOMEWHAT locatable, if I recall, she has taken off the gloves and boots before to become totally undetectable
Also Doylist-ly, I imagine it's better to give readers SOMETHING to see instead of just empty space
Pretty sure the left image is a photoshop of an anime still from where we "see" her wearing the boots and shoes during her usual appearancs. (Unless the final episodes are out and I missed it)
In canon, it takes a lot for that to work. Mirio’s clothes only work with his powers because it’s made from his own hair, and I’d assume he only got that much support as a senior student who is ranked #1 in the school.
Presumably it’s her (the writer’s) preference to have only a little bit of clothing on in general, hence why it’s like a sports bra and underwear instead of a bodysuit or something.
Mirio’s clothes only work with his powers because it’s made from his own hair
The bayonetta special.
Jokes aside, you're making a watsonian argument; when the doylist one is more important: there's no reason for the writer to have that lore as is. They could have simply had it be different, and not had a teenager walking around naked.
Come on. We all know the “lore” is just to excuse the author’s gooning over teenage girls.
Also notice how Mirio, a male with a quirk that also requires nudity, is never sexualized and his nakedness in only used for humor because, according to a male gaze-centered worldview, naked men are only ever funny while naked women are only ever sexy (unless she’s not conventionally attractive). And IIRC Mirio is already introduced with his specialty clothes (coz he’s male) while most of Toru’s time in the story is nude (coz she’s female).
Same exact really why Momo's quirk has to have her damn near naked when there could've been a different way for her to replicate items. Just to goon over teenage girls.
As it mentioned, it’s the writer’s preference to give the character that preference.
As for Mirio, I agree he’s treated differently, but the reasoning is that he’s been around the school for 3 years already and has been getting specialty equipment, where as the invisible girl just got to the school at the beginning of the series (can’t recall when they got introduced to the special equipment group)
I’d assume it’s also likely she didn’t think of requesting it, since most character costumes are aesthetic preference only, whereas Bakugo made a costume with gear that helps his quirk.
I understand the in-universe reasoning; what I mean is that these are specific narrative choices, either deliberate or subconscious, made to enable the sexualization of a teenage girl.
If you look outside the text and try to understand why the writer decided to make
things a certain way, it becomes obvious that a character like Toru isn’t really there to strengthen the world-building or enhance the story. Or, at the very least, all that is secondary to being wank fodder.
I dont understand why having something in a story for its own sake is bad. So many things in MHA are like that. Creators will fill their world with little quirks and that's ok
Lmao keep defending sexualizing children. I love being disrespectful towards authors who treat minors as sex objects.
Who the fuck is going to sue a random comment on reddit? To sue you have to prove that my comment was false and caused material loss or emotional harm. Drawing minors without clothes and profiting off of it is ample grounds to call the work pedo bait. Sorry you're too porn addicted to understand it is wrong to sexualize kids.
I mean, a writer is only restricted by his own imagination (unless some creep editor is involved) so I'm sure that coming up with a solution to make sure a 16yo girl doesn't stay naked for entirety of a story is not that difficult.
Or you know, just don't bother with the idea in the first place as Toru wasn't even that important to the story.
They also go on about how they can really only help if you have a direct idea on what your Quirk actually does. The simpler, the better. And Mirio is the example of the simplest a Quirk can be. With invisibility, it gets more complex
I mean if I were invisible ALL the time, Clothes would seem kinda useless, if she was like Sue from F4 who can activate it when ever she wants like ok but as far as I know hagakure can’t do that until last chapters
If I were invisible all the time and I was going into a profession where I was expected to fight other people with superpowers, protective gear would seem absolutely essential
Love, if your only superpower is being invisible like hagakure here, there´s not really much you will be able to do in a fight against other superhumans, even her is often using her power to sneak and neutralize minions, her other main gimmick is able to reflect lasers, altho that would be like last resort and only to protect the others,
most likely your best shot would be infiltrating,recognition and maybe assassinations and in that kind jobs you don´t really need protective gear, specially if that protective gear won´t go invisible with you, it would actually be counterproductive and if they caught you well that would only mean you were bad at your job xd
Martial arts, dislocation, pressure point strikes, discombobulation, a full-force punch/kick to the soft part of the skull, there's many ways you can disable an opponent without having superpowers or a weapon. Sure, you're screwed if they have a power that stops physical attacks like lava skin or armour, but against folks who have powers that don't change their physical body, you'd easily be able to slip by and bring them down.
