Enokida

Enokida
General Information
Name	Enokida Chihiro Matsuda (birth name)
Also known as	blackleg_nameko (online)
Age	22 (at start) 23 (as of volume 2)
Status	Alive
Birthday	February 14
Height	170 cm (5'5")
Occupation	Informant
Position	Center fielder
Nationality	Japanese
Family	Kazuo Matsuda (father)
Portrayal
Voiced by	Kensho Ono (JP) Kyle Igneczi (EN)
First Appearance
Light novel	Volume 1, 2nd Inning
Manga	Volume 1, Chapter 3
Anime	Episode 1

Enokida (榎田, Enokida) is a member of the Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens baseball team and a long-time acquaintance of Zenji Banba's. He is a genius hacker who works as an informant, and he maintains a circle of information gatherers who perform legwork for him.

Characteristics

Appearance

Enokida has dyed platinum blond hair with long bangs covering nearly half of his face. The cut makes his head resemble an enoki mushroom, hence the nickname Enokida. He is usually seen wearing a yellow parka with red skinny jeans and black-and-white checkered shoes.

Personality

Enokida is an aloof and playful individual. He is highly observant and able to see through most people's lies. According to Lin, he will "do anything for money, for good or bad reasons." Because he knows that people associated with the underground like himself will not have easy deaths, he believes in living a comfortable life and doing as he pleases. He is prideful and assertive when it comes to his abilities in hacking, and he will sell his services to anyone, even if by doing so, he knowingly puts his friends in danger. Even though he gives his friends fair warning, he has faith in them to survive the difficult situations he sometimes puts them in.

Aside from business, he is known to use his hacking skills for his own entertainment, such as toying with street lights in a certain radius or changing weekly regional weather forecasts.

Background

Enokida grew up in a luxurious and wealthy household, but he primarily has negative memories of his upbringing. Being the son of a politician and an influential figure, his father endorsed a strict education and lifestyle for him, causing Enokida to lash out and defy him frequently. When he was a teenager, he intentionally hacked into his father's personal files during a crucial point in the election process. After this stunt, his father realized he was a lost cause and ordered his servant Yagi to dispose of him. Enokida was brought to a warehouse when Yagi pointed a gun at him, telling him it was just the master's orders. He let Enokida go, however, and provided him with a plane ticket to Fukuoka, promising him that there were people he knew there who could help him.

About a year after that, Enokida started working for an overseas hacker group and was captured by a certain organization. José Martínez was hired to extract information from him, but uncomfortable with torturing a young teenager he injected him with a truth serum instead. However, Enokida talked about his own personal history and upbringing to avoid spilling information and succeeded, impressing Martínez and earning his respect. It is still unclear what became of that situation past that or when Enokida left the group he belonged to, but at some point he became a completely freelance hacker operating in Fukuoka and remained close friends with Martínez.

History

Mayor Harada Scandal Arc

Zenji Banba visits Enokida in an internet cafe on the fifth floor of the Gate's Building where Enokida has been staying. Banba shows him a photo of Mayor Harada accompanied by a woman whom Banba suspects to be a killer in his employment. Enokida hacks into Murder, Inc.'s archive and discovers the woman is named Reiko Asakura, a killer for hire, and provides information about another killer who left Murder, Inc. and specializes in strangulation, Hisashi Ivanov. After accepting Banba's payment for the information, Enokida gives Banba his own GPS-equipped redback spider model listening device.

Enokida is visited by Banba a few days later, inquiring about a killer who had visited his office. Banba asks if Enokida knows anyone fitting the description of a male cross-dresser. Having already looked up a man with a similar description for Yamato and Martínez, Enokida brings up information on Xianming Lin. Later that day, Banba takes Ivanov's cell phone from Lin and tasks Enokida with retrieving information from it. Enokida arrives at Banba's office to discuss what he has found and shows Banba and Lin the footage of Takuya Itou being framed by Reiko and Munakata. He then plays Banba and Lin the recording of Reiko and Munakata's conversation taken by the bug planted on Ivanov's body, revealing that the true culprit of Qiaomei Lin's murder is the mayor's son, Yusuke Harada. Lin proposes a plan to get him close to Yusuke and asks for Banba and Enokida's assistance to pull it off.

