Hiro Nakamura

Template:Heroes character box Hiro Nakamura is a character on the NBC drama Heroes who possesses the ability to teleport and manipulate time.

Character history

Template:Spoiler Hiro works at Yamagoto Industries, as a programmer, in Tokyo, Japan. He is a salaryman, bored with the monotony and conformity of his job. He is also a huge science-fiction nerd, often referring to Star Trek or superheroes. One day, while 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! (やった!)" (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!"

In the second episode it becomes apparent that Hiro not only teleported himself, but also sent himself forward in time five weeks—from October 2 to November 8. In this time frame, he finds and buys a comic of himself that shows him standing in Times Square with his hands up, yelling "I did it!" (this time, transcribed into English), the exact same thing that 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.

In the third episode, he 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 to find the girl and freeze time, he hurries through the mess of items that 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 the move again. Hiro and Ando then celebrate at the achievement, and Hiro convinces Ando to go with him to New York. They fly to Los Angeles 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…"

After driving to Las Vegas, Hiro and Ando begin exploiting Hiro's power to win at gambling. Later after they are thrown out of the Casino, they are attacked by some of the card players they cheated against. Later in the episode, 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 before the episode ends. The scene was 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 (see External Links below), Hiro is a confessed fan of Future Trunks.

Powers and abilities

Hiro discovers in the first episode he can actually affect the space/time continuum, stopping or slowing time with sheer power of will. The first noted occurrence is when Hiro apparently 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' washroom on a dare (said in jest) by Ando. When he believes he needs to go to New York, he concentrates intensely, teleporting to Times Square, New York, five weeks into the future. Ultimately, he is also able to revert the process to 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. It is unknown at this point if Hiro is completely unable to control his time traveling (although he easily returned to the "present" with a thought), or if he simply did not know "when" he was going at the time he chose "where" he wished to go. In the third episode, he also froze time relative to himself. However, he could not hold time in this state for very long. A Hiro from the future is also shown to have the ability to freeze time relative to himself and other people of his choosing, although it is still uncertain if this restricts him to himself and one other or if his limits allow more.

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 leaf for Action Comics #1, the comic book which introduced Superman.

Name

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".

Interests

• He 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". (Vaan most likely refers to the main character of Final Fantasy XII, the most recent in the series being released in the U.S on Oct 31, '06) One of Hiro's 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 (which dealt with time travel) and the Final Fantasy roleplaying game series. He is also a fan of Mirai Trunks, a time traveller from the manga and anime Dragon Ball Z.

• In the second episode, Don't Look Back, it is shown 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.

External links

• Hiro's Blog