Saguru Hakuba

Saguru Hakuba (白馬探, *Hakuba Saguru*?) is a character in the manga and anime franchise Magic Kaito, who has made multiple appearances in the manga and anime franchise Detective Conan.

## Biography

Hakuba is another teenage detective, just like Shinichi Kudo and Heiji Hattori. However, he does a lot of his work in England, as well as Japan, and claims to have handled more cases than Heiji. In the Magic Kaito manga franchise, his main goal is to capture the master thief, Kaitou Kid but in the Magic Kaito anime franchise, Hakuba's main goal is to capture the assassin, Spider and using Kaitou Kid as a bait.

## Appearance and Skills

Saguru Hakuba has brown-blonde hair; his eye color is usually blue in the manga, but brown in the anime. According to Hakuba's own introduction to Aoko, Hakuba is 180 cm tall (5'11"), weighs 65 kg (143 lbs), was born on August 29th under the Virgo zodiac, and is blood type 'A'.
In the Twilight Mansion case, he showed himself to be skilled at billiards, and to have at least basic knowledge of falconry.
He also seems to have an eidetic memory, just as Shinichi, Heiji and Kaito have proven themselves to have, and is capable of remembering long strings of data, particularly (in Hakuba's case) precise times down to the millisecond.

## Personality

As a detective, Hakuba takes great interest in learning culprit's motives, asking "How come you did that?" Hakuba also pays a great deal of attention to time, carrying a pocket watch that only loses 0.001 seconds per year. In cases, Hakuba tends to note the time to the second. He is even more extreme in his earliest appearances; he notes during the Adam's Smile painting heist that Kaitou Kid is a minute and 13.02 seconds late. During his first appearances in Magic Kaito, Hakuba is seen often wearing an Inverness cape and a deerstalker, much like the stereotypical portrait of Sherlock Holmes. In later appearances he has given up this look opting for a suit instead.
His speech is usually formal and polite, like his attire; for example, he uses the more humble pronoun 'boku' to refer to himself during the Detective Koushien case, while Heiji uses 'ore,' which is a cockier and less polite way of referring to oneself. However, Hakuba displays a distinct sense of arrogance himself, particularly during his earlier appearances. He displays an arrogant assurance in his ability to capture the Kaitou Kid, and conveys a superior attitude towards Inspector Nakamori's men in volume 3 of Magic Kaito. In the Detective Koushien case in Detective Conan, he frequently mocked Heiji, calling him rash and hotheaded and repeatedly expressed his disappointment in Heiji's seeming incompetence, and despite being clearly defeated by Heiji's deduction, he showed no such regrets or humility. Kaito describes his tone as sugary yet obnoxious.
Hakuba also appears to be something of a flirt. He kissed Aoko's hand and tried to sweet-talk her into going on a date with him,And during the Detective Koushien he was particularly attentive to the female detective present, even promising that he would "solve the case for her." However, it's possible that in both of those cases his actions were at least partly intended to irritate Kaito and Heiji, respectively.

## Plot

### In Magic Kaito

Prior to arriving in Japan, Hakuba spent time as a detective in England and attended London Bridge High School. According to Hakuba's father, Saguru is most interested in meeting the infamous Kaitou Kid and is taken to the Adam's Smile painting heist. Hakuba fails to capture Kid but begins collecting clues as to Kid's true identity.
In the anime special adaptation of Hakuba's introduction, The Splendid Rivals, the circumstances of Hakuba's and Kaito's meeting have been altered. The target is a purple gem in the eye of the Bronze Statue. It is revealed that Hakuba has no interest in capturing Kaitou Kid, but rather, Spider who is part of the mysterious organization that Kaito is after. Hakuba humiliates the police and he figures out where Kaitou Kid was hiding. He nearly captures the thief with sleeping gas, but Kaitou Kid takes his gas mask so Hakuba is taken down by his own trick. Kaitou Kid then disguises as Hakuba to get close to the gem, but the scheme is quickly figured out when the police finds Hakuba's sleeping body. Later, Hakuba forces himself to wake up when Kaitou Kid is caught in Spider's illusion. Hakuba saves him by spraying him with water. After both Spider and Kaitou Kid escape, Hakuba falls asleep once more. Much to Kaito's dismay, Hakuba transfers into Ekoda High School Class 2-B and continues his mission to unmask Kid. He is now the classmate of Kaito Kuroba, Aoko Nakamori, Akako Koizumi, and Keiko Momoi.
In the special The Secret of the Red Tear Hakuba appears briefly in class, reading a book that mentions Spider. He is shocked by Akako's beauty and is seen blushing.
Although Magic Kaito is no longer frequently continued, Hakuba has made several appearances in the cases that have come out alongside Detective Conan. He telephoned Kaito from Paris to give him information on the thief known as Chat Noir, and also appeared in the Dark Knight arc, where he arrived too late to stop Kid's theft but correctly deduced his methods and kept up with Kaito in uncovering the identity of the mysterious 'Nightmare.'