Later, Enokida is confronted by Reiko and Munakata, who found him by tracking the last signal emitted from Ivanov's cell phone. They take him into the bathroom to extort information out of him. Unfazed by the rough treatment, Enokida merely requests payment for his information before divulging Banba and Lin's plan to assassinate Yusuke. Near the end of the exchange, Enokida secretly slips the GPS-equipped redback spider listening device onto Reiko's person.

After Banba, Lin, Saitoh, and Jiro capture Yusuke and force him to confess his crimes on camera, Jiro sends Enokida the recording. Enokida edits Lin out of the video and broadcasts it throughout Fukuoka via an electromagnetic hijack, effectively leading to Mayor Harada losing his position.

Niwaka Samurai Impersonator Arc

Enokida participates in a practice game with the Tonkotsu Ramens, where due to his speed, he supports Genzo's idea of a punishment game for the player with the fewest base runs. The other team underestimates him due to his slight build, but he hits a homerun that brings all of his teammates on base home. The next day, he meets Martínez at Starbucks in Canal City and they discuss Lin's poor performance the day before, wishing that their teammates could work together. Getting back to business, he is tasked with gathering information on a van involved in a recent car accident for avenger-related work. During their conversation, Martínez mentions that he has not been getting much business for his main occupation lately, and Enokida offers to write a post promoting his work on an underground website. When he finishes, Enokida gives Martínez a new version of the redback spider transmitter.

In the Kawabata Arcade, Enokida meets his next client, Nguyen from Murder, Inc, who asks him to track down Saitoh. Unsure of what to do, Enokida requests some time to find Saitoh's whereabouts. Enokida gives it some thought for a few days before giving Nguyen Saitoh's home address. Once Nguyen leaves for Saitoh's apartment, Enokida leaves Saitoh a voicemail with a warning about the killer.

A few days later, Enokida is strolling through Nakasu when a panicked Saitoh rushes up to him, trying to escape George Gondo. Enokida attempts to brush him off, not wanting his life endangered as well, but Saitoh follows after him. Fortunately, Enokida spots Genzo pulling his food cart and the pair run to him. Genzo easily takes Gondo down, and the three question the killer's motives. Needing a plan that will allow Gondo to fulfill his assignment and save Saitoh's life from his various pursuing killers simultaneously, Enokida has Martínez and Jiro bring Yamamoto to Saeki to have him undergo plastic surgery that makes him look identical to Saitoh. Enokida brings the restrained and gagged Yamamoto to Nguyen, pretending that he is the real Saitoh.

At some point, Enokida begins working with Banba to gather information on the Kakyuu Association. He has two of his information providers infiltrate the group, but one is discovered, tortured, and killed. Enokida informs Banba about Takashi Unoyama's lawyer appointment and the sword he keeps in his office. Around the same time, a temporary employee for a mail-order firm sells a customer registry, and the personal information on individuals has been circulating in the underground, easily purchased by anyone with money, and Enokida buys a copy.

Shou Wang Arc

Enokida joins the team for their weekly practice, where he explains to Lin the concept of stealing bases and bats while Lin practices stealing second. The next day, Enokida meets with Yang, the Chinese mediator, and Yang inquires about Lin. Later, the informant is shopping for materials for a new redback spider model when he runs into Lin in JR Hakata City, but Lin does not recognize Yang's name.

Enokida has plans to meet Banba in a ramen shop in JR Hakata City, where he informs Banba that the spy he had planted within the Kakyuu Association has been murdered. His body, found floating in Hakata Bay, has been a story in the local papers recently. Because his other spy cannot move freely, he has had trouble tracking the whereabouts of the Kakyuu Group executives who have gone into hiding. The most information Enokida can provide Banba on the syndicate is that a man named Suzuki has been making decisions for the organization of late, and that a suspicious man named Yang has shown up asking about Lin. Just as Enokida pulls up the feed on the tracking device he had planted on Yang, the transmission cuts out, and Enokida has to credit the shady mediator for being sharper than expected.

Enokida runs into Lin again the next day when Lin visits Enokida's usual internet cafe in Nakasu looking for a place to stay. Having just run away from home, Lin is displeased to see him, but Enokida has a favor to ask of him and drags him down to the coffee shop on the Gate's Building's first floor. Two informants have been tortured and killed in quick succession, and as informants treat each other as rivals and partners, Enokida wants him to kill the killer. He shows Lin surveillance camera footage and is surprised by Lin's reaction at seeing his former best friend, Feilang, alive.

