Eureka

Eureka (エウレカ) aka Eureka Thurston, is the main female lead in Eureka Seven.

A member of the Gekkostate, she is the pilot of the Nirvash type ZERO, along side her co-pilot Renton Thurston, with whom she falls in love and later marries. She is a Coralian created by the Scub Coral and was meant to gather information on the human population. Eureka is a "blank page" of sorts, an empty imitation of a human created by the Scub Coral as a means of communication. She is the wife of Renton Thurston, the mother of Amber Thurston and Ao Fukai, and the adoptive mother of Maurice, Maeter and Linck.

Background

About fourteen years before the anime series began, Eureka was found in a mine along with the Nirvash type ZERO's archetype and she was immediately brought to Tresor Laboratories for study. It was found out that while the type ZERO would not work well with any human at the controls, it responded well to Eureka being the pilot. Soon afterwards, she met Adroc Thurston, who taught her how to walk, speak and interact with others. His influence on Eureka was that of a father. After Adroc's disappearance in the New Era Summer of Love, the then Lieutenant-Colonel Dewey Novak had Eureka placed under the care of his younger brother, Holland, who trained her to be an obedient child soldier. They were both assigned to the then SOF so that the military could use Eureka and the Nirvash for their benefit. During this time, Eureka grew to trust Holland to a degree equivalent to her trust of Nirvash, but she was still emotionally detached and unaware of her sense of self. Then one day, the SOF was given a mission to eliminate all the people living at Ciudades del Cielo under the pretense that they were terrorists for protecting the Coralians, and Eureka agreed to participate only because she believed in Holland. She killed many people until she found three small children traumatized but still alive in the pile of corpses she had just killed. Awakening to her senses of self for the first time and realizing that she had killed people, she decides to protect them. Taking them to the Nirvash, she rendezvous with Holland who was talking to Master Norb of the Vodarac. Later, she joins him in a revolt against the United Federation, aiding in stealing the Gekko, an experimental ship, and has been on the run ever since. She became an adoptive mother to the children and a respected member of the Gekkostate, but she never showed any emotion nor did she associate herself with anyone other than Holland and the children.

Personality

In the beginning of the series, Eureka acts extremely distant and odd around others due to the fact that she has had very little interaction with humans outside the military. Because of her lack of emotions and care towards others, she was very blunt and serious, nonchalantly going along with anything that Holland suggested or told her to do without as much as questioning his judgment. However, things changed when she met Renton. Eureka saw something different in him as a person when she discovered that he is also able to pilot the Nirvash alongside her. As time goes by, she begins to act less a socially awkward girl and more like an actual person as parts of her human side begin to emerge.

However, she becomes passive and weary due to her feelings that Renton can pilot the Nirvash better than her, causing her to feel unwanted and hopeless. This also caused her to reject and ignore Renton, never realizing that she was simply jealous of him and lonely that her partnership with Nirvash was strained. After he saved her from getting absorbed by the Scub Coral in a botched suicide attempt, she slowly changed from uncaring to sympathetic as she started to understand the hardships Renton has endured for her sake. When she found out that Renton left, she bursts into tears and blames herself for his abandonment, and realizes how important Renton is to her. When they are able to meet once more, Eureka claims that she has "chosen" him as her lifetime partner. Despite being happy with Renton, she feels remorse for dragging him into a war and staining his hands with blood, and develops a strong desire to make him happy with her.

Through her relationship with Renton, Eureka opts for a change in her personality in order to become a better person. Although initially reluctant to accept the change in her in the beginning, she decides it is best for her if she truly wants to atone for her past misdeeds and comes to believe in Renton with her entire being. In season 3, when she is able to connect feelings of guilt to her worst memories, she becomes less confident and depressed, although she says that all she needs to move forward is having Renton by her side. It is his emotional support that allows her to try her best, no matter how bad the odds are against them.

Like the being she originates from, Eureka is very interested in humanity, though her curiosity is met with confusion and at times, disappointment. While frustrated with her inability to relate to others, Eureka comes to love humanity for its ingenuity and resilience, believing that they and the Scub Coral can coexist with one another.

Eureka is usually characterized as someone who is in constant conflict with herself as she struggles to forgive herself for her blind following of orders and violent misdeeds. Eureka is usually shown to immensely dislike herself; beyond considering her physical appearance unnattractive, Eureka despises who she is, or the lack thereof, due to her numerous shortcomings in acceptably human behavior and deficits in social skills. While it is left ambiguous if Eureka reconciles with her past, she actively seeks to make up for it, treating others with kindness where possible and detesting conflict due to the ways in which she has hurt others through it. Eureka also loves her children very much and has a strong parental instinct, though feels distant even from them on account of her nonhuman origin.

Eureka grows up becoming like Adroc, particularly in AO, and her own journey directly mirrors his. She seems to have acclimated fairly well to human life by the time she becomes an adult, revealing her kind and helpful personality belying her strangeness - though she is still very self conscious, especially regarding her relationships with Renton. This is best seen when Elena mentioned the moon with the heart on it from Eureka's world and when Ao asks about who the father is of her unborn daughter, Amber. After becoming a mother, she is very loving and caring towards her son and daughter, so much so that she is willing to put her son's life before hers.

She is constantly concerned about Ao's well-being and hides her sadness that stems from Amber's death so that Ao wouldn't worry. Eureka is very protective of Ao; seen in the manga when she challenged Truth while she was still in holographic form and was enraged at Truth for trying to kill her son, and in the anime when she pleaded with Ao and later Naru to destroy the Scubs or else Ao will suffer a tragic fate. Because her son and daughter are the most important people, next to Renton, in her life, she was willing to sacrifice everything else that was important to her, including her relationship with Renton. However, she always believed that Renton would come back for her and Ao, and that he was risking so much to protect them while she stayed behind to raise their son and attempted to risk her life for his, proving herself as a loving wife and mother.

