Breaking the stalemate: Mari's role in NTE

Discussion of the new series of Evangelion movies ( "Evangelion Shin Gekijōban", meaning "Evangelion: New Theatrical Edition"). The final instalment made its debut in Japan on March 8, 2021.

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Breaking the stalemate: Mari's role in NTE

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Postby Blockio » Sat Aug 14, 2021 12:53 pm

Mari is a fascinating character and one that has been generally given less credit for her importance to NTE as a whole. Her first appearance in Ha is the first major deviation from the TV sturcutre; Mari represents change, and moving forwards.

That same angle is also the focal point of one of the scenes in the climax of Shin. When Unit 01 and Eva 13 are locked in a stalemate that explicitly cannot be won by force, the thing that tips the scales and allows events to move forwards is delivered to Shinji by Mari; at every turn presented, Mari uproots the status quo established by the series, gives rise to changes that take the movies away from the established formula. It's not an exaggeration to say that she is the driving force, the point of contact that makes Shinji grow up and move on and, by extension, tells the audience to move on and accept new things. Or at least, so it would seem.
While there is an amusing observation about "best girl" wars to be made here, given that contained within 01 and 13 at the time were the souls of Rei and Asuka respectively, this is not what I want to focus on here.
Instead, the thing that I want to focus on is a complementary aspect to the scene: Misato.
While, as said before, the one who delivers Gaius to Shinji is Mari, however the one who creates it is Misato. Without her actions and her sacrifice, Mari would not have had the means to break the stalemate. Which brings me to the point I am trying to make with this - Mari is not The One Who Magically Fixes It All™, she is a messenger, a guiding hand giving a nudge in the right direction, to find the strength within themselves to move on and change for the better. You neither learn by strictly clinging to the old, nor by completely abandoning it in favor of something new; only by taking both into consideration, you can grow as a person.
This is also what the final scene of her taking off Shinji's collar means to me: she doesn't just pop in to free him from the burden placed upon him, Shinji put the collar on himself this time. she is here to say "It's okay, you can move on now, don't let the past weigh you down and prevent you from taking new steps."

The title of this is perhaps a bit pompous for what I actually had to say with this, but I'm hoping that as I rewatch Shin I'll notice more things to add to this thread, more ways in which Mari encompasses the things I talked about here
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Re: Breaking the stalemate: Mari's role in NTE

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Postby Jornophelanthas » Thu Jul 21, 2022 3:26 pm

I find the interpretation of Mari as a messenger/courier very compelling.

I can see it in a lot of her actions toward both Shinji and Asuka:
  • As you mentioned yourself, Mari delivers the Spear of Gaius to Shinji.
  • Aditionally, Mari ferries Shinji himself across the gates of Guf into the Anti-Universe, where he can access Unit-01.
  • Mari acts as a bridge between Asuka and Shinji: she gently prods Asuka to clear the air with Shinji, and she breaks the ice with Shinji when she and Asuka visit him just before the final battle.
  • In all EVA battles where Asuka and Mari work together, Mari's role is support to Asuka. In two of those battles, she literally carries Asuka's weapons for her, and hands them to her as needed.

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Re: Breaking the stalemate: Mari's role in NTE

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Postby Axx°N N. » Thu Jul 21, 2022 3:47 pm

Her purpose in a script-writing sense is what I would term quantum contrivance, turned up to 11 when she literally begins to pilot quantum overlapped Evas. Merely by boasting a mysterious enthusiasm and unexplained past and general means or reason for existence, one can utilize her ability to slide into any scene and champion any behavior needed by the script that would otherwise run into walls of what are consistently harder to embed or lay groundworks in a narrative that zips by as fast as NTE's and covers such an immense span of time-skipped years. In other words, when the plot or character progression of the more quotidian characters (ie, everyone but Mari) couldn't possibly be compelled by anything else, Mari functions as a catch-all swiss army genki who can skip to and fro without any conceivable baggage between what would be more conventionally Evangelion sequences and cast rosters. The way NTE is plotted couldn't possibly work in any other way but to have this third-party character acting as the scriptwriter's errand girl.
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Re: Breaking the stalemate: Mari's role in NTE

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Postby Jornophelanthas » Thu Jul 21, 2022 4:28 pm

View Original PostAxx°N N. wrote:the scriptwriter's errand girl.

I prefer to review the work in terms of its themes and internal merits, and not in opinionated terms of how it was made.

