#hero!dabi

let’s start from the head down! the hair thing.. idk, he’s 22. i’ve never met a 22 year old who could keep their hair dyed consistently, and the stakes are much lower for Touya than they are for Dabi.

the mask i was initially basing on like those protruding jaw/cheekbone masks you see in kabuki theatre, but nothing had the right dragon feel to it. in reading about the color symbolism in kumadori (blue is usually villainous lmao) i saw comparisons with Chinese Opera. while kabuki isn’t descended from chinese opera, the aesthetics of the face-painting share similar approaches to emphasizing expression and alignment. so i flipped through some designs and stumbled across this one, the mouth of which in particular inspired me (well, i say inspired; the mouth is more or less identical in design).

oh fuck i’ve given him an extra piercing. well. that’s canon now

the jacket is sort of a cross between classic biker gear and traditional japanese firefighting coats. the material is hardy, dyed with indigo, and insulated with the aforementioned liquid nitrogren. since Touya is cold-resistant, he can touch it with no ill effects for about as long as Shouto can use only his ice side.

what’s the red u may ask? welllll traditionally hikeshi banten are reversible! and as a reward for trying to parse my bullshit, you get to see the inside of the jacket:

i was going back and forth on the reverse side tbqh. couldn’t decide if i wanted to draw my own or find a pre-existing image. i did find a lovely print of the stage at kiyomizu that i almost went with, but in the end this Daoguang tapestry won me over with its bold colors and beautiful representation of a flaming pearl. since the tapestry is chinese, i had to edit some things, which is why i ultimately decided against putting this on the ref sheet–i feel almost as weird editing this kind of stuff as i would making my own shitty attempt–but it was mostly to naturalize the dragon to japanese depictions of them. like i changed it from the imperial 5 claws to the japanese 3, took out the bats because the pun doesn’t translate (they’re lucky, it’s a whole thing, don’t ask) and then the clouds because they looked weird without the bats. and of course, took it down to one dragon. both for size constraints (it’s not that big a jacket) and because touya’s counterpart is the phoenix

god i didn’t realize how much i had thought about this shit until i started writing it all down. there’s something wrong with me man we’re not even through his torso yet

the necklace looks at a glance to be either a magatama or half of a heart, but it’s actually a stylized red wing, bc i’m not subtle at all

kept the elbow braces from Dabi’s villain costume, bc it makes sense with the backdraft his quirk has exhibited

the bracers have more concentrated cells of liquid nitrogen because his forearms seem particularly vulnerable, particularly the way he wields his quirk hand-first. if the pattern is incidentally similar to someone’s hero shirt, well, that’s none of my business

the claws were a spur of the moment, how-can-i-distinguish-these-as-dragon-scales-and-not-fish decision. there are three because again, japanese dragon. the resemblance to wolverine is unintentional but retrospectively hilarious. the tricky part with those was actually figuring out how he gets them to retract–i didn’t want him to like accidentally hit a button and spear his coffee or some shit. so he can either smack his fists together or slam one into a hard surface. he doesn’t actually use the claws much, since his quirk discourages would-be melee battles, but they sure do look cool

ah, the fire pole thing. another borrowed element of traditional japanese firefighting. he uses it to maneuver in burning areas, not for combat. i wish i could say it was telescoping because i thought “oh, it would be inconvenient to carry” but uh. the reason is much less rational. in journey to the west Sun Wukong got his Ruyi Bang from the Azure Dragon and i was like ‘oh that’d be cool’ lmao. anyway it attaches to that red strap at his hip

the belt buckle! i spent way too long on the belt buckle. it’s kind of his ultimate ‘fuck you’ to Endeavor, tbh. the shape is the same as All Might’s belt buckle (though inverted) and the character inside is… well, you know how Enji’s a narcissistic bastard and put the 炎 from his name on his belt? Since that’s just two fire kanji stacked, this is going for something similar–except the kanji for ice (氷) doesn’t stack. nor does the ice radical. but you know what has the same aesthetic?? the Old Chinese version of the ice radical, 仌! that’s right baby. touya was so psyched to flip off his dad that he resorted to old chinese. yeah. his decision. don’t mind me

the boots are cobbled together combat boots & hiking boots, and are treated with the same material as Endeavor’s. so like theoretically, he could be walking around with hotfeet all the time, but that’d be like, silly. it’s great for kicks though