Thomas H. Norstein

Thomas H. Norstein (トーマ・H・ノルシュタイ), is a fictional character in the anime series Digimon Data Squad.

Thomas is a 14-year-old boy genius who graduated from the Stockholm Royal University of Science at the age of 13. His abilities are considered elite, even within DATS. He bases his operations on data and theoretical principles, and as such his personality clashes with Marcus's. His mother is Japanese and his father is a prominent Austrian aristocrat named Franz Norstein. Franz and Thomas' mother met while she was an exchange student in Austria, and Thomas lived with his mother in Japan until she died. He was taken back to Austria. He also has a younger half sister, Relena, who suffers from a strange disease. It is never shown who Relena's mother is, but she died of complications during childbirth. While Thomas does not particularly care for his cold father (at least not until after the events of episode 42), he does love his sister very much and does whatever he can to protect her.

Calm and shrewd, he is the exact opposite of Marcus and sees him as a rival. He has an elitist attitude but he gets emotional when thinking of his mother, who died years ago when he was young.

Thomas' loyal partner is Gaomon, who always addresses him as "sir" and gets angry easily when he thinks someone is not treating Thomas with the proper respect. It has still yet to be revealed how the two actually met.

In episode 3, Thomas returns to Japan to assist DATS in its Digimon containment efforts. Marcus however, dislikes the fact that Thomas is his squad leader and challenges him to a boxing match. They both end up with cheek bruises before DemiMeramon start appearing. Thomas' tactics clashed with Marcus' impulsiveness to simply charge in. Marcus managed to fool 3 DemiMeramon to merge into Meramon so he can be punched for a DNA charge. Afterwards, Thomas concludes that Marcus had no plan and they begin arguing until Commander Richard Sampson tells them they will have to be partners to get along.

In episode 4, they were on the verge of defeating Drimogemon but Marcus' stubbornness resulted in the Digimon escaping back into the Digital World. Thomas requested to go there to return Drimogemon to his Digi-egg form before he could bring other Digimon to the real world but was denied. So he did an unauthorized Digital Dive to go after the gopher Digimon. But he and Gaomon got lured into a trap deep beneath the Digital World surface. Marcus and Agumon, who were sent to rescue them, get trapped as well but they laugh at the fact that the "genius" was outsmarted by a gopher. Marcus has them jump on Drimogemon, pulling his hair to direct him to the surface and into an ice prism where he can't drill. But Drimogemon digivolves into Digmon and proves too powerful for them separately, so Thomas suggests they have their partners attack together, which defeats Digmon.

A great deal of Thomas's background comes in episode 15, when MetalPhantomon manipulates his mind, feeding Thomas nightmares from the past. We learn his mother died in a horrific accident in which she was killed by a speeding truck. However, the nightmare does not have the entire desired effect on Thomas, and he pulls through, allowing Gaomon to digivolve to MachGaogamon.

In episode 28, he finally obtained the power to Digivolve his partner further, but his Digivice iC was not able to support the uncontrolled enhanced power of his Digisoul and shattered, with the same process happening to both Marcus' and Yoshino "Yoshi" Fujieda's digivices. In the following episode, he, along side his friends managed to repair their iC's and turn them into Digivice Bursts, allowing Gaomon to digivolve to MirageGaogamon.

After the destruction of ElDradimon, Thomas was forced by his father to abandon his friends and side with DATS' greatest enemy Akihiro Kurata, who claimed to have the means to cure Relena. Unfortunately, Kurata had placed a bomb in Relena's necklace to keep Thomas from betraying him. He even had to fight his former comrades, to the anger of Marcus, who accidentally invoked a dark Digi-Soul to fight him, with disastrous consequences. Once Kurata's men were about to perform surgery on Relena to make her a Bio Hybrid Digimon, Thomas and Gaomon knocked out everyone once the necklace was removed. Also Thomas betrayed Kurata by planting a charge inside the device he was using to control Belphemon, and rejoined with his friends to confront him.

In episode 36 he also confronted his father that the only reason he went to study abroad was for him to become a physician, in order to find the cure for Relena's illness when any other doctor had failed before.

In episode 42, Thomas gets into an argument with his father and remembers how his grandmother hated him for not being born a "true" Norstein, being half-Japanese, an illegitimate child and not having a mother who was an elite member of society. But because of Relena's illness, his grandmother had no choice but to appoint him as the Norstein heir and ordered his father to find him a suitable woman. While protecting the airplane where Relena was located, Thomas fought against LoadKnightmon and unlocked MirageGaogamon's Burst Mode. After that, he rejoined the others and went to find Marcus back in the Digital World, partaking in all of the events leading up to the final battle.

After the defeat of Yggdrasill, Thomas was forced to realize that the Digimon needed to go back to their own world, and spent one final evening with Gaomon. The next day, he and the others bid the Digimon farewell as they returned home, only to find out that Marcus had tagged along with them as well.

Five Years Later, Thomas receives the Nobel Prize in Medicine at Stockholm City Hall, aged 19, becoming the youngest person ever to win it, for finding a cure for Relena's illness.

Fighting Skills
Thomas is a very skilled fighter, and uses boxing. He is an Olympic boxing champion, and gave Marcus a humiliating defeat near the start of the season. Both smart and fast, he was capable of hanging with the Featherweight boxing world champion in a sparring match. His most impressive feat is to knock Marcus down with just a few punches, even though Marcus has taken much harder hits and fought gangs alone. He is generally one of the better human-combatants in the series.

Trivia

 * In one of the earlier episodes of the Japanese version, Masaru Daimon called Tōma "Tūma", which is a rarely used Japanese word meaning idiot or dope. Appropriately, in the dub, Marcus often calls Thomas "Nerd-stein".
 * It is revealed that Thomas has a doctor's license when they go to the Digital World in episode 16.
 * Norstein is a typical Austrian Name. In episode 38 Thomas say Austria(Österreich) is like Germany (Deutschland) but smaller.
 * Thomas makes a cameo appearance in the "The Legendary Tamer" quest of Digimon World Dawn and Digimon World Dusk, as a competitor in Exhibition 3 of the Legend Tournament. He and MirageGaogamon Burst Mode fight alongside Marcus and ShineGreymon Burst Mode. The girls in the audience, specifically Dorothy, scream for him and cheer for him over the main character, despite being on the same team.
 * In The Ultimate Farewell, when Thomas is being interviewed for winning a Nobel Prize, his last name is misspelled "Nordstein"