You Know What I Love About Toshinori Yagi?  (an Artist-y Chat)

You know what I love about Toshinori Yagi?  (an artist-y chat)

Besides the obvious, I mean.

It’s his unconventional design.

Here you have someone that is all angles, dark shadowed eyes, a scowl, eyebrows rarely visible, tall, gaunt, generally unhealthy looking.  His face is literally a skull.  You don’t need to squint much to notice that.

And under normal conventional character drawing methods / standards / cliches / what have you, any of these would immediately throw him in the villain pile.  It’s actually pretty amusing whenever I draw the Sunflower at work and someone unfamiliar with the series asks me why I’m drawing “such an evil looking person”.  Because we try to guess what someone’s like based on how they look.  How they’re drawn.  And angles and dark shadows usually mean “tragic past” and usually, trope-ily, “that dude that’s totally gonna betray you at the most pivotal moment of the story because of his tragic past.”

And yet, as those of us familiar with him all know, Toshi is one of the greatest heroes ever.  I can’t tell y’all how delighted I am that Horikoshi decided to break so so SO many comic tropes with this guy.  Never forget that All Might as we know him would have been removed in the early stages of BnHA if Horikoshi hadn’t decided that he liked doing something the editors didn’t like.  “Who is this old guy?  Kids aren’t gonna like him.”

There’s a world wide horde of fans that happily disagree.

Toshinori’s true form is a huge plot point for a good chunk of BnHA.  He’s ashamed of how he looks.  Even Izuku recoils the first time he sees him.  And I headcanon that one of the reasons Toshi adores his broccoli boy so much is because Izuku accepted the true form, maybe even admired him even more.  He didn’t lose faith or admiration for his hero just because of how Toshi looked.   And that goes a long way toward helping Toshi heal as a person.      

I also love is how Toshi is an artsy rorschach test of sorts.  Oh we all draw him with the wild burst of gold, the shadowed eyes, the towering lanky gait.  BUT.  BUT.  There’s something more in each Toshinori I see.  

There’s so many gorgeous renditions and interpretations of him.  The gnarled hands and wiry muscles.  Blue eyes that spark power and glow kindness.  An exhausted hero, a goofy teacher, a proud father…and a man struggling to be kinder to himself.  We draw him how we see him–as in, how we feel when we picture that lovely sunflower man–and I think that’s just so beautiful.  People love him just as much as the perfectly sculpted All Might.  I’d dare say moreso.  Because we know his story.  And our art reflects that.

So he may not be beautiful by “normal” standards. And that’s fantastic. He’s beautiful because of what he’s done and how he cares for people.  That’s a powerful message.  One happily shown again and again in our massive fandom each time we draw him.  And I think that is just so beautiful as well.

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