Couldn't find a topic specific to this, so here goes.

Broadly speaking the way I see it:

Points in favor:
* Asuka refers to 'pilots' collectively rather than specifying Shikinami-type and Ayanami-type when discussing cloning
* Similar name to the other two
* Other characters seem to think she's the same age as the other two
* Seems genuinely inexperienced in 2.0
* Resembles Gendo's friend (just like Rei)

Points Against:
* Mary Iscariot conversation in Thrice
* Resembles Gendo's friend (maybe it's her?)
* Lacks emotional turmoil; maybe more mature because she actually is?
* Every other clone is depicted alongside dupes, Mari never is
* Mari seems to know things she's not supposed to, suggesting early involvement in NERV

Thoughts?

There was the occasional bit of speculation here and there, but nothing substantial, much less since Shin came out.

I'm not quite as awake right now as I'd like to, so I can't quite get the words and examples that I know exist to come to me; I feel relatively confident in saying that Mari's body definitely is artificial in some fashion, and that cloning is the most likely explanation to that. I wish I could go into some more depth here, but this is getting into things that are kinda tough to properly explain even on a good day

The only thing that leads me to cloning is the boat naming scheme, which might not relate to cloning at all. Mari very specifically has knowledge, dialogue quirks, appearances, and songs that imply she's older than she appears. If she were a clone she shouldn't be familiar - I know brainwashing and memory alteration and programming are implied in NTE but she seems too self-driven and any talk of the former is kept far away from her.

Basically, I don't think so, -nami be damned.

What I think is that mari is a clone because if she really is the person who went to university with gendo and yui that would generate more questions than answers.

assuming she was the same age as manga mari (16 during her time in college) and the fact that in the photo in 3.0 where she appears next to yui and Shinji mari / maria? she is taller than yui and she has the appearance of an adult ... so that makes one wonder how she managed to regain the body of a 16-year-old girl to pilot the eva. Besides, from then on, several lines of dialogue and her character as such ceases to make sense in 2.0. And taking into account that Asuka has memories of her "original" where she sees Shinji with his family, it is easy to assume that Mari Illustrius Makinami was the last clone model created to pilot Evas and has the memories of the original (or she recover them completely at some point during the 14 years) besides the fact that if she really is gendo's immortal friend then she successfully managed to hide her true identity for 28+ years to the point where her "princess" didn't know who she really was, Besides that due to her position she had to know exactly the plans of yui / gendo or seele for the final impact so she has let everything happen, including the death of several characters and the apocalypse?

plus Shinji was the only lillim not "artificial" or modified and even then Shinji is no longer considered human in 3.0.

also if mari received the curse of eva then there should have been an eva hanging around there between 1996 and 2000 for her to continue having the body of a teenager.

I am tempted to bump this topic to see both titles contending for number one position in the topic list

Could she perhaps be both? A clone body with the memories and personality of the original Mari implanted into her.

The18°angel wrote:...or she recover them completely at some point during the 14 years

This is a neat explanation for the difference in characterization between 2.0 and 3.0. Though it undermines the idea that the character change was a natural consequence of Mari bring a healthy person who didn't spend the time skip years wallowing...

because of the naming convention, I have felt that she was also a clone, but a more clandestine one without all the dupes. Her original was
probably around for a lot of the EVA preparation and perhaps arranged a clone to be prepared and and a copy of her mind imprinted on it as
a "wild card" of sorts. This is of course loosely based on a lot of circumstantial evidence and a wish for her character to make sense in the overall
scheme of things for me. Since there isn't an "original" around perhaps she contracted something fatal and this was a way to continue?

Mari seems to be a clone of Maria (fandom name for the woman we see on the fotograph, and during Gendo's flashback). Seems like this Maria cheated death by creating a clone of herself. Her memories seem to have been transferred over, too, which is why Mari has so much knowledge she shouldn't have at her age. Seems like the only explanation that makes sense to me. De-aging herself seems rather far fetched by comparison, and isn't supported by anything we see.

Unless the Curse of Eva does not only stop your aging, but ages you back to a 14yr old (can you imagine if gendo stuck around an entry plug a bit longer, lol).
Which seems kinda lame and a bit too specific.

