I Can't Really Draw But I Had An Idea

I can't really draw but I had an idea

Update on Tokoyami's Tribal Wardrobe

So I was completely off base when it came to my initial impression of this illustration of Tokoyami. I though he either was dressed in an everyday feathered headband with no war associations or an arrangement of elements to give the impression of a warbonnet or roach headdress, but I knew I was missing something which becomes obvious as I moved past the silhouette and looked at the individual elements.

Elements of Tokoyami's garb:

Single feather

Woven fiber bands

Patterned cloth

Exposed plant fiber ends

What are either tusks or horns, large amounts of woven hoops, and a medallion plate carved from either precious metal or stone.

It was right around the obvious plant fibers that I started raising an eyebrow and questioning my assumption. While it's not unusual to find woven plant materials in any number of Native American tools and everyday items it is unusual to see them so prominently visible in any of their headdresses.

Tip-off #2 was the prevalent hoop ornamentation which, though it occasionally shows up, is almost never a part of any tribe's garb I could find and never this prevalent.

The final nail in the coffin I was looking in the wrong place were those tusks/horns. The only instance I could find of horns being used in Native American headdress of any kind were in plains nations' buffalo warbonnets. However, even then they only ever contained two, perched on top of the crown as it would sit on the animal, and whose horns to begin with are far too narrow to be whatever these are.

What Tokoyami is wearing cannot be American.

Using my clue of large tusks/horns and how many of them are displayed in this wardrobe I thought of places with woven ornamentation like this that would also have easy enough access to animals with large enough tusks or horns to use so many. Immediately my thought shifted to Africa and with a bit of searching I found it.

This isn't tribal American, this is tribal African - likely one of the tribes of the Surma people located in Ethiopia, perhaps specifically the Mursi tribe!

Mystery one solved! But here's where I hit another snag in my research.

Pictures have been easy enough to find, but I'm having trouble finding credible sources on their culture and any particular significance of the elements beyond it's a masculine, warrior's garb and the fact that these people apparently value jewelry which is why there are so many shell beads. I may have also found information that their religion includes a higher power connected to the sky that may manifest itself as a rainbow or bird, so maybe there's that.

I'll try to keep looking and come back if I find more. If anyone else out there is willing to help me out it would be appreciated.

A rant about Nirengeki Shoda and his mischaracterisation

One thing I love about Shoda is that he's a confident chubby character wich you don't really get a lot especially in anime but a lot of people tend to mischaracterise him as being nervous and shy and bad with people even though he's nothing like that in the manga or anime so people are only thinking of him like that because he's fat wich is really sad to see

Examples

People tend to forget he was also mind controlled by Shinso during the sports festival and dropped out with Ojiro taking a public stand with him (even though he'd probably have done great in it) wich I doubt most of his class was happy about

and even after this during the joint training arc he didn't even bring it up to Shinso because he understood the position he was in and happily talked to him explaining what his classmates were talking about

(I couldn't find the panel of him explaining to Shinso what Reiko meant by calling Midoriya spooky)

And on top of all that he's the vice class rep of class 1-B and is stronger than most of 1-A being grate at martial arts and strategy

(Thes were the best pic's I could get of the ultra analysis book)

In conclusion Nirengeki Shoda is a strong confident and competent fat character who isn't fat as a joke or just because of his quirk he is just a guy that happens to be fat and he isn't seen as weaker for it by the people around him wich I love

I may or may not have a type

shoutout to everyone who wants to infodump but cant string together coherent thoughts to form sentences and instead just look at you like this

I wanna give that man the sloppiest top known to man. Does he deserve it? absolutely not he's an evil piece of shit...but he's a hot evil piece of shit