Defending Touya Akira's fashion sense

Much has been made fun of Touya Akira's fashion sense on the net, and I feel I have to defend him, even if he is just a manga character (from the manga Hikaru no Go). A lot of people in the fandom call him colour blind and says that his fashion sense is very old-fashioned, but I don't agree with this.

Firstly, Hikaru no Go was a manga, and as such, I feel that the manga-view is more important. When Hikaru no Go was made into and anime, it suffered from a fairly poor budget, so the quality of the anime is very far from the manga. Touya Akira was also the character who suffered the most changes - they switched his clothing around in scenes, and his hair was turned into a rather alarming shade of green rather than black with steel-blue highlights.

In the manga, and in all coloured pictures drawn by the artist Obata-sensei, there is not a single one where Touya is wearing ugly clothes. Quite the opposite, in fact - his clothes are classy, and they are for a reason. Obata-sensei and Hotta Yumi put down quite a great deal of effort into making this series feel real, and by doing so they also put a lot of thought into the characters. The clothes they wear reflect their personalities:

Shindou is an energetic boy, with a mother that is constantly worrying about him getting friends. He is also very good at sports. Most of his clothes are brands you'd connect with sports - we see quite a lot of the logotypes, Nike for example, on his clothes. He doesn't wear suits until he needs to. As he matures, he starts dropping the sport clothes and change into a t-shirt and shirt-ensemble that is casual but still classy. He runs, so his shoes are the kind you can just slip on and run in.

Touya is a very rich boy, (as is stated when his father retires, he earned about a hundred million yen a year) and as such he wears clothes that are very expensive. Most of his clothes are obviously designer clothes, and he has a quite large variety. He isn't an active person, and he is rather vain, so him wearing casual jeans or baggy clothes wouldn't fit his personality. He usually wears dress pants combined with a shirt and a pullover, or a turtle neck. He wears very classical black shoes, also something very expensive. He's a well bred boy, and it's not difficult to believe that his mother's taste reflects his choices - but he is also very feminine, which is only emphasized in this.

Waya is a bit sloppy and casual, so he wears his clothes more or less just hanging off of him, with lose sweaters or jeans. Waya loves jeans. Considering how messy he is, it's not difficult to believe that his clothes usually end up in a heap rather than neatly folded. How he's wearing his clothes is just as important as what he's wearing.

Ogata is almost always seen wearing a suit, sometimes without the jacket. He takes himself very seriously and is fighting to be taken seriously by others as well, so the formality (along with his very expensive car - a Corvette) suits him. He also wears expensive designer clothes, there are no brand tags to be seen anywhere.

Touya Koyo is seen wearing hakama most of the series, which is very suitable for a man of his stature and personality. He is calm and speaks very formally, and to my ears he sounds like a samurai - what more fitting than samurai clothing, then?


Touya's argyle sweaters and cardigans has been made most fun of, and this is hardly fair - it just shows that the fandom know very little of what rich people wear. Argyle is a quite popular pattern especially by golfer and it's quite common in equestrian sports as well. The colour choices, however, is another thing entirely:

As you can see, Touya is wearing another cardigan entirely in the manga. The jacket on his arm is also most likely not purple. From my knowledge of argyle, I'd say his cardigan should have been white, with a black and bright blue argyle pattern. The jacket on his arm seems to be a trenchcoat rather than a purple jacket. In real life, it would look quite stylish and matched.

Another thing that a lot of people is bearing down on is Touya's violet suit. This is another example of something that is undeserving of such critisism, since the real issue isn't the suit - it's his hair in the anime. Look how horrible the green clashes with the rest, compared to the right most picture which is from the manga:

First of all - I don't think he's wearing his violet suit at the Young Lion's Tournament, for one very obvious reason: his violet suit seems to be of silk or a silk-mix (another very expensive designer set), and that suit isn't shiny enough. Of course, this fact is ignored in the anime. Also, his tie has been changed. Black, violet and mustard yellow does actually look good together and the pink doesn't disturbe the image at all - pink and violet work well together. I can agree that is is a rather feminine mix of colours, but as stated before Touya is feminine. The violet and pink are also gay colours, and since so much emphasis is laid on how their clothes change when they grow up and mature and get to know themselves better, I hardly think that is a coincidence.
Touya's suit looks good on him when his hair is black with steel blue to purple highlights, while it looks awful on him in the anime. Something that is also worth noting is that the times Touya wears this set in the manga, his shirt changes frequently, while in the anime he is always wearing that pink one. 

In conclusion: there is nothing wrong with Touya's fashion sense, whatsoever. The problem lies with the people who made the anime and picked the colours there, and the budget the anime got. Also, I think that they wanted to really make Touya's disposition even more obvious in the anime, which I personally don't think was needed at all. In my opinion they should have received a bigger budget, made a better quality anime and actually used Touya's variety of reactions - that was, sadly, only available in the manga - instead of just changing his clothes.