And I'm not a particular fan of derailing any discussion on Rebuild of Evangelion into yet another "it's terrible" argument.

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Re: Breaking the stalemate: Mari's role in NTE

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Postby Blockio » Thu Jul 21, 2022 5:17 pm

I echo that statement. Axx, you have been warned before about dragging people down who wish to discuss NTE on its own terms instead of defaulting to "it's like this because it sucks", and while you have been a lot better about that lately, that statement still remains. If you have nothing better to add to a debate looking to analyze than that you think analysis is futile, not adding anything is the superior option.

@Jorno good catch with the anti-universe stuff and how she supports Asuka, that completely slipped my mind when I was writing the initial post right in the afterglow of my first viewing.
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The movies function on their own terms. If people can't accept them on those terms, and keep expecting them to be NGE, then they probably should have realized a while ago that they weren't going to have a good time. ~ Words of wisdom courtesy of Reichu

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Re: Breaking the stalemate: Mari's role in NTE

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Postby Axx°N N. » Thu Jul 21, 2022 6:04 pm

View Original PostJornophelanthas wrote:I prefer to review the work in terms of its themes and internal merits, and not in opinionated terms of how it was made.

And I'm not a particular fan of derailing any discussion on Rebuild of Evangelion into yet another "it's terrible" argument.

I don't see where I made assumptions of how something was made--or at least, how assuming what the writers intend for a plot device is any less of an assumption than what they intended a theme to be. It's the same level of assumption and interpretation, right?

Regardless of how something is made, there are detectable tropes and narrative conceits in the work itself. I don't see where I suggested any of this made anything "terrible," and I don't see how it's irrelevant to the themes seeing as the film itself brings up fiction as a dichotomy with reality and presents a metaphysics where they merge into one fluid stream of consciousness--would it be insulting to bring up Instrumentality as a 'stream-of-consciousness' technique because it's looking at it through the lens of how it functions as a writing tool, versus as merely an internal plot element? The purpose of Mari's character in an archetypal or functional sense is interesting to me and I think it's an undeniable aspect of trying to understand her.

I didn't intend to negate anything or knock your perspectives, especially because I don't see our viewpoints as mutually exclusive--her thematic function can match her function as a device. Thrice being as meta as it overtly is, I'm not sure why this should be a controversial take. I wasn't trying to present a "so there," anyway--I was taken in by what I thought was an interesting point of reference.
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Re: Breaking the stalemate: Mari's role in NTE

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Postby nerv bae » Thu Jul 21, 2022 7:33 pm

View Original PostAxx°N N. wrote: I don't see where I suggested any of this made anything "terrible,"

I don't know how familiar Jornophelanthas is with the warnings that Blockio referenced. But assuming that familiarity, and assuming both of them read your "quantum contrivance" and "scriptwriter's errand girl" as pejorative (they sound a bit pejorative to me!), then I can imagine both of them extrapolating your as-read pejorative-against-Mari post into a soon-to-follow pejorative-against-NTE post. Once bitten, twice shy, I guess.

Axx°N N. wrote:Merely by boasting a mysterious enthusiasm and unexplained past and general means or reason for existence, one can utilize her ability to slide into any scene and champion any behavior needed by the script that would otherwise run into walls of what are consistently harder to embed or lay groundworks in a narrative that zips by as fast as NTE's and covers such an immense span of time-skipped years.

Can you think of any scenes where Mari was not used by the writers this way? I.e., not as a contrivance or errand girl, but instead as a "natural" character? Off the top of my head I'm guessing at least half the scenes she's in don't suffer (see, now I'm using pejorative terms too) for this reason you've identified.

Blockio wrote:The title of this is perhaps a bit pompous for what I actually had to say with this, but I'm hoping that as I rewatch Shin I'll notice more things to add to this thread, more ways in which Mari encompasses the things I talked about here

I want to follow in Jornophelanthas' footsteps and bump more under-appreciated August 2021 topics. :mari_love: Have you rewatched since you posted this and noticed anything new?

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Re: Breaking the stalemate: Mari's role in NTE

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Postby Blockio » Thu Jul 21, 2022 7:47 pm

I did rewatch it since, but it was always with friends and I was more focusing on general theorycrafting and lore, so I didn't pay as much attention to that aspect, lol
I can see why Gendo hired Misato to do the actual commanding. He tried it once and did an appalling job. ~ AWinters
Your point of view is horny, and biased. ~ glitz2hard
What about titty-ten? ~ Reichu
The movies function on their own terms. If people can't accept them on those terms, and keep expecting them to be NGE, then they probably should have realized a while ago that they weren't going to have a good time. ~ Words of wisdom courtesy of Reichu

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Re: Breaking the stalemate: Mari's role in NTE

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Postby Axx°N N. » Thu Jul 21, 2022 8:23 pm

View Original Postnerv bae wrote:They sound a bit pejorative to me!

