Hidemi Hondou
| Hidemi Hondou | |
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| |
| Japanese name: | 本堂 瑛海 (Hondō Hidemi) |
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| Age: | 27 |
| Gender: | Female |
| Relatives: | Ethan Hondou (father, deceased) Eisuke Hondou (younger brother) |
| Aliases: | Kir Rena Mizunashi |
| First appearance: | Manga: Chapter 499 Anime: Episode 425 |
| Appearances: | Chapters: 59 Episodes: 39 Movies: 2 OVAs: 1 Specials: 1 Openings: 15 Closings: 2 |
| Keyhole number: | Volume 48 |
| Japanese voice: | Kotono Mitsuishi |
Hidemi Hondou (本堂 瑛海 Hondō Hidemi), also known by her alias Rena Mizunashi (水無 怜奈 Mizunashi Rena), and by her Black Organization codename Kir (キール Kiiru), is a character in the manga and anime franchise Detective Conan.
Contents
Background
Hidemi Hondou is an undercover CIA agent who has managed to infiltrate the Black Organization under the codename Kir. She has a younger brother named Eisuke. She was forced to kill her father, Ethan Hondou, who was also in the CIA, after a mistake nearly caused her to lose her cover in the organization.
Conan first encountered Hidemi as a newscaster under the alias Rena Mizunashi when she asked Kogoro Mouri to solve a trivial stalking case. Due to an accident, Conan later discovered she was a codenamed Black Organization agent and a leading participant in an assassination plot. While foiling the plot with the aid of Jodie Starling and the FBI, Hidemi suffered an accident and fell into a coma, whereupon she was secretly interred in a hospital secretly. The Black Organization and her younger brother Eisuke began looking for her. Later, the FBI and Conan discovered her true allegiance to the CIA and tricked the Black Organization into recapturing her so she could continue her infiltration mission.
Personality
Despite having to maintain her cover within the Black Organization, Hidemi remains a compassionate person and attempts to preserve as many lives as she can. Having seen him in action, she has come to trust Conan and his judgment implicitly. Among the members of the Black Organization though, she appears to be cold and obedient to her superiors, but she acts a bit more merciful than the others, causing Gin to get suspicious of her at times.
Plot overview
Black Impact (Manga: 499-504, Anime: 425)
Hidemi first met Conan in her newscaster identity. For some time Rena had been stalked at her own housedoor, with sleeping pills left regularly on her doorstep. Rena's friend Yoko decided to call in Kogoro, who came of course in Ran's and Conan's company. In order to track down the culprit, Conan pasted a bug next to her door.
Eventually, the stalker turned out to be a young boy. The reason for his leaving pills was that his late mother ostensibly resembled Hidemi, and in order to see her more regularly on TV, he had deposited the pills so she could have more restful sleeps. Facing these facts, Rena gently encouraged the boy to get over his mother's death and start his own life now. Shortly after Conan and the others left, Rena also departed, but in the process Conan's bug fell off and accidentally got stuck to the sole of her shoe. Right afterwards, to Conan's immense shock, Rena made a call to no other than Gin, who directed her to the attempted assassination of a popular politician; under the guise of a TV interview, Rena was to guide him to a place where he could be easily dispatched.
Conan of course decided to intervene, and he, Professor Agasa and Haibara took up the pursuit, during which they also met Jodie Starling who tagged along as well. They just barely managed to thwart the assassination, but the Organization decided to execute a backup plan, with Rena pursuing their target on a motorbike. When the FBI attempted to apprehend her, an accident ensued in which Rena was critically injured and fell into a coma. She was delivered into the Haido Central Hospital and kept under constant guard of the FBI.
Eisuke's arrival
Shortly after Rena was hospitalized, a clumsy young man named Eisuke Hondou moved into the neighborhood and decided to tag along with Kogoro. His suspicious behavior and his astonishing physical similarity to Rena lead Conan to believe that he was somehow in cahoots with her.
Clash of Red and Black (Manga: 595-609, Anime: 495-504)
In time it turned out that Eisuke was in fact Rena's/Hidemi's younger brother, who had been looking for her after she had inexplicably disappeared. She was in fact an agent of the CIA who had taken her father's place as a mole in the Black Organization following a blunder on her part, which had forced her father to sacrifice himself to save his daughter and maintain her cover.
Akai's death at Raiha Pass (Manga: 605-609, Anime: 501-504)
Gin is suspicious of how ineffective the FBI's plan was and that Akai didn't make a strong move. Gin thinks Akai is still hiding something and that doubt is relayed to the boss who plans a test of Kir's loyalty. Meanwhile, Andre Camel becomes a suspect in a coincidental murder case. The Black Organization hears about it, and taking advantage of the FBI's distraction, Gin orders Kir to call Akai out to meet with her and kill him to regain the boss' trust. Kir meets with Akai at Raiha Pass and apparently kills him, although there is the possibility that Akai and Kir conspired to fake Akai's death.
Bourbon
After having regained her standing in the Black Organization, she continues to feed information to both the FBI and the CIA, including that an agent named Bourbon had been sent to track down a renegade member. However, ever since her recovery, Gin has been keeping a sharp eye on her, especially when Scar Akai appeared to have resurfaced unexpectedly.[1] However, so far Hidemi has - with a good portion of luck, fast-talking and circumstances - avoided giving herself away.
