Dominic Sorel

Dominic Sorel
Appearances:
First Appearance	Episode 1
Last Appearance	Episode 50
Voiced by:
Japanese	Shigenori Yamazaki
English	Peter Doyle
Biological Information
Age	20 years old (debut)(E7) 22 years old (ending)(E7) 36 years old (debut) (AO; if he appeared) 38 years old (ending) (AO; if he appeared)
Race	Human
Physical description
Gender	Male
Personal Information
Family	Unnamed Parents (deceased)
Allies	United Federation
Enemies	Gekkostate

Dominic Sorel (ドミニク・ソレル, Dominiku Soreru) is a member of the United Federation.

Character

Dominic Sorel is the youngest known second lieutenant in the United Federation, and also Dewey Novak's subordinate. He is assigned to Anemone to tend to her needs and monitor her physical and mental condition. It's never explained why Dominic was promoted so fast, especially given his occasional naiveté. There are men in the military far older than him and yet of much lower rank, who often have trouble obeying his orders. Dominic is also aware that commanding officers give him a hard time following his orders for Dewey as they think he's still a kid.

Dominic is mainly a field officer, constantly working on investigations and field missions for Dewey. If he's not on the ground investigating or on covert missions, he's in the air tending to Anemone. At one point, Dominic was ordered to investigate Renton Thurston's grandfather, Axel Thurston. Seeing how the Thurston's tend to have an effect on the world, Dewey wanted to gather more information from Renton's grandfather. After crashing his motorcycle, Dominic spent a day with Renton's grandpa and got to know him. After staying over the night to get his bike fixed, Renton's grandfather spoke to Dominic in a moving way to look after Renton like family, saying he considers Dominic family as well. Dominic decides not to report the incident, but it is anyway, as Dewey had men watching Dominic's movements. Dewey never seems concerned about this fact, or Dominic's somewhat overt distaste for Dewey's methods, and in fact seems to consider Dominic to be a harmless but occasionally useful tool that can be safely ignored.

In episode 44 "Its all in the mind." When Dominic goes to Warsaw to seek a new pilot for typeTheEND to replace Anemone he is accompanied by Captain Jurgens and Maria Schneider. on the journey they pass by the Captain's old house where he lost his wife and daughters in the war, and the Captain gets out of the car they're traveling in to pay his respects, Dominic gets angry when informed why Jurgens left the car and starts beeping the horn. after Jurgens returns Dominic states that Jurgen was "not the only one who lost his family during the war." this implies that Dominic's parents were killed at some point during the civil war.

Eventually Dominic turns away from Dewey after witnessing the sick human experiments used to create artificial Humanoid Coralians like Anemone. He joins up with the crew of the Super Izumo and Gekkostate in an attempt to stop Dewey and rescue Anemone. Even though he acknowledges his love as one-sided, he goes out of his way to look out for Anemone. He even risks his life in an attempt to stop Anemone from interfering with Renton and Eureka, taking a small shuttle into a rapidly-sealing hole that Anemone had used to reach them. Though unsuccessful, the act is enough to convince her to stop and for her to finally return his feelings. After "Second Summer of Love", they are seen camping next to Dominic's bike.

Personality

Dominic is a serious, intelligentand matter-of-fact man when it comes to his duties as a military officer. As a result of having lost his parents during his childhood in a war, he initially lacks empathy towards others and tends to be very blunt. He despises those who show him no respect or acknowledge his rank, even if he is still a kid and didn't have to work hard to get promoted. The only person he truly cares about is Anemone, after seeing that she is a lonely and mentally unstable girl who was ruined from being a subject experiment. After this, he shows her extreme devotion and affection, even when she rejected him and took her violent outbursts out at him. He is even willing to risk his life to save her. Although initially distrustful towards the Gekkostate, after learning the truth about Dewey's intentions, he teams up with them to save Anemone from her own fate in a suicide mission and to stop Dewey from destroying the planet. He also takes an instant interest in Renton, trying to understand how the boy could have a huge effect on people. This leads him to question the motives behind to why he fights and what he should be doing.

Story

Dominic was only 10 years old when he lost his parents in the civil war that began in the aftermath of The First Summer of Love and he was taken in by Dewey, who taught him to be a soldier. As a result of having been orphaned at a young age and seen the effects of a war, Dominic becomes stoic and blunt towards others, and takes his duty as a soldier seriously. When the main story takes place, Dominic is 20-years-old and has been promoted to second lieutenant, which caused him to be looked down upon by his fellow soldiers who were suspicious to why he was promoted so quickly when there are veteran officers who are at a lower rank than him. Dominic is assigned to the Izumo crew, under the command of Captain Jurgens. Dominic and Jurgens are often at odds with each other, with Dominic attempting to send commands to the crew and over Jurgens' protests because he is the captain of the ship and disapproves many of Dominic's orders. Dominic first appears in episode 2, when the military learned that the Gekkostate was in Bellforest and Dominic wanted the Izumo crew to hold back out of concern of the Gekkostate attacking first. Jurgens berated him for trying to command his crew by reminding him of his place as an observing officer. Dominic then decided to use his status to temporally take over the ship.