I can see how, but in my own defense (but of course) it's more that that's how I see her in spirit--she has the mischief, half-serious "insider-scoop" feel to her of someone sent as a kind of underling. And her roles are generally along those lines--espionage, cover fire, wingman, etc. When she's on the phone in 2.0, I can't help but imagine Khara on the other line. To me it wouldn't be true to her character to put her in any other terms.

View Original Postnerv bae wrote:Can you think of any scenes where Mari was not used by the writers this way? I.e., not as a contrivance or errand girl, but instead as a "natural" character?

That's an interesting question, and barring a full rewatch to look out for that exactly, I'm not sure. I'd tend to say that her general function prevents me from seeing her as natural in any scene. Really, she seems to always be playing the part of being where she shouldn't be or, if she should be where she is (say, aboard the Wunder) she operates as a sort of useful sounding board. Take the Fuyutsuki scene--without her showing up quantum-like, who else would Fuyutsuki be able to soundboard against and give us some much needed insight into his perspective on things? It would otherwise have had to be as soliloquy. But she serves an incredibly important role there in that there's a precise context for him to reveal in the way he reveals--and it happens because her own past, which is a tabula rasa, is adapted to fit into his past. So the scene is sort of killing two birds with one stone, and I'd be liable to say Mari herself is the stone. I suppose her most natural scenes are those with Asuka, but that's a contrivance from the outset because we have to take their friendship for granted, as Q starts us off in media res and we never see their friendship begin. And again, we see Mari adapted to suit these purposes--she can really have anything applied to her. So in the same film, another gap, interests and hobbies, is revealed--books--so that she can impart folk wisdom about hair and set up a motif that gets mirrored later--while also being a confidant for salon customer Asuka to reveal some of her attitude about her biology.

EDIT: and just to be clear, I don't intend 'contrivance' here to carry a negative connotation--it seems to me that Thrice consciously leaned into Mari functioning as an extra-narrative device.
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Re: Breaking the stalemate: Mari's role in NTE

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Postby Jornophelanthas » Thu Jul 21, 2022 9:41 pm

The scene with Mari and Fuyutsuki teases some backstory between them, especially with Mari seemingly knowing things about Fuyutsuki's motives, and Fuyutsuki referring to Mari by using a name she admitted she has not been called in a very long time.

Them being prevously acquainted is further suggested by the Gendo flashback. Specifically, it depicts someone who looks very much like Mari introducing him to Yui, with Fuyutsuki also being present in the scene.

--- NOTE: This Mari-lookalike introducing Gendo and Yui is yet another example of Mari having a messenger- or bridge-role ---

And then there is Fuyutsuki's photograph, which includes the woman in red glasses, who shows a strong resemblance to the adult version of Mari in the last scene of 3.0+1.0. The woman in the photo is very likely to be an older version of the Mari-lookalike in Gendo's flashback. This is not implausible, given that we know that picture must have been taken several years after Gendo meeting Yui. Specifically, sufficient time for Gendo and Yui to date, get married, have Shinji, and have Shinji grow up to the toddler-age he has in the picture.

While we do not know Mari's backstory, nor her relation to the woman in Gendo's and Yui's (and Fuyutsuki's) past, the sum of the above three scenes amounts to a strong suggestion that such a backstory/relation has been conceived and that she has been embedded in the Rebuild of Evangelion narrative universe. It just has not been included in any exposition to the audience.

(I am considering arguing something about possible reasons for this (deliberate?) omission of Mari's backstory beyond hints, but my thoughts on that have not fully crystallized yet.)

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Re: Breaking the stalemate: Mari's role in NTE

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Postby dzzthink » Fri Jul 22, 2022 4:28 am

^Those are some good points. I realize now that the photo could be an adult Mari.