Department Store Bomber Case (Manga: 700-704, Anime: 578-581)
After seeing the news regarding the department bomber case, the organization spotted Scar Akai coincidentally recorded in the news. Although Vodka assumed that the person's just a splitting image of Shuichi Akai, since there's no way that he is alive as they witness Shuichi's death being executed through the video transmitted from the camera that was attached in Kir's collar. Gin couldn't believe that was just a coincidence, hence his suspicion towards Kir arises again assuming that she and Shuichi might have set up some kind of trick to deceive them. However, Kir denied any of it saying,
| “ | "I only did that because you were the one who told me to shoot him in the head... not to mention that you were also the one who told me to call him to Raiha Pass... Afterward, I was under the organization's watch up until I met him there. With that, how could I have pulled any type of trick?" | „ |
She then added,
| “ | "That is unless you're implying he or I had superhuman brainpower that allowed us to calculate that far ahead; maybe then we could have tricked you. Yes, a mind like that of Sherlock Holmes. So how about you quit it with your strange doubts, and just be truly happy that our enemy is dead?" | „ |
Plot exposition
Hints that Hidemi was the biological older sister of Eisuke Hondou
- They look alike. Both have unique matching eye designs.
- Rena Mizunashi mentioned having a little brother just after the Ding-Dong Dash case. After hearing that the child's mother died, which mirrors her own family situation[2], she became emotional to the point of crying. Conan noted a similar reaction of Eisuke's later[3] likely meant he wasn't acting.
- Eisuke has a mark on his chest where a needle was inserted to monitor his leukemia.[4] A nurse later revealed that he has leukemia and was given an bone marrow transplant. Bone marrow transplants change the blood type of the receiver to that of the marrow donor, so Eisuke's blood type changed from type O to type AB. Later his sister was able to donate AB blood to him because of this.
- Hidemi and Eisuke both use the same classical lie detection technique - feeling for the pulse while watching the pupils - which is taught by some American law enforcement agencies.
Hints that Hidemi was a member of the CIA and not loyal to the Black Organization
- Hidemi asked for help on a case from Kogoro. Haibara points out that this is strange behavior for a Black Org agent.[5] It is later revealed that she asked Kogoro for help because she was going to ask him to protect Eisuke because Hidemi knew that she couldn't keep Eisuke away from her.
- In her introductory case, Hidemi uses several stock CIA expressions, such as a Japanese transliteration of a quote from John F. Kennedy's speech at CIA headquarters, "Your successes are unheralded--your failures are trumpeted."[6][7]
- Conan discovered that Ethan Hondou, Eisuke Hondou's father, was a member of "The Company" - a nickname for the CIA. If Eisuke is Hidemi's sister, as Conan discovered because of Eisuke's surgery, that means Hidemi's father was in the CIA, and thus it is possible she followed in her father's footsteps.
- Kir hesitates right before she directs Domon to the bench where he will be assassinated, showing that she has second thoughts about what she is doing.[8]
- Despite hearing Jodie's silenced gunshots that damage the sprinklers, Kir does not report this interference to Gin.[9]
- She uses a classical lie detection technique - feeling for the pulse while watching the pupils - which is taught by some American law enforcement agencies.[10]
- Conan is caught by Kir when he rushes up to take the tracker off of her shoe, and she uses the aforementioned lie detection technique to ask Conan "Did you follow me here?" Conan denies it, but assuming Kir is competent, she would have spotted the lie. She then tells Conan, "Thank you... for picking my shoe up... I owe you one. Really..." Such a level of thanks and relief is more than necessary. Combining her knowledge of the sprinkler related interference and Conan's lie she guessed he was there to interfere with the assassination and was grateful that he helped stop her from having to help the Organization assassinate Domon.[11]
Name origin
According to Shuichi Akai, her alias Rena Mizunashi is actually a mnemonic for 007, the service number of fictional secret agent James Bond. "Mizunashi", meaning "no water", is a subtle reference to zero. "Rena" is a contraction of the numbers zero (rei) and seven (nana). Hondou from Hidemi Hondou comes from Bondo (ボンド), the Japanese pronounciation of (James) Bond.
Trivia
- Kir is a cocktail made of crème de cassis and white wine. It breaks the Black Organization codename pattern for women because it is a wine-based cocktail rather than a straight variety of wine.
- Kir is seen driving two different types of cars. The first is a silver Citroen Hathback during episode 425, and also a dark coloured NC Mazda MX-5 with the power-retractable hardtop during episode 504.
See also
References
- ^ Manga Chapter 701: Hint of Red and 13
- ^ Deceased Mother's Memento
- ^ Nail Snake and Hammer case
- ^ Deceased Mother's Memento
- ^ Manga Volume 48, File 10, page 7: "A new person in black"
- ^ https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/our-first-line-of-defense-presidential-reflections-on-us-intelligence/kennedy.html
- ^ Manga Volume 48, File 10, Page 10: "A new person in black"
- ^ Manga Volume 49, File 2, page 3: "New Order"
- ^ Manga Volume 49, File 2, page 4: "New Order"
- ^ Manga Volume 49, File 2, page 8: "New Order"
- ^ Manga Volume 49, File 2, page 9: "New Order"