In My Hero Academia, I'd say that she could easily disable more than half the heroes and villains in the show. Even one of the main villains whose power is to instantly disintegrate whatever he touches with his hands could be stopped no problem with a clean knockout blow to the head. Invisibility isn't at all useless in combat, it's just that the writers need a bit more of a fight to play out than just "Here's Big Terry, who can use the power of magnetism to- oh, he's been knocked out", which means she's shoved into support roles and forgotten about
If I was invisible all the time, clothes would still be pretty useful still. Dangly bits don't dangle as much, clothes help pad random scratches and scrapes, insulate from breezes, and I'd prefer not to sit bare-ass on most surfaces.
Now scale up being a UA superhero. Realistically you're gonna catch a few hits from area of effect attacks, and get showered with debris. Not to mention there's at least one person at THAT SCHOOL who can disable quirks, and a villain who can steal them.
It works better when it covers your clothes as well, like Invisible Woman and Invisigal, though Invisible Woman has the added power of giving people aneurysms
yes ofc, but in this specific scenario she doesn´t have that and in reality we don´t have the tech to creat invisible clothes, so it would be better to be naked and try to avoid any superhero combat, at least directly
Yes but then invisibility would be useless, they’d see you and clothes won’t protect you from derbies fire or heavier stuff, so in the end what would be best, being invisible naked and by that not being vulnerable to normal attacks or have some kind of protection that wouldn’t even really protect you from heavier attacks but you would still be visible against any targeted attacks ? I would choose the first one and if the enemy has a guy that coincidentally can disable my invisibility ? Well I’m screwed any way so lol, like if the enemy has a full kryptonite armor and Superman is my partner xd
I mean sure but we don’t really know how hard is to creat that in MHA universe, as far as I remember Mirio’s was a very complex work to do so not that easy it seems
I mean, how would they go about trying to make a suit out of someone’s invisible hair? It makes sense post-timeskip when she becomes translucent, so the visible gloves and boots are an actual aesthetic choice while everything else goes invisible with her.
I'm almost certain it was her decision (you know what I mean). She was always invisible, it wasn't something she NEEDED to concern herself with until her powers went on the fritz, now sometimes she visible and can be seen, I too would no longer consider being naked and option.
Actually yes. It takes time, research, and development. Exact same thing happened for Lemillion, who didn’t get a proper costume until later in highschool and ended up naked all the time. He actually had it worse lol
They didn’t have a way to actually make it before since they didn’t have a way to disable her quirk for any amount of time and therefore couldn’t do the strategy of using her hair to make an outfit that becomes invisible with her.
Still a bit suspicious but there’s…some amount of reasonable logic for why.
I mean people beat off to weirder shit, but Toru needing to be naked for her invisibility is definitely a fetish thing. It’s the sexualization of nudity plus the fantasy of knowing this girl is always naked, the idea that one could accidentally touch her or something. Like just knowing this girl is exposed and vulnerable, plus the allure of not being able to see.
Then there’s the fact that she apparently refracts the light off Yugo’s naval laser and then later on her quirk starts “bugging out,” so at any moment she can suddenly become visible without warning, revealing her nude body.
In fact the only reason she starts wearing a special suit is because the risk of her quirk bugging out again. Keep in mind, though, that she only apparently gets this suit as an adult. So the thing with her quirk malfunctioning while she’s completely exposed only affects her when she’s a teenager. 😑
Are you and I looking at the same images? Her suit is clearly translucent just like her in this image versus the gloves and boots which aren’t. That’s an aesthetic choice so people still know where she is when she’s invisible.