After listening to the story of Lin's upbringing, Enokida is momentarily in a state of shock, but he determines that Lin might not be able to handle killing his best friend again and suggests giving the job to someone else. Lin asks for time to think about it and process the situation. When Enokida learns that Lin has run away from home, he pries for details. While he believes Lin is being too hard on himself by running away from a comfortable life, his words make Lin think about what is truly important to him.

When news of the serial stabbings of men named Noriaki Hayashi reaches the papers, Banba has Enokida look into the connection between the murders. Lin understand the message Feilang is leaving for him and returns to the internet cafe, needing help finding the next Noriaki Hayashi so that he can confront his old friend. Enokida is able to find the next victim's address on his copy of the mail-order firm's customer registry after finding a credit card purchase that connects the victims. He meets Banba at Gen-chan a short while later, and after Banba fills him in on his pursuit of Suzuki, Enokida fills him in on Feilang. During their conversation, Lin calls Banba for help, and when Banba asks for Genzo for assistance, Enokida decides he does not want to be left out of the action. He supplies his friends with spider-shaped earpiece communicators, bombs, and grenades, and tracks Banba's whereabouts.

When Banba does not reach out after the agreed-upon time has passed, Genzo closes his shop and picks up Enokida, who directs him to the Kakyuu Group's main base. The informant stays in the car throughout the fight and waits for Lin and Banba's return.

A month after the end of the story, Enokida dresses in jinbei, traditional Japanese summer clothes, and he and Martínez meet several other members of the Tonkotsu Nine at Bar Babylon. When Jiro finishes styling Lin's hair, the group leaves for a fireworks festival together.

.mmm Arc

Enokida meets with his acquaintance, the cybercrime investigator Karimura, to deliver a USB drive of encrypted data he had stolen from the computer of an .mmm hacker at the investigator's request. After they part, he learns of Saitoh's arrest from Shigematsu and contacts Karimura to vouch for his friend. He next meets Martínez in order to exchange information on Martínez's next target, Shinji Taniyama. Over coffee, Martínez presents him with the wig Jiro had made for Misaki's school play, bringing up unwelcome memories of Enokida's own childhood. Shortly after, Enokida agrees to meet Lin at the Banba Detective Office in order to help Lin with his most recent case, but he finds Yagi inside, talking with Lin and Banba. Enokida is apprehended as he tries to flee and agrees to talk with Yagi in private, where Yagi convinces him to put his feelings aside and look into the hacker threatening Kazuo Matsuda, not as Kazuo's son, but as a professional informant.

Annoyed at himself for accepting the job from Yagi, Enokida goes to Manabu Kuroiwa's apartment to copy the contents of his computer, but he finds the door unlocked and the room bare of computers. Lin enters the apartment next, looking for information on Kuroiwa's killer, and gives him the hacker's smartphone just before Banba arrives, searching for his latest target. Retrieving the hidden surveillance camera, they watch the footage of three men barging into the room, abducting Kuroiwa and removing his computers. Enokida takes the surveillance data and smartphone back to his internet cafe to uncover more information about the abductors.

As he looks through the data on Kuroiwa's smartphone and confirms that he was the hacker who had threatened Kazuo Matsuda, he is contacted by Karimura with a decrypted blacklist taken from the .mmm operative Enokida had recently hacked. Both Kuroiwa and Enokida's usernames are on the list, and Karimura warns him to be careful, as .mmm wants him dead.

As Enokida leaves the Gate's building shortly after, formulating a plan to deal with .mmm, a hitman attacks him in an alley, and Banba arrives to save him just in time. In Banba's car, Enokida attempts to hack Undergroundjobs.com in order to remove the post with his bounty, but .mmm counters, and a new post is created with the current time and his GPS location. Only able to fight hacking with hacking, he returns to the Gate's Building and begins an attempt to crash the job posting site through a DDoS attack. Moments later, Irasawa enters the room and begins trying to force the door of his bathroom stall open, and Enokida causes a momentary power outage in the building that gives him just enough time to escape. He runs to a bathroom in a nearby subway station and ditches his computer, infecting it with a remote virus to finish the hacking of Undergroundjobs.com, making the post containing the hit on him inaccessible.

As he wanders Tenjin thinking of his next move, he creates a post on Undergroundjobs.com with a bounty on Saitoh, taking potential pursuers' attention off of himself. He sends text messages to several of his friends and buys bullet train and airplane tickets. While bouncing around crowded, public places, Yamato walks by and steals his wallet. Enokida heads to a family restaurant to wait for his friends to make contact. Not long after, Lin enters the restaurant, and Enokida receives a call from Banba that throws his pursuers into confusion. When he heads to the restroom, he and Lin swap outfits and return to each other's seats. When Banba meets him at the restaurant, the pair follow the redback spider transmitter on the abducted Lin, and Enokida calls Yagi to have him save Saitoh, now that the decoy bounty is no longer needed.

