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. He is portrayed by actor Masi Oka.

Character history

Genesis

Hiro works at Yamagoto Industries, as a programmer, in Tokyo, Japan. He is an office worker, bored with the monotony and conformity of his job. He is also an otaku and often refers 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!"

Don't Look Back

It soon 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 a comic of himself that shows him standing in Times Square with his hands up, yelling "I did it!" (this time, transcribed into English), which had happened moments earlier. 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 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…"

Collision

After driving to Las Vegas, Ando convinces Hiro to exploit his power to win money. In a nod to the movie Rain Man, Ando and Hiro buy new suits and go down an escalator just like Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. Later, they are thrown out of the casino and attacked by some poker players they cheated against.

Near the end of he episode, a Hiro self-described as being "from the future", appears to Peter Petrelli on a subway, appearing very different from the Hiro of the present. He is without his glasses, fashions a soulpatch and ponytail hairstyle, carrys a katana, and speaks excellent English. This Hiro tells Peter he is there to give him a message before the episode ends. The future Hiro also mentions that the present Peter looks different from his scarred future self. Hiro's future appearance and meeting with Peter were very similar—including Hiro's katana—to Future Trunks and his first encounter with Son Goku during Dragon Ball Z. As noted in his blog, 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.

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 Future Trunks, a time traveller from the manga and anime Dragon Ball Z.

• In "Don't Look Back", it is revealed 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. Previously, in "Genesis", Hiro cites X-Men #143 as having taught him about the concepts of time travel (although the storyline that he refers to, "Days of Future Past", actually happens in X-Men #141-142).

External links

• Hiro's Blog