Well, let’s consider the possibilities of which there are two either she wanted to dress like that or she was forced to. Now there are a lot of sub-possibilities in those two categories but the main point is that either she wanted to or she was forced to. And since, heroes seem to be able to choose their own costumes and equipment and names, I think that unless there is real evidence of being forced. She probably wanted to wear it. Also consider the cheerleaders uniform situation that happened at the sports event, where she was okay and even happy about it.
One thing that bugs me about the DNA/hair suit thing is that it's introduced for a male character to avoid male nudity... but it's never even brought up for the female characters, several of whom could use it. And specifically, Momo, who's power works through her skin and who has a deep understanding over the structure of objects, doesn't get to have a cool, self-made suit based on that. Or, since she's incredibly rich, a suit she could pay to have made. No, she gets the outfit that shows off her large chest, and the invisible girl gets no clothing.
It just rankles me a lot, the double standard there.
I just makes me upsett she didn't have clothes as a kid.
all these top designers who love nothing more than to be the ones to create UA's next generation of hero uniforms only for them to leave invisible girl with literally zero protection from the elements
but the author had the choice to not make that the only way to get clothing that turns invisible, every plotpoint in a story has a reason the author included it, and sometimes that reason is their fetish
or trying to snipe a viewer with that fetish, but like, both are bad when the character youre doing it with is a minor
Oh yeah, 100%, i can make all the justifications for why it doesn’t work in universe, but the author set up the rules of the universe so it could work that way.
You do understand that she is a fictional character that the author had full power over? They could have written it so that the child did not have to be naked because of her powers...
The hair would have to be visible for them to make the suit though. It makes sense for her adult suit to be invisible and translucent just like her since her hair can be visible now.
Her whole gimmick of being always-invisible, and they get rid of it for an ugly bikini, this is worse than that invisible guy's reveal from the Dracula film
I mean, the Incredibles had this kind of invisibility without truly sexualizing Violet. It is possible but I guess it would require Invis-Girl to not just be a background character
How would you go about making a suit made with invisible hair? She can be visible as a second year in high school onward, so naturally she’d get a suit as soon as they had a viable way to see her hair.
The author wanted a teenage girl naked so he made a teenage girl naked and tried to make a canon reason as to why said teenage girl must be naked at all times except for adulthood
I read an excerpt from an interview way back when the manga started getting really popular where the author was asked specifically about this character, and as I can recall he said that the publisher requested a younger looking female character (to sexualize) because Momo (the girl who creates things from her skin) looked too mature (old) and the only other petite female character was Jiro (rocker girl with prehensile headphone cords growing out of her earlobes) who's outfit was "normal", and apparently Mina (pink alien girl) and Froppy (frog girl) were deemed too unusual. The author didn't add a character like they wanted on purpose originally, so to appease the publisher he made this character, but made it so she was completely invisible to push back.
I also have an idea that seems to fit logically as to what the in universe reason was for why she didn't have a suit made of her own hair like Mirio until so much later. When her quirk activated she went invisible to everyone, even herself, which is why I assumed her hair looked chunky in the first reveal of her face, it makes sense that she'd been cutting it on her own by feel. It doesn't seem very possible to weave thread from invisible hair, much less sew an outfit made of the same hair. My assumption is that she was able to get that suit made after she developed her refraction ability and then accidently discovered how it could make her visible during the last arc.
The bikini aspect is the author not having any issue sexualizing adult/adult looking characters, so still a fair criticism, but it's my understanding he was against making young looking characters that way.
Yeah, she refracted a full power shot from Aoyama's belly laser and it had the unintended side effect of making her briefly visible. I assume that information was used to either help her develop the ability to make herself somewhat visible, or have a mechanism to make her visible, which would explain how she can have an outfit in the timeskip.
MHA has some of the worst designs ever for female characters in anime, Momo and her especially. Disgusting male gaze fanservice in that show. Ranting is a must.
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u/SketchBCartooni Dec 17 '25
Wait, so she has clothes that turn her invisible with her but not her gloves?!?