Links or it didn't happen.

Grimmjow wrote:I loled at this thread.

She just enjoys the scent of LCL. If she's gay for Yui then she's gay for every other soul injected into Evas.

Never meant to be taken to seriously, but i must point out that there are hints towards there being no Resident Souls within the Evas besides Yui in Eva-01 in this continuity.

Synapsid wrote:And by extension Shinjii, you mean.

By what alien logic? There are people on this very forum who feel sexually attracted towards Rei, but i don't think that means they fap/schlick to Shinji too. Also, she can't be gay for Shinji. I don't care if his design was based on Nadia, Shinji's a boy.

Halicat wrote:Now that I think about it, how does one's smell STAY in the entry plug anyway? Surely they refill the plug with fresh LCL so it can't be that.

Good glayvin! Of course tastes can remain after the liquid has been replaced.

You ever try to make tea using water heated in a coffee pot?

You ever drink tea out of a mug used for years? (I could make tea without any tea leaves, my mug has absorbed so much over the years.)

If you want a vessel to retain nothing whatsoever, you need to make it solely out of metal or glass, make it small with no nooks and crannies, and then run it through an autoclave a couple of times. Ask the medical folks.

Kendrix wrote:Mari is pretty nose-fixated. It might or might not have a particular reason. It might be as simple as that since she can't rely to much on her eyes, she learned to use her nose instead to the point that she can recognize other Eva-pilots. It might be connected to her past, or just be simple weird-ppl ability XD

She probably does have a weird past. But has anyone noticed how she's heavily characterized as a dog-like person?

You have all the smelling stuff (classic dog-character - look at Inuyasha), you have her multiple uses of 'puppy' for Shinji, you have her beast mode, and you have her quasi-dog-like loyalty to Shinji even as she/Eva-02 is dying (which is not a trait ever ascribed to, say, cats).

I know this is probably the latest reply in EvaGeeks history, but I think it's safe to say now, given the events of the Extra Stage of Volume 14 of the manga, that this speculation is now canon.

gwern wrote:You have all the smelling stuff (classic dog-character - look at Inuyasha), you have her multiple uses of 'puppy' for Shinji, you have her beast mode, and you have her quasi-dog-like loyalty to Shinji even as she/Eva-02 is dying (which is not a trait ever ascribed to, say, cats).

OTOH, I never saw much of a dog motif for Mari, at least not for most of the reasons given here. Her Beast Mode doesn't look like a dog at all (as opposed to Asuka's which clearly looks like a cat), and her use of the "puppy" nickname probably says more about Shinji than it does about her--it's a playful way of saying that he's desperate for attention and wants to please his superiors. She also calls Asuka "Princess", so clearly giving people nicknames is just something she does.

El Squibbonator wrote: (as opposed to Asuka's which clearly looks like a cat)

To my previous list, I would add: Mari is explicitly described as shallow and straightforward and honest in, IIRC, some of the 3.0 materials, which is a description you would use of a dog; and with the Asuka/cat motif being pushed so heavily with the cat-hat and beast-mode, what is the natural 'odd couple' pairing for a cat? A dog, of course.

I still respectfully disagree. I never saw Mari as having a dog motif (at least, not a very strong one), with the possible exception of her scent fixation. Everything else was just reaching.
In fact, in the third movie she actually exhibits some of the same cat-like traits as Asuka does. She has that little song she sings with the "meow!" noises, she wears the same cat-eared helmet, and it's pretty heavily implied that Asuka's kitty-eared hat was even a gift from her, since it has a British insignia on it. Heck, there's a meme on this very forum (started by Squigsquasher, I believe) that calls her "Britty Titty Kitty." Point being, I've seen Mari identified at least as much with cats as with dogs (granted, this was mostly in the third movie).

I have a personal theory (which I've mentioned on this board before) that this also may be a joke on the part of the writers. In Japanese "Neko", which means cat, is also slang for a lesbian woman. Now look at Mari and Asuka in the 3rd movie (and Mari in the manga as well), and look at the imagery associated with them. See where I'm coming from?

Sadamoto's canon for the original manga should really be seen as an interpretation of Anno's NTE film canon.

That being said, if Anno includes a backstory like that, or if Sadamoto's had included a scene where Mari gets in Unit 01, the lesbian sex implications would be phenomenally hilarious!!!

So, you're saying that we should be viewing Mari in the manga and Mari in rebuild as separate characters?

FreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:Sadamoto's canon for the original manga should really be seen as an interpretation of Anno's NTE film canon.

That being said, if Anno includes a backstory like that, or if Sadamoto's had included a scene where Mari gets in Unit 01, the lesbian sex implications would be phenomenally hilarious!!!