I would also like to mention the scene in Evangelion 2.22 where Mari breaks into the evacuation centre and drags Shinji out so that he can see the devastation and go fight Zeruel. It is not clear how she conveniently found him or how her battery reserve lasted that long, so I can see what AxxNN means, but this moment is critical to the series of events leading to the third impact. Without Kaji talking about his watermelons (though he does this earlier on in the film), she must act as Shinji's support and driver. Even when third impact occurs, she seems rather supportive.
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Re: Breaking the stalemate: Mari's role in NTE

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Postby nerv bae » Fri Jul 22, 2022 7:46 am

View Original PostJornophelanthas wrote:And then there is Fuyutsuki's photograph, which includes the woman in red glasses, who shows a strong resemblance to the adult version of Mari in the last scene of 3.0+1.0. The woman in the photo is very likely to be an older version of the Mari-lookalike in Gendo's flashback.

For reference, there's some good discussion of Fuyutsuki's photograph in this Mari thread from a few months ago.

dzzthink wrote:I would also like to mention the scene in Evangelion 2.22 where Mari breaks into the evacuation centre and drags Shinji out so that he can see the devastation and go fight Zeruel. It is not clear how she conveniently found him or how her battery reserve lasted that long, so I can see what AxxNN means, but this moment is critical to the series of events leading to the third impact. Without Kaji talking about his watermelons (though he does this earlier on in the film), she must act as Shinji's support and driver. Even when third impact occurs, she seems rather supportive.

Mmmm, yup. In that scene Mari functions both as an Axx°N N. contrivance insofar as Unit 02 just happens to conveniently collapse into the specific shelter where Shinji is running-away-in-place, and as a Blockio-Jornophelanthas thematic bridge between Shinji and Rei.

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Re: Breaking the stalemate: Mari's role in NTE

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Postby Archer » Fri Jul 22, 2022 7:59 am

I think the reason for the omission of Mari’s backstory is more mundane.

1.0 obviously had no place for Mari since it’s a more or less a trimmed down remake of Eps 1-6 with only superficial changes.

2.0 is a bloated mess as it is, we know there were supposed to be more Mari scenes that got cut due to runtime. There certainly wasn’t any room for a backstory here.

We know that at some point, 3.0 was going to cover the the timeskip (probably focusing on the period of time between the end of 2.0 and the immediate aftermath of Third Impact), but that this was changed sometime in development to be the 3.0 we got with the 14 year timeskip.

My hypothesis is that Asuka and Mari’s backstories were originally supposed to be developed in this version of the movie, since Shinji would’ve been MIA and it’s possible that they would’ve filled in as the main characters. But with the new 3.0, which focuses entirely on Shinji’s POV (who spends the majority of the movie away from WILLE), it also became impossible to devote any screen time to a detailed backstory for Mari. Thus, they had to cram in what little scraps they could in the last movie.

@Jornophelanthas I’ve made a thread discussing Mari’s potential history that you might find interesting to read through:
thread/21286/Mari-is-not-afflicted-with-the-Curse-of-Eva/
I’m also of the opinion that the woman in the photo is supposed to be Mari, and that whether or not the Mari scene in Gendo’s flashbacks is an adult or not is intentionally ambiguous (it seems like every shot she’s in is framed such that her height cannot be easily compared to the other characters).

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Re: Breaking the stalemate: Mari's role in NTE

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Postby Axx°N N. » Fri Jul 22, 2022 1:16 pm

View Original PostArcher wrote:My hypothesis is that Asuka and Mari’s backstories were originally supposed to be developed in this version of the movie, since Shinji would’ve been MIA and it’s possible that they would’ve filled in as the main characters.

The fact we know about this theoretical unmade film sure shoots a lot of certainty about intentions in the foot. It's like schrödinger's backstory--it's possible it would've still been kept a mystery, and I find that an interesting likelihood. I also find it interesting that Mari's role in the films is pretty consistent in terms of how she's utilized, but I'm not sure that means it was baked into her intention from the start. We know from interviews that it's clear she was meant to disrupt, but it's not clear if this gets deeper than that until Thrice. I'm liable to suspect they extrapolated from what was there and broadened it in a way that meant they didn't need to cover her backstory at length, which is another killing two birds with one stone thing, and that she wasn't functioning as a contrivance in a meta way prior to Thrice out of thematic reason, but pragmatic reason, as it's not like she was the only contrivance in NTE back when they were compressing the old plotlines--whereas come Thrice she is the contrivance. Really, it's an interesting question and for that reason I doubt it will ever be answered, but like, when she parachutes in and there's the very loaded visual happening of Shinji's tape proceeding to a new number, was it floated out as an idea or mapped out in any way that she would be positioned with him as a conclusion? Hard to say because we know about the BTS struggles to utilize her character, but internally it all seems fairly consistent retroactively.
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Re: Breaking the stalemate: Mari's role in NTE

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Postby Konja7 » Fri Jul 22, 2022 10:21 pm

View Original PostArcher wrote:My hypothesis is that Asuka and Mari’s backstories were originally supposed to be developed in this version of the movie, since Shinji would’ve been MIA and it’s possible that they would’ve filled in as the main characters. But with the new 3.0, which focuses entirely on Shinji’s POV (who spends the majority of the movie away from WILLE), it also became impossible to devote any screen time to a detailed backstory for Mari. Thus, they had to cram in what little scraps they could in the last movie.