Mari being a clone from Maria, and having her memories so that she practically IS the same person, would work with the photograph, Fuyutski's line calling her Maria Iscariot and her battleship lastname.
It also lines up with technologies shown or mentioned before (memory manipulation, erasing memories, how much harder is it to copy memories?).

contracted something fatal

Like bothering Seele.

She wouldn't even need to have Maria's memories, really, just a bit of outside information which could have come from anyone (Kaji? Maria's notes? A programmed limiting bias like the Ayanami series has?) It would be very PKD for Maria's gambit to be to ensure that she's the clone donor, trusting her cloned self to do the right thing in her place when the chips are down.

I have no idea where/why de-aging is coming into the discussion. Animation has enough sameface and artstyle-shift to make those kinds of observations outside of very obviously telegraphed redesigns pretty much moot.

Mari was young once, and got into university and made friends with Gendo/Yui/Fuyutsuki, and for mysterious reasons stayed young for decades, changed her name at least once to make her eternal youth less conspicuous, and spends her time maneuvering her way back towards Evangelions and Nerv and Yui and co. That's kinda just what Mari is from what we see.

I think inserting a doner character who was the real character all along who supposedly died/disappeared and the Mari we know is an unaging clone or three aging ones (and the last one only got Cursed in 2.0) in the interim is kinda unsupported, even if we're trying to fill in the cracks where Khara was in a state of writing paralysis in 2.0 with regards to who/what exactly Mari is supposed to be.

I have no idea where/why de-aging is coming into the discussion

The dialogue in 2.0 seems to suggest that Mari passes as pilot-aged. She also refers to 'adults' as an other.

If adults can pilot Evas that just opens up a whole bunch more questions than we started with, but "who can be a pilot" is already a confusing question in the Rebuilds.

OutlawThirds wrote:If adults can pilot Evas that just opens up a whole bunch more questions than we started with, but "who can be a pilot" is already a confusing question in the Rebuilds.

Not to mention that also kind of presents a huge plot hole for the entire Rebuild series, because if they could just have adults pilot an Eva, then why the hell do they even need to rely on kids like Shinji, Rei, and Asuka to do it in the first place? The premise of the entire series (teenagers having to pilot giant robots to protect humanity) falls apart.

But she is pilot-aged. Just permanently.

I too think she's a teenage clone of Gendo and Yui's college classmate, but somehow has her original's memories implanted.

She fell to the "curse of Eva" and stopped ageing at the end of 2.0, when she crossed the entry plug depth in Eva-02 (beast mode).

Szmitten wrote:But she is pilot-aged. Just permanently.

the photo in 3.0 where mari/maria appears. It is shown that she is an adult taller than Yui who is 175cm according to official measurements and Mari Illustrius Makinami is 165 I think. also in rebuild there are only 2 or 3 ways to obtain immortality I think ... the first is piloting an evangelion and receiving the curse of eva. the second is to turn into a monolith in the same way as SEELE (gendo mentions that they could live forever but they didn't want to) and apparently use the key of nebuchadnezzar (turned gendo into an angel / god so it should be possible).

Besides, if you think about it for a minute, how was it that mari infiltrated nerv betania without anyone wondering what an exact copy of someone who worked with yui and gendo makes more than 15 years ago if the pilots are supposed to be artificial (except Shinji apparently) and no other -nami series has been created to pilot the eva 05 unit

so SEELE and gendo were aware of this renegade element and their reaction was

"Nah everything will be alright"

Let's be honest it's impossible for her to infiltrate nerv as an eva pilot when NERV and SEELE have so much control over the pilots and the eva program that they literally created the series shikinami and Ayanami as eva pilots it's impossible that mari came along and pretended to be just another pilot when unlike the other two she was not grown in a tube or unlike Shinji whose evangelion gives the middle finger to anyone other than him.

And if a person from before the second impact can pilot because they did not offer the position to Misato, I am sure that she would not care about immortality if she was capable of having revenge for herself.

Unless ... mari is the biggest evangelion troll and is not a clone, not even the original but the daughter of maria who decided to play a practical joke on everyone by making them believe that she is her mother / clone.