When they reach Irasawa's house, Irasawa is already heavily injured, and he offers them his phone. Suspicious of his willingness, Enokida calls Martínez and helps transport Irasawa to the avengers' warehouse, waiting throughout the five-hour torture session. After obtaining the password to Irasawa's phone, Enokida and Martínez visit Taniyama, offering a large reward for his help in creating a fake video. Enokida attaches Flammulina to the video file and sends it to Chegar from Irasawa's phone, gaining access to Chegar's phone, his contacts, and a huge amount of .mmm's data when Chegar opens the file. He meets Chegar in person that afternoon before the spy is apprehended by police, and Enokida sees Yagi off in the train station. A few days later, he is out to dinner with the rest of the team when he hacks his father's computer to wish him a happy birthday.

Avengers Arc

Enokida and Martínez go to Genzo's ramen shop for dinner, where the group listens to Jiro's problems concerning Misaki. Drawing on memories of his own upbringing, Enokida offers a guess as to how Misaki will turn out given the way Jiro is raising her and involving her in his avenging business, and is the first to suggest that giving her up is the best way to ensure she lives a normal life.

The next day, sitting in his usual cafe, he receives a request for information on abusive parents. While the drug dealer requesting the information had been murdered the day before, he provides the intel out of curiosity. Banba and Lin visit him in the cafe, and he uses city surveillance to help them find Rena Aikawa's last known location. After looking into her stepmother, Mari Aikawa, he leaves her name on the list of abusive parents for his mysterious client. The following morning, confronted by the confused and panicked private detectives, he fills them in on her abusive history and gleefully reveals his role in her recent murder. He shows extreme disgust for guardians who abuse the helpless children they are meant to take care of.

That evening, the informant is visited by Misaki, who threatens him into giving him Jiro's location. He warns her of the yakuza group Jiro is conducting business with before she sets out after him. Late that night, he is finally able to warn Jiro of the yakuza group hunting him just as Jiro is having the bullet wound he received from them patched up. The following day, Enokida meets Shigematsu for lunch, seeking information on the mystery client who has killed drug dealers and abusive parents across the city, and the detective fills him in on Méqué. He sets up an appointment for Enokida to meet with Méqué's childhood psychiatrist, where Enokida discovers the murderous clown's desire to sever the link between abusive parents and their children, first by attempting to eliminate the drugs that push parents to extreme violence, and ultimately by eliminating the abusive parents themselves.

When Enokida learns later than Misaki is missing, he tracks her using a transmitter he had slipped into her pocket the night before, finding traces of her wandering around the festival near Hakozaki Shrine before stopping on a street nearby. In the alley, however, they find her cell phone and the transmitter lying on the ground. Enokida uses city surveillance once again to track a car belonging to a Mutagawa Group member coming out of the alley at the time of her disappearance, and Jiro, Lin, and Banba head toward the organization's warehouse to rescue Misaki.

Etymology

• The name Enokida means "lotus tree, nettle tree, hackberry" (榎, enoki) and "field, rice paddy" (田, ta/da).
• The given name Chihiro consists of the characters "thousand" (千, chi) and "inquiry/fathom" (尋, hiro), meaning "a thousand inquiries," alluding to his curious nature.
• The family name Matsuda consists of the characters "pine tree" (松, matsu) and "field, rice paddy" (田, ta/da).

Trivia

• Enokida's real given name, Chihiro, is first revealed in the anime by Yagi.
• He does not have an official residence and operates in various internet cafes in Fukuoka.
• His hacker handle is "Blackleg Nameko" - both 'black-leg' and 'nameko' are names of mushrooms.
• Enokida is the one to suggest and write a post on the web to promote Martínez's torture business, but in the anime, Enokida only tells him of the site and Misaki is the one to write the post instead.
• It is mentioned in the Durarara x Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens crossover novel that he has been playing piano since middle school.
• He has a cameo appearance in the Durarara!! spin-off novel A Standing Ovation with Izaya Orihara and is involved in the plot off-screen.

Gallery

Enokida's full light novel appearance

Enokida's full anime appearance