I still think that the coolest thing that Anno could do with 4.0 would be to link up and integrate every single "canon" timeline of Evangelion and have the different events of those three main stories (Sadamoto's manga, NGE, Rebuild all being parallel universes caused by Lillith/impact/instrumentality/whatever) somehow have an effect on the outcome of Final. It would make Stephen Hawking proud.

^ That might be a neat thing to do, depending on the execution. It would certainly give us a LOT to talk about.

El Squibbonator wrote:So, you're saying that we should be viewing Mari in the manga and Mari in rebuild as separate characters?

Well, have you ever noticed how down-beat and out Of character Mari seemed in the Manga as opposed to the bright and happy Mari in the movies? Also, Sadamoto's Mari does 100% less Eva piloting than the NTE Mari. It's pretty clear that Manga Mari doesn't share the same experiences or interests and NTE Mari.

Well, to be fair, we don't actually see all that much of Sadomato's Mari. BTW, what do you think about the observations I noticed?

Guy Nacks wrote:I still think that the coolest thing that Anno could do with 4.0 would be to link up and integrate every single "canon" timeline of Evangelion and have the different events of those three main stories (Sadamoto's manga, NGE, Rebuild all being parallel universes caused by Lillith/impact/instrumentality/whatever) somehow have an effect on the outcome of Final. It would make Stephen Hawking proud.

It's been done. Campus Apocalypse went there.

And I'm pretty sure a fair few fanfic authors have also had some fun with the idea (LiteraryEagle is the only one I can name off the top of my head, though).

El Squibbonator wrote:Well, to be fair, we don't actually see all that much of Sadomato's Mari. BTW, what do you think about the observations I noticed?

It's the very fact tha we don't see Sadamoto's Mari that much solidifies my point. Sadamoto's Mari occurs in a flashback, prior to the events depicted in the manga. And in the events depicted in the manga Mari isn't once seen piloting an Eva. That means that in Sadamoto's manga Mari didn't pot on Eva. NTE Mari did. There's at least clear distinction between the two there.

As for your points about Mari being a lesbian due to her "cattiness," I'd suspect that if she was that it wouldn't be with Asuka. Asuka has more of a rabbit thing going on than a cattiness that would be similar to Mari (read of her initial character designs for NGE, and Anno's thing with "Bunny Girls"), and in most of their interactions Mari bounces off Asuka like water on a rock. But Maya, on the other hand, states in Q that she can't stand young men. If Mari's homo (or bi), and if Maya's sexual orientation is similar to that in NGE, then I'm more inclined, based on the cattiness and lines of dialogue presented to us in NTE, that Mari and Maya be bangin'.

FreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:...lines of dialogue presented to us in NTE, that Mari and Maya be bangin'.

Wat? Seems rather far fetched, but I'm intrigued; has there been more discussion of this topic before?

^ Not that I'm aware of. But not that the conclusion assumes a LOT to be true, such as Mari's "cattiness" suggesting homosexuality and Maya's character still being written gay. At any rate it's way less far fetched than assuming the AsukaxMari works of a popular fanfic writer are canon with (or insightful into) NTE.

So I just read the bonus chapter. Is it safe to assume that by the time Mari is introduced in rebuild she is a old woman stuck in a teenaged body the way Asuka is after the time skip? I'm thinking this since her appearance in the manga is proof that she is was a teenager during that time period. Such a weird reveal. Like what's the point story wise. Merchandise wise they could have shown Mari as a lesbian in another way during the movies but why reveal it in the past like that. Makes me wonder if the final movie will connect the show and manga by introducing more multiverse type of things.

zlink64 wrote:Is it safe to assume that by the time Mari is introduced in rebuild she is a old woman stuck in a teenaged body the way Asuka is after the time skip?

There are other hints in the films that Mari is older than she looks, such as referring to Gendou as "Gendou-kun", which would fit with the manga scene. For it to work I think it requires that Mari returns to take part in the initial Eva experiments with Yui, but as a pilot, not a contact. Against Mari being so old is Kaji's remark about "using the children" at the start of Ha. Clearly the matter will not be definitively decided at least until we get the final film, and maybe not even then...

pwhodges wrote:Against Mari being so old is Kaji's remark about "using the children" at the start of Ha.

And the implication that Eva-05 was Mari's first time in an Eva...

That too. But even though the continuities have always been separate, and remain so in my view, I find it hard to believe that Sadamoto would have produced that scene without having some suggestion from Anno that it was a possibility - I mean, why would he, otherwise? You are free to disagree on that one, of course, as it's no more than my feeling about it.