Hiro Nakamura
| Hiro Nakamura | |
|---|---|
| |
| Portrayed by | Masayori Oka |
| First appearance | Genesis |
| In-story stats | |
| Known ability | Space/Time Manipulation |
| Gender | |
| Age | 24 |
| Residence | Hiro Nakamura's home |
| Occupation | Office worker |
Hiro Nakamura works at Yamagato Industries as a programmer, in Tokyo, Japan. He is a salaried employee, bored with the monotony and conformity of his job. He is also a huge science-fiction nerd, sometimes referring to Star Trek, the X-Men, and Back to the Future. Hiro discovers he has the ability to manipulate space and time.
Character history
Genesis
In his cubicle, Hiro is able to utilize a recently-discovered power: he makes the second-hand on his clock go back one second. Ecstatic, Hiro runs throughout the office, excitedly yelling "Yatta!" (I did it!) His friend Ando Masahashi is skeptical, joking that Hiro possesses the same skills as Mr. Spock.
Hiro begins to hypothesize that in addition to altering time, he could also teleport. Ando is more concerned with the personal gain that could potentially result from his friend's superpower. However, Hiro is adamant in the belief that a superhero should never use his or her powers in such a way. At a karaoke bar one night, Ando dares Hiro to teleport into the women's bathroom. Hiro agrees and succeeds, but is thrown from the bar.
Ando is unable to comprehend Hiro's enthusiasm over being so different from everyone else. All their lives they had been taught to remain the same. Hiro leaves in frustration. The next day, Hiro sees a vacation ad for New York City on a train. After intense concentration, he manages to teleport himself into Times Square. Awe-struck, Hiro lifts his hands up and yells "Yatta! Hello, New York!"
Don't Look Back
In New York, Hiro finds and buys a copy of 9th Wonders! Issue #14, a comic whose cover features Hiro standing in Times Square with his hands up, yelling "I did it!", exactly as just happened. He discovers the partially decapitated Isaac Mendez, and witnesses the explosion in New York that Isaac himself had predicted in a painting. Before the explosion hits him, Hiro teleports himself back to the train in Tokyo, back in the 'present' time frame.
One Giant Leap
Hiro works hard to try to convince Ando of his powers, and of the future. He shows Ando the 9th Wonders! comic, which details nearly every event that is going to happen to them that day. Though Ando remains skeptical, Hiro leads him to a place where a schoolgirl is depicted in the comic to be hit by a bus. Managing the find the girl and freeze time, he hurries through the mess of items the truck collides with (including a table full of vinyl Mazinger Z figures). After Hiro moves the girl's time-frozen body just out of harm's way, time begins to move again. Hiro and Ando then celebrate the achievement, and Hiro convinces Ando to go with him to New York, NY. They fly to Los Angeles, CA and rent a car to drive to Las Vegas, all the while following the comic's storyline, but somewhere after they rent a Nissan Versa, the issue reads "To be continued..."
Collision
After driving to Las Vegas, Ando convinces Hiro to exploit his power to win money. Later, they are thrown out of the casino and attacked by some poker players they cheated against. Later, a future version of himself appears to Peter Petrelli on a subway carrying a katana. Speaking in perfect English, Hiro tells Peter he is there to give him a message.
Hiros
Hiro and Ando are dumped out of a van in the desert outside Las Vegas, near the "Fly By Night" diner. As they enter, they argue, and Ando leaves . Just then, Hiro witnesses Nathan Petrelli landing just outside the diner. When Nathan comes in, Hiro talks to him, explaining in broken English that he saw him fly and that he is also special, able to bend space and time. He tells Nathan about the explosion, but Nathan seems to write him off as crazy. When Nathan asks if Hiro knows the result of the election, Hiro tells him he won "in a mudslide". Hiro then begs a ride back into town from Nathan. Decked out with a Vote Petrelli badge, he makes his way back to his rental car, only to discover that he can neither drive it nor read the manual. Eventually, Ando shows up and they resume their journey together. With Ando's help Hiro places a call to Isaac Mendez to warn him about the future. Peter Petrelli picks up the phone and tells Hiro that he has a message for him.
Better Halves
Hiro is told that a future version of himself says he must help "save the cheerleader" and to meet Peter Petrelli in New York City. As they leave they are intercepted by the high roller who compels them to help him cheat in a private poker game. When Ando sees a gun, he pulls Hiro into the bathroom moments before a ruckus breaks out and everyone is killed. Hiro is unable to stop time quickly enough to save them. Having essentially hidden in the bathroom, he begins to doubt whether he's the hero he thought he was.
Seven Minutes to Midnight
Continuing their journey to meet Peter Petrelli in New York City, Ando and Hiro stop for breakfast at the Burnt Toast Diner in Midland, TX. They meet a waitress, Charlie, who speaks excellent Japanese considering she's learned it from a phrase book and in only a week.
Hiro is immediately charmed by Charlie and spends a great deal of time with her, coaching her on her Japanese. She confesses that for the last few months, she's been able to remember and fully understand everything she reads, which is how she picked up Japanese so quickly and how she can speak better than would be expected from a phrase book. Hiro tells her he also has a "skill", but when she presses him about it, he tells her it's to teach anyone Japanese.
