Hey Evageeks, long time lurker, first time poster.

I assumed that Mari sort of grew up around Evangelions, like having a family member being part of Seele Euro- essentially Shinji or Asuka if they grew up with normal people (as opposed to any cast member of Evangelion). Seele Euro noticed her aptitude, and started to train her. There's precedent for this in Rebuild, as that's how Asuka is implied to be have chosen.

This also implies that she hasn't actually piloted an Eva before Unit 05. At the very most, she had used training simulations, similar to what Shinji uses in 1.0. All of her knowledge about running an Eva are theoretical. Her comments after her ejection from Unit 05 sort of reflect this line of thought:

Syncing with an Eva is even more brutal than they warned me. Well, I'm alive, so it's all good.

Now comes the problem of her knowing what Beast-Mode is/does. To be honest, any guess on the matter would be reaching far. My personal belief is that she was simply told that Evangelions could intentionally go berserk, but it was probably a bad idea to use it.

I really wanted to agree with Seele00TextOnly that she's older than she looks. I really did. She made a good, solid argument with facts proving her point. However, most of the facts she posted were reaches (not that mine aren't), that my mind didn't jump to. I'm not arguing she's wrong, merely that I don't see the vague facts the same way.

Just my two cents.

...

robersora wrote:Kinda like this?

SPOILER: Show

Oh, and can we be sure that it was not Ritsuko's mother? If I recall it correctly Ritsu's mom and Yui were close, weren't they?
Oh my god. Mari is Ritsu's mom! (lol)

Well yes, kind of, in terms of the way she's turned sideways XD
Except in the photo, she was smiling and her expression was very soft, even motherly in a way (because she was playing with kiddo Shinji I suppose?)

I highly doubt that'd be Naoko as the hair colour looked visibly different (if we go by Naoko's appearance in NGE) and she had the same glasses Mari's wearing now.

Just in case, I've asked my friend who's going to see Q again next Wed to STARE at "Mari"-in-the-photo for me, so we'll see LOL

How old does she look in the pic?

bobbyfischer's ghost wrote:How old does she look in the pic?

I want to say younger-looking than Yui.
But then again it was impossible (at least for me) to tell that Misato and Ritsuko have aged 14 years in the current frame, so I really can't be sure lol;;;;

I'm kinda divided between that person being Mari herself or her mom.
How old is the "current" Mari anyways??

Errrr I wish I could have just taken a photo of that.... photo orz

Make sure to tell you're friend to play special attention to that picture. たのむ

bobbyfischer's ghost wrote:Make sure to tell you're friend to play special attention to that picture. たのむ

もうバッチリですよん！！
I think she's more pumped up about that picture atm than I am lol

よかった
I hope she enjoys the film.It Makes me wish I was in her place.

It'll be her 3rd time watching it, so she's probably enjoying everything to say the least ;)

[s:3kxu9u3q]Oh and it still boggles my mind that Anno has squeezed the entire 14 year gap into that 30-ish-second trailer at the end of Ha instead of giving any kind of solid explanation in Q.[/s:3kxu9u3q] A nakkid and glaring Mari doesn't really tell us much, does it.... Way to go Anno =_=

^
Well, that could be. It's still not confirmed, what child Mari is, is it? Ayanami is the first, Ikari the Third, Kaworu the fifth... So if Asuka's the fourth, Mari could be the second...

Mari's the 'Problem Child'. I think theres more to that comment from Kaji than a bit of gentle teasing. I don't think he called her that just because she's a bit of a handful...

Also for what its worth and im not sure how relevant this is, she can spread an AT Field. She does so in Unit 5.

robersora wrote:if Asuka's the fourth

I guess you forgot that Asuka is the Second Children in NGE?

In NME, Shinji = Third Boy, Rei = First Girl and Asuka = Second Girl.

According to 2.0 CRC, Mari would have been the Fourth Girl but she was never stated as such in-film.

Kaworu is known as Seele's Boy in 3.0.

Sailor Star Dust wrote: I guess you forgot that Asuka is the Second Children in NGE?

In NME, Shinji = Third Boy, Rei = First Girl and Asuka = Second Girl.

According to 2.0 CRC, Mari would have been the Fourth Girl but she was never stated as such in-film.

Kaworu is known as Seele's Boy in 3.0.

I think the idea behind that is, that if no one mentions their counting status on the children, everyone would naturally asume Asuka is still the second.
But with new Mari-Theories coming up as 3.0 Spoiler pour through this could be a hoax as Mari is the second in NME opposed to Asuka.
That would be one way to stitch a acceptable backround story for mari together, if Anno intends to ever do so.

See my above post: the three main pilots (Shinji, Asuka, Rei) were given their status in 1.0 and 2.0. NME's Boy/Girl (Japanese) replaces NGE's Children (English).

Jayfive wrote:Also for what its worth and im not sure how relevant this is, she can spread an AT Field. She does so in Unit 5.

What do you mean by "spread"? Do you mean create an A.T. Field or make an existing A.T. Field larger? After watching the scene again, there is a line where she says "Expand A.T. Field!" but I think that the pilot of the Eva can influence the strength of the A.T. Field. That's why Shinji and the other pilots always say "A.T. Field to maximum!" when turning the A.T. Field up full (when Shinji stops Sahaquiel's descent, for example, or when Rei tries to drill through Zeruel's A.T. Field). I think Mari's line is just a variation of that, or possibly just means that she's deploying the Eva's A.T. Field. There's no indication in 2.0 or 3.0 that Mari can generate an A.T. Field on her own, or influence them.

Sailor Star Dust wrote:See my above post: the three main pilots (Shinji, Asuka, Rei) were given their status in 1.0 and 2.0. NME's Boy/Girl (Japanese) replaces NGE's Children (English).