### In Detective Conan

Saguru Hakuba's first appearance in Detective Conan was in the Twilight Palace case, where he was one of six detectives invited to investigate a murder that had been committed 40 years ago in an old mansion. During the case it is revealed Hakuba has a pet hawk named Watson whom he got in England.
Heiji and Saguru didn't get along during the Detective Koushien.
His second, and only other canonical appearance, was in the Detective Koshien Case. Although he initially believed that he was to represent the 'east' in a contest between four high school detectives, in fact the competition had been arranged by a woman seeking a detective 'with a strange accent' who had incorrectly accused her friend of committing a murder. Thinking that Hakuba's Japanese might be accented due to his time in Britain, she invited him, as well as Heiji Hattori, who is well known for his strong Kansai accent.
During the Detective Koshien case, it was stated that Hakuba had returned to England sometime before the case, and had returned to Japan specifically to compete in the Koshien, thus explaining his absence from the Kaitou Kid heists in Detective Conan.

Hakuba appeared in Episode 219: The Gathering of the Detectives! Shinichi Kudo vs. Kaitou Kid (2 Hour Special). During the Kid case, set some time before Shinichi was shrunk, Kaito thinks to himself that the heist will be much easier without Hakuba around, as he has apparently returned to England. Kid was therefore not expecting a challenge, so when the officers trick him into revealing himself and successfully locate him in the ventilation shafts, Kid wonders aloud who, if not Hakuba, could be helping the police.
Hakuba also made a cameo of sorts in the tenth Detective Conan movie, The Private Eyes' Requiem. Claiming that someone dear to him had been captured by the theme park, he assisted Conan and Heiji in their investigations that day but later disappeared after they were separated by attackers. It is later revealed that 'Hakuba' was actually Kaitou Kid in disguise.

## Relationship

* **Family and Friends**

Hakuba's father is the Metropolitan Police chief in Japan. His mother is British. His family also apparently runs a research laboratory in Japan. His father appeared only once in Magic Kaito, when he asked Inspector Nakamori to look after Hakuba.
In subsequent appearances in both manga series, Hakuba's sole caretaker seems to be a housekeeper whom he refers to as 'baaya' or 'governess' in the English translation.

* **Kaito Kuroba**

The relationship between Hakuba and Kaito is a rather tense one; Hakuba convinced himself early on that Kaito was indeed Kid, and during the first few volumes he's constantly throwing out offhand comments that show his suspicion. However, later on in the manga, we have a small scene where Hakuba calls Kaito from Paris in order to give him some information on 'Chat Noir', a dangerous, fellow gem thief trying to outshine Kid. Though Kaito continues to vehemently deny being Kid, Hakuba gives him the information anyways, ending the conversation with, "Do your best at least. I don't want to see you lose to anyone before I capture you myself". Whether that was his actual motive, or if he was merely concerned for Kaito's well being, or a mix of both, is unknown.
* **Aoko Nakamori**

Prior to the heist in Volume 3, Chapter 3, Hakuba seems to flirt with Aoko after Kaito turns down Aoko's offer to go to the Prince Prince concert. Hakuba and Kaito then make a bet that if Hakuba manages to catch Kid then Hakuba will go to the concert with Aoko, and if he fails to capture the thief, Kaito will go instead. When interviewed before the heist, Hakuba notes "Tonight's battle has a special meaning to me". However, Hakuba seems to only be doing this to irritate Kaito, and although initially surprised to have Hakuba want to go to the concert with her, Aoko wants Hakuba to fail during the heist so she can go with Kaito instead.
* **Akako Koizumi**

In The Secret of the Red Tear, Hakuba is shown blushing at Akako's beauty. Aoko notices and teases him, which he quickly tries to deny. Akako looks delighted. Also in The Witch, the Detective, and the Phantom Thief, Hakuba is shown blushing when Akako comes and drags Kaito away and he thinks that she is out of his league.
## Etymology

Saguru (探, ***Saguru***?) means "to search" and Hakuba (白馬, ***Hakuba***?) means "white horse".Like most Magic Kaito main characters, the name references a color; in this case Hakuba's white opposes Kuroba's black. As a nod to the family name, the Hakuba family seems to use the horse as its emblem. Saguru has a horse on his pocket-watch and the Hakuba laboratory has a horse on its facade as well.

## Trivia

* Saguru, along with Shinichi, Heiji and Kaito, are sometimes referred to as 'The Four Geniuses' or 'The Gosho Boys' by fans.
* Hakuba's eyes are blue in his manga appearances, but brown in the anime.
* In the tenth Detective Conan movie it was stated that Hakuba had been studying Criminal Science in London.
* Hakuba wasn't given an English name in Case Closed. In Volume 30, the Twilight Mansion case and his only translated American appearance to date, he was simply referred to by his original name, like the other one-shot detectives in the case.
* In Magic Kaito, Saguru acquires a strand of the Kid's hair and runs a genetic scan on it, determining that the Kid is a fifteen-to-seventeen year old male with a higher-than-average IQ. He then runs this information against a database of Tokyo teenagers and comes up with a list of possible Kaitou Kids, at the top of which was Kaito Kuroba's name. However, it's interesting to wonder whether Shinichi Kudo, another sixteen-year-old Tokyo resident with a similar build and above-average intelligence, made Saguru's list, but the search included only teenagers with blood type B, and it has never actually been stated what Shinichi's is (although Kogoro Mouri mentions that Conan's blood type is rare) Type B is not a common blood type, so it is possible that this is Shinichi's type.