Well, not the folks at Gainax, that's for sure...

He's new here cut him some slack.

In case you didn't know, Gainax isn't involved in the Rebuild movies, all animation and production staff are in Anno's own Studio Khara.

Compare all of Mari's looks before the glasses and her new hairstyle to these.



Oh and when Mari yells about the escaped rats, there's a similar look to that in the tv series that I can't find, I believe it's after Asuka talks on the phone with her step mother and yells at Shinji cause he got her to open up. but I've seen it somewhere.

I'm making the argument that Mari is the Feminine side of Asuka, the side that takes after her mother, she looks the most like her. She's the confident side of Asuka. She's the one that attached to Kaji. She's a genius, she eats the junk food, she makes Shinji uncomfortable sexually, she's the one that wants him to man up, she mocks him. She's also the Asuka with the bloodlust like we see in EoE, she even makes the same facial expressions in combat when fighting Zeurel that Asuka made in EoE when fighting the MPE's.

In the manga Mari states that she's 16, I don't know how long the events NGE lasted though. It could also link in with the time loop theory, that she is 16 in the sense that she has done the timeloops for the equivalent of 2 years, Asuka was 14 in EoE. She also skipped grades like Asuka did.

Here's a picture of Kyoko before the insanity



Compare to Mari

Shikinami is the Masculine side of Asuka, the side that takes after her father. It's always been speculated that Asuka's father was military and Shikinami is military too. She is the insecure side of Asuka. She's disciplined, organized, strategic, graceful she has the genuine feelings for Shinji. I also want to talk about how the military is a masculine/patriarchal thing in Evangelion and relate it to Shikinami's masculine side, but I think the masculine protest and military thing has already been written about in other threads. I also want to talk about how Shikinami is the damaged side of Asuka that is only able to unleash it when wearing the doll.

Mari has the feminine features of Soryu and Shikinami has the the body, if we were combine the two again she would get darker red hair color and the fuller breasts that Soryu had.

I also think that the preview that was shown for 4.0 is a hint that Shikinami and Mari are going to combine again, that's why they are half and half, Asuka will become complete again in 4.0.

The way it works for me is that it occurs during EoE, right before Asuka is killed by the MPE's Unit 02 briefly activates, I think Kyoko was trying to absorb her like Unit 02 did to her, but much like her it was only able to absorb part of her, it caused the division. At least I think Anno will retcon saying it did that.

So......are Asuka and Mari going to fuse into a single being a la Adam and Lilith in EOE?

Well, that could be Kyoko, but it could also be Mari's mother as well. There's no official word either way. She looks a little like both of them, and with the colors washed out it's hard to tell if her hair is supposed to be reddish or dark brown.

I can't really see a heavy similarity between them in those manga pages beyond the usual Sadamoto sameface. She looks more like Sakura or Natsuki from Summer Wars than Asuka to me.



On the whole, it just doesn't make much sense to me. When you look at Shikinami and Sohryu side-by-side, Shikinami comes off as far more confident, more secure and less broken than her counterpart; she doesn't use others to prop up her self-image, she's more open and honest about her feelings, and she's not broken by an Angel's mindfuck or by losing her Eva.

If they were originally Asuka Prime, then how and why did they split when nobody else did, and how does that serve their characters at all? Having them secretly be halves of the first Asuka would just be insulting to both characters, in my opinion.

^
Ah fuck, I forgot to re-add that part, thanks for reminding me.

It's not secret at all man, hell the manga even shows why Mari is Clark Kenting.



Well now, this is all sorts of fucked

Jesus Jaeger, I clicked on one of your quotes and turns out it is a response to something I wrote nearly seven years ago, Jesus.