Soon after, Dewey informed Dominic that he would be sending his new weapon against the Gekkostate, and it turns out to be Anemone and declares her as the pilot of TheEND. Dominic is assigned to be her caretaker, and although he is unpleased with this, he decides to firmly serve his newfound responsibility. However, he becomes the target of her violent mood swings and outburst, and her calling him stupid for trying to understand her issues. Overtime, as he witnesses how physically incomplete and mentally unstable Anemone truly is, he unexpectedly develops affection and sympathy for her, and develops a personal desire to protect her at any cost. After Anemone's first battle against the Nirvash left her and Eureka unconscious from the affects of the Zone, Dominic was forced to work together with Renton so that they can get medicine for the girls. Dominic knew that Renton was Adroc Thurston's son and a member of the Gekkostate, and as a result, distrusted him instantly. But seeing how Renton is a mechanical genius and able to disable the Compac Drive from his motorcycle to bribe him into taking him with him to get the medicine, Dominic took an interest in Renton. This interest heightened when he saw that Renton was able to awaken Nirvash to form a trapar barrier to protect them from an ambush by the military. After this, Dominic became obsessed with Renton's past and wanted to know what makes Renton so unique. Dewey evidently recognized this and ordered Dominic to travel to Bellforest to find Renton's grandfather, Axel Thurston, to learn more about the Thurston family.

He arrived at Bellforest to find the Thurston residence destroyed but found Axel and spent a whole day with him talking about Renton. Dominic passed himself off as a friend of Renton's and made up about how Renton was doing. Dominic became touched of how the family is able to have an impact on the world and decides not to report his findings to Dewey. But they eventually were by undercover officers who were watching Dominic the whole time. Dominic didn't want Dewey to send Anemone to fight the Nirvash during the Gekkostate's invasion of the Capital after finding out about the upgrades the Nirvash underwent and was worried Anemone wouldn't be able to keep up after seeing how shaken up she was when Renton and Eureka were able to easily defeat her with the Seven Swell Phenomenon, but Dewey and the Ageha crew ignored him. Anemone then pinned him against the wall and demanded for him to tell her if he thought Dewey would give her a third chance to fight Nirvash after her two failures. He said she would get another chance and she would win the next time, but she called him stupid for taking it all so easily. He starts to see that Dewey is losing interest in Anemone and has been using her as a weapon, often referring to her as "it" or "that thing", which angers Dominic. He also disapproved how Dewey was ordering KLFs to attack the Scub Coral to release the Antibodies and having Anemone destroy them to present her as the world's savior. After Anemone failed a third time to defeat the Nirvash and also failed to reach through the Great Wall, Dominic was ordered by Dewey to travel to Warsaw to search for a replacement for TheEND.

Before leaving for Warsaw, Dominic gave her an anemone flower and she accused him of giving the flower to mock her because the flower - which is her namesake - symbolizes dying hope. Dominic denied this and he doesn't know anything about flowers. Anemone called him stupid for not knowing anything but told him about how she wanted to be saved and asked Dominic if he would protect her. He said he would no matter what and suddenly kissed her, but she bit his lips and told him to stay away from her because he doesn't understand her. Dominic traveled to Warsaw with Jurgens and Maria, and found that Jurgens lost his family in the war, but Dominic nonchalantly told him he wasn't the only one who lost loved ones in the war. They arrived at Joy Division and found that all the girls who were potential replacements were infected by the Desperation Disease and subjected to horrific experiments by injecting them with the same medicine he has been giving Anemone. After witnessing all the girls die from the experiment, Dominic becomes physically sick after finally realizing what Anemone has been put through and questions Dewey's intentions. Jurgens, who has been suspicious of Dewey, asks Dominic to come with him to meet with the Gekkostate and find out the truth. After the meeting, Dominic and Jurgens realize that Dewey is planning to destroy the Scub Coral, along with the planet and everyone else, and team up with the Gekkostate to stop him. Dominic has a private meeting the Gekkostate by telling them that while he doesn't care if they trust him, he wants to protect Anemone because he loves her even if she doesn't care for him at all.

When Anemone traveled through the Scub Coral to locate the Command Cluster, Dominic chased after despite Holland's protests. His vehicle was destroyed as he followed her, and by the time he arrived at Earth, he was falling mid-air from the sky and called out to Anemone. TheEND ejected Anemone and the two were reunited. Anemone called him an idiot for risking his life to save her, but he said it was because he loves her, and they share their first consensual kiss. However, Dewey fired the Oratorio 8 to destroy the Command Cluster and TheEND sacrificed itself to protect Dominic and Anemone. In the final episode, while they watched Renton and the Gekkostate rush to save Eureka, Dominic and Anemone held hands and were later seen camping and looking at the moon with Renton and Eureka's names carved into it.

Trivia

• A bit of a running gag in Eureka Seven is Dominic's inability to use and understand maps. Because of this, Renton calls Dominic a "genuine idiot" twice.
• In the manga, Dominic, in order to save Eureka and help Renton, decides to pilot Nirvash type TheEND at the risk of his own life.
• Dominic makes several brief appearances in TR2: New Vision, the events of which take place before the anime. He first shows up to tell 2nd Lieutenant Steven Bisson of Sumner and Moondoggie's connection to Gekkostate, and subtly chides him for losing track of Sumner Sturgeon in the first place. Toward the end of the game, he leads the military fleet that arrives to attack Thundercloud tower, which had, by then, fallen under the control of Steven's renegade forces. His final appearance is after the credits, in which he silently and stoically watches as a KLF squadron is dispatched to Bellforest, presumably to hunt down Eureka and the Nirvash at the beginning of the series.