Eureka's exact personality varies depending on the continuity, particularly in A Pocketful of Rainbows. As her and Renton's roles are reversed, Eureka is depicted as being violent, impulsive, and very short empered, a stark contrast to her calm and reserved series counterpart. From the moment she "joins" the Gekkostate, she displays nothing but rebelliousness and insubordination, especially where Renton's safety is concerned. She does, however, retain her kind and dutiful personality despite her even colder exterior. She also still cares about Renton very much, going so far as to hold Anemone at gunpoint in order to convince the Gekkostate to have him admitted to a hospital after he suffers life threatening injuries. Eureka's more "complete" personality in this continuity also coincides with her role as a spy android as opposed to a synthetic "blank page", and having never been emotionless may be the reason for her more hot headed and expressive demeanor.

Inversely, her manga counterpart empathises her cold, stoic, and introverted aspects, and as such she comes off as much more standoffish and socially unskilled. She is also much more depressive, feeling that her life has no meaning and that she is wholly expendable despite Renton's protests. The only people to whom she is not initially rude and avoidant of is her children, though she warms up to and learns to care for them better slower than in the main series.

Knownable Relatives

• Axel Thurston (Great Grandfather in law)
• Rose Thurston (Great Grandmother/dead)
• Blau Thurston (Mother in law/dead)
• Adroc Thurston (Father in law)
• Diane Thurston (Sister in law)
• Renton Thurston (Husband)
• Amber Thurston (Daughter/dead)
• Ao Fukai (Son)
• Maurice Thurston (Adopted Son)
• Maeter Thurston (Adopted Daughter)
• Linck Thurston (Adopted Son)

Trivia

• Her name in Japanese means ???.
• Her star sign is a ???.
• Eureka's true age is unknown and some of the Gekko crew thought of her as between 14 and 16. It is revealed that Eureka was found the same year Renton was born. *After becoming Renton's wife and the mother of Ao and Amber, she has noticeably aged.
• Its possible that until she met Renton and fell in love, Eureka lacked a catalyst to physically change. (Even Norb noticed she was trying to become more human)
• In the anime, Eureka was ashamed of her scars because they made her feel she was unattractive to Renton, while in the manga, she was grateful of her scars because she got them as she tried to prove that she loved Renton.
• In the film, Eureka Seven: Pocketful of Rainbows, Eureka's surname is Zita.
• After marrying Renton in episode 50, she goes by the name Eureka Thurston.
• In episode 50, the Thurston family record book revealed that Eureka married Renton on April 2, 12006.
• In episode 19, Eureka attempted suicide by almost allowing the Scub Coral to absorb her. This is due to her depression as being estranged from Nirvash and her belief that she is hated, and when she found a book with blank pages, she compared herself to it and felt she had no purpose in life. However, the thought of dying scared her and she pleaded for Renton to save her, which he did.
• This was the first moment (albiet subconsciously) Eureka displayed her feelings for him.
• In episode 39, Eureka is shown to be skilled in playing soccer, despite having never played before, and her jersey number was 7. (A joke most viewers picked up on.)
• In Eureka Seven: AO, her attire is similar to the one her sister-in-law, Diane, wears in the original series.
• In Eureka Seven: AO, her son, Ao, inherited his eye and skin color from her while having inherited his facial features from Renton. Early in the series, his hair was brown like Renton's but it changed into turquoise when he first came into contact with the Nirvash IFO.
• Eureka stated in both Eureka Seven and Eureka Seven: AO that what she loved most of all were Renton and their children (two biological children and three adoptive children).
• Even though Eureka has five children, it appears that Ao is her favorite, likely due to him resembling Renton and being the only one of her two biological children to survive, and she affectionately refers to him as "my Ao".
• Eureka is named after a famous exclamation attributed to the Greek sage Archimedes.
• Even though she calls Maurice, Maeter, and Linck her children and loves them dearly, Eureka never mentions them in AO.
• In the manga and novel series, Eureka sacrifices herself to save the planet from being destroyed (by the Coralians in the manga; by Dewey in the novels), and although he refuses to accept Eureka's death, Renton treasures her memory. In the anime series, she was supposed to sacrifice her memories in order to save the planet and part ways with Renton, however, due to the popular ratings, the ending was changed into a happy one where Eureka and Renton would be able to live happily together. In 2010, the producers of the series released an audio of the original ending with recurring scenes from the series, where of which Eureka parts ways with Renton forever after sacrificing her memories and disappearing, but he promises her they will meet again someday.
• The only time Eureka ever turns into a full human is in the film, after which she sacrifices her memories to the Azo to save Renton from dying due to a gunshot wound.
• How Eureka sacrificed herself in Eureka Seven: AO to teleport the Quartz to a different time in order to save Ao and the planet from a Scub Burst is similar to how her father-in-law, Adroc, sacrificed himself in Eureka Seven by removing the Compac Drive from Nirvash in order to save his children and the planet from the First Summer of Love. Also, many believed the two had died as a result of their sacrifices, but in truth, Eureka is in limbo between worlds due to not having a specific time and place in mind, and Adroc merged with the Scub Corals for an unknown reason.
• In chapter 2 of the second light novel, Eureka actually told Renton that she hated him for flying Nirvash in a manner that opposed hers. This is only time she has ever said this to him in the entire series. In the anime and manga versions, while she was jealous of him, she said she never harbored any ill will towards him and would worry that anything hurtful she said or did to him would make her lose him.

Voice Actresses

• Japanese : Kaori Nazuka
• English : Stephanie Sheh