While Hiro is in the bathroom, Charlie's body is discovered with her head sliced open. Sheriff Davidson questions Hiro and Ando and tells them to stick around so he can get a statement from them. Hiro feels that he should have done something to stop Charlie's murder. Ando tries to persuade him that it's too risky to attempt to go back in time to save her, and that they should just continue their mission, but Hiro disappears into the past anyway.
Homecoming
Hiro's friend Ando Masahashi and Peter Petrelli anticipate his return to help save the cheerleader, but he never appears. Peter decides to go without Hiro while Ando patiently waits in the Burnt Toast Diner. He notices that Charlie's birthday picture has Hiro in it. Wondering when the picture was taken, he asks the manager about his friends identity. Manager says the picture is about six months old from Charlie's Birthday, and that it is in fact, Hiro. She says Charlie and he were friends up until a couple of weeks ago. Hiro appears briefly near the end of the episode at the pictured birthday party in the Burnt Toast Diner. He is excited to see Charlie but soon remembers what needs to be done - to somehow save Charlie from losing her top.
Six Months Ago
Hiro arrives at the Burnt Toast Diner six months in the past, though he thinks it's only one day prior. After telling Charlie that he is there to save her life, she invites him to her birthday celebration. Hiro tries in vain to explain to Charlie that he teleported from the future and tells her not to go to work tomorrow. He realizes that he teleported back too far, and is afraid to teleport again for fear of missing his mark. Hiro calls his work looking for Ando, but instead is answered by the oblivious Hiro native to that time.
Hiro tells Charlie that she has a special power, despite Claire's doubts. Hiro attempts to prove his power to Charlie: in no time, he gives her a bouquet of flowers, completes her order, and finally tells her that tomorrow "the swallow will slay the dragon." The next day, Hiro shows Charlie a Japanese newspaper proclaiming that the baseball team, the Swallows, slayed the Dragons. He suddenly transforms the room to be filled with paper cranes, a Japanese tradition that earns one wish. Hiro then offers Charlie a plane ticket to Japan along with him. The two grow closer, and eventually attempt to kiss. Suddenly, Hiro is teleported back to the present on a rooftop in Japan; he is unable to teleport back. He physically travels back to Texas to meet up with Ando where he realizes he wasn't able to save Charlie. Despondently, he proclaims that he can't change the past.
Powers
Hiro discovers he can actually affect the space/time continuum, stopping or slowing time with sheer power of will. The first noted occurrence is when Hiro supposedly made a subway train late using this power. This is especially notable because a Japanese train being late at all is an extremely unlikely event. Later, he theorizes that he may soon be able to teleport by bending the space part of the continuum. Although this isn't seen, he does seem to teleport from the seating area of a Karaoke bar to a ladies' bathroom on a dare (said in jest) by Ando. When he believes he needs to go to New York, he concentrates intensely, teleporting to Time Square, New York, five weeks into the future. Ultimately, he is also able to revert the process to the exact place and moment he left when an explosion in the alternate future threatens his life. Although being able to teleport and time travel great lengths at once, Hiro had no apparent control over how much time elapsed when he teleported. This shows that, without further honing of his powers, he cannot teleport great distances without also traveling in time. He has also frozen time relative to himself. However, he cannot yet hold time in this state for very long.
Although no source has been cited for Hiro's powers beyond Heroes' general theme of evolution, in a free web comic released by NBC, Hiro's grandfather was hinted to have been directly affected by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Believing that he has done "a great disservice" to him, Hiro makes an origami crane out of the cover page for Action Comics #1, the comic book which introduced Superman.
Hiro's rules of time travel haven't yet been explicitly defined. Whether he changes time just by travelling, or whether it's more of a ripple effect is not known.
It should be noted that it appears Hiro's time-traveling powers may not supercede the principles of the self-consistency theory. This essentially states that a time traveler cannot alter history in such a way that he would cause a paradox to occur; rather, the events would self-correct. However, it seems Hiro's powers are controlled by "fate", as not only were his powers disabled at one point, but he traveled in both time and space against his will. This is contradictory to Future Hiro's statement that he risked creating a "rift", as well as his existence being proof that he is trying to prevent the catastrophe.
Notes
- According to the online comic on NBC.com, Hiro is named after Hiroshima, so that his family will always remember the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tim Kring has been quoted as saying, "It's no coincidence we named him Hiro… he truly is on a hero's quest". To this end, his name is often used as a pun. His co-worker Ando once called him "Super-Hiro" in jest, which is actually similar to the Japanese word for superhero: スーパーヒーロー (sūpāhīrō), and the fifth episode's title is "Hiros".
- The scene where "Future Hiro" visits Peter is very similar (including Hiro's katana) to the first encounter of Future Trunks with Son Goku in the Dragon Ball Z manga and anime. As noted in his blog, Hiro is a confessed fan of Future Trunks.
- The scene where Ando and Hiro buy new suits and go down an escalator is just like Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise in Rain Man.
- Hiro is a big fan of the Japanese anime and manga Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. In his blog, he states that he wants to "be like Jojo and Vaan and go on adventures". One of his powers includes time manipulation, a gift shared with Jojo characters Jotaro Kujo and Dio Brando.
- According to his blog, his favorite video games are Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy (games that dealt with the manipulation of time). He is also a fan of Mirai Trunks, a time traveller from the manga Dragon Ball.
- In the second episode, Don't Look Back, it is said that Hiro's wallet contains a membership card for the Merry Marvel Marching Society, a Marvel Comics fan club which has not distributed membership cards since the 1970s.
Blogs/Websites