My bad i totally forgot about it.

I can't help but feel that if she really turned out to be "someone time-frozen from the past", we'd be getting a very different character, than the one we were introduced to in 2.22.
A bad one, more plot than character, like they didn't properly take their time for her and wasted the potential that I once liked, like they got bored of her and thought they had a better idea.
There were hooks to inner conflicts, starts for possible relationships and that whole thing with her being a subversive Element, and none of that went anywhere - Anno & co kinda wrote this character to fit into the movie that Q was originally going to be, something with power struggles between organizations.
Back when Sadamoto designed her first suit, there was that idea of her backstory of the daugher of a distinguished English family, with lots of pets and her having been forced to restrain her ideosyncracies/live them out in secret due to being in a strict catholic school - that's the sort of backstory that would produce the character we saw in 2.0, her cluelessness of how to act around others and preference to work alone in contrast with her positive attitude made for an interesting character that had a big impact on the viewer and fit into the universe.
What happened to her representing "change for the better" and the big deal Anno made about it in the CR - okay, there are still some unstranslated lines, including the bit where she stops fourth impact, but all this just makes me want to see their original plans.

Not that I don't understand the artistically daring choice to reglement all this to the backstory, just with less Shinji, and go for maximum schock/irreversibility factor,
It's just that with the others, we already had the old series for detailed character material - for Mari, Rebuild's all she's going to get.


It's far too late in the story for flashback storms, so I'm really wondering what they're gonna do - I just hope that this is Mari's mother, and that Mari herself will join the three children and interact with Shinji in a meaningful way - they seemed like such an interesting combination, character-dynamics-wise, just from their few encounters. Then again, her telling Rei that "your original was much friendlier" points into another direction - but after the photo, literaty half the fandom is gonna predict that same thing and I don't think they'd do something that obvious... would they?

Of course, Mari's awe about his deeds and what seemed to be her being surprisingly sucessfull at talking sense into him have all been rendered moot here - I think I could live with the changes in Q if they had basically finished what they were initially doing including Mari's developement and the Mark 6 actually doing something, had Shinji ending liquid by way of some of the other disastrous events alluded to in the backstory of Q, and THEN gone all art nuveau on us as they did...

Kendrix wrote:weeep, i want my mari back

Sorry to tell you this, bro, but they never really had plans. Only thing they knew was that they wanted to destroy eva. anno once said, they had no clue about how her character was going to be until her Maaya started giving her a voice.

Kendrix wrote:Then again, her telling Rei that "your original was much friendlier" points into another direction

Well, I don't know, which one Mari refers to as original, but don't forget, when Rei tried to nuke the 10th angel in 2.22, she threw Mari back, so that she wouldn't get caught up in the blast.

Kendrix wrote:but after the photo, literaty half the fandom is gonna predict that same thing and I don't think they'd do something that obvious... would they?

Well, I guess in Final he will do his TROLL POWER TO THE MAX!

Kendrix wrote:Of course, Mari's awe about his deeds and what seemed to be her being surprisingly sucessfull at talking sense into him have all been rendered moot here - I think I could live with the changes in Q if they had basically finished what they were initially doing including Mari's developement and the Mark 6 actually doing something, had Shinji ending liquid by way of some of the other disastrous events alluded to in the backstory of Q, and THEN gone all art nuveau on us as they did...

Well you're right on this one, maybe with a little more development for Asuka and Mari in 2.0 the Q-Effect would have been even higher.

Kendrix wrote:It's far too late in the story for flashback storms, so I'm really wondering what they're gonna do - I just hope that this is Mari's mother, and that Mari herself will join the three children and interact with Shinji in a meaningful way - they seemed like such an interesting combination, character-dynamics-wise, just from their few encounters. Then again, her telling Rei that "your original was much friendlier" points into another direction - but after the photo, literaty half the fandom is gonna predict that same thing and I don't think they'd do something that obvious... would they?

Of course, Mari's awe about his deeds and what seemed to be her being surprisingly sucessfull at talking sense into him have all been rendered moot here - I think I could live with the changes in Q if they had basically finished what they were initially doing including Mari's developement and the Mark 6 actually doing something, had Shinji ending liquid by way of some of the other disastrous events alluded to in the backstory of Q, and THEN gone all art nuveau on us as they did...

I'd agree that I would very much so like to see Mari (and Asuka, for that matter) receive more development in 4.0. Unfortunately, I can't help but fear that they are going to be pushed to the side to make way for Rei once again, especially given Rei II's glaring absence from 3.0.

They need to do something to explain what the heck is up with Mari, even if it's just two minutes of backstory or character development. If they dangle hints for three movies and then choose never to resolve them I'll be quite miffed.

I'd also like to know what's the story behind Asuka wearing a pin that's a symbol representing her and a symbol representing Mari joined together; the implication would seem to be that they are friends or have an understanding at the very least, yet it seems that we're pretty much only going to see them piloting in 3.0 and so the rapport that they have developed won't be explored at all. That would've been a great way to give Mari some character development, but I doubt it'll ever be addressed now.

All of the untapped potential here really makes me wish for something set in the gap to explain just what the hell went on.

TheTuna wrote:I'd also like to know what's the story behind Asuka wearing a pin that's a symbol representing her and a symbol representing Mari joined together; the implication would seem to be that they are friends or have an understanding at the very least, yet it seems that we're pretty much only going to see them piloting in 3.0 and so the rapport that they have developed won't be explored at all. That would've been a great way to give Mari some character development, but I doubt it'll ever be addressed now.

I like this as a theory, but I'm not sure what the second pin is. (picture) Asuka is represented by a skull with an eyepatch, and Mari is represented by a blue and red.... nipple?