Honestly, I feel Mari's backstory would be mantained as a mystery even in that version of the movie. I don't think the changes of plans have greatly altered what we were going to know about Mari.

Sure, what they showed in 3.0+1.0 leaves more questions than answers, but it's totally intentional and pretty well introduced.


PS: I also doubt we will know more about Asuka, since she was still hurt and Eva-02 destroyed.

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Re: Breaking the stalemate: Mari's role in NTE

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Postby ElMariachi » Thu Aug 11, 2022 4:51 pm

Putting aside debates on the merits or quality of her use in the movie, she is indeed a tool used wherever the writers needed the story to go in a direction.
And this is not merely my personal opinion, but Khara staff's own admission: they said in interviews that each characters of Evangelion are a facet of Anno's mind, and as such, that he has a very hard time to make them change and evolve, and that Mari was created specifically to "break Evangelion", Anno even purposefully avoided participating on her design and scenes (until Thrice) so he wouldn't "entrap" her as a part of his psyche. IIRC Tsurumaki even said in the 2.0 CRC that Mari feeling out of place in Evangelion was the intended effect.
And thus, she's present to change things by her presence and participation so the characters (and the story) could take a different path than in NGE:
  • Kaji in NGE was alone in his quest for truth, and it was implied that he didn't even really cared if he would survive or not because he strongly suspected that he had no chances, and in the end while he transmitted the truth to Misato, it didn't changed anything: NERV failed to stop SEELE, Instrumentality happened and was only broken by Shinji deciding it (which would had happened whether he knew about SEELE and Gendo's plans or not). But in NTE, thanks to his partnership with Mari, he has an ace in the hole that neither Gendo nor SEELE knew about (that she survived) and she also indirectly provided him the strength of the Eva as she's a pilot. Well, there's also the fact that he founded a secret rebel faction (again, unlike NGE where he was on his own), but their only visible contribution in 2.0 was in assisting Mari (first by covertly parachuting her in Tokyo-3, then by helping her access the frozen Unit-02)
  • Asuka would had probably ended as a suicidal ball of spite, rage and self-loathing like in EoE after all that happened to her, if it weren't for Mari being here with her, and with the positivity and strength of character to put up with her... complicated personality for 14 years. I'm not even sure that she would had been alive by the time Shinji came back to Earth (if he would had even came back in those circumstances). Of course, Mari wasn't alone, there's also Kensuke, but I don't see him becoming that parental figure to her at least until he reached adulthood, so someone else must had kept Asuka together, that someone being Mari
  • In the prequel manga, she was the one who brought the conditions to have Shinji awakening inside Unit 01 (and awakening it again) by pushing Asuka to be in first line instead of Unit 08
  • With Rei's disappearance, she's the one who serve as remaining pilot when the plot needs Asuka to stay somewhere else (aka all the Village-3 half of Thrice)
  • In the final battle, as the bad guys are about to win due to their overwhelming strength and the fact they prepared for it for decades, like in EoE, Mari is the proverbial wrench in their plans by revealing that she turned Fuyutsuki to her side, which gave her the four Adam's Vessels and the means to unblock the situation by bringing Shinji to Unit 01 and freeing the Wunder
  • She also serves as an additional technoblabber thanks to her past in Yui's team, that thus know what the hell is going on with the Anti-Universe (unlike Ritsuko) and can navigate it to bring Shinji to Unit 01 and bring him back after the battle (in fact, her Eva is the only one which not only survives the whole movie, but ends in a better shape than when it started!)
  • She also worked retroactively with Gendo and Yui, with the former shown to be an extreme introvert, and unlike NGE where they came together on their own (with the implication that it was Yui who made the first step), here it was thanks to Mari playing matchmakers, indirectly kickstarting the whole plot

Now again, you could debate on how heavy-handed her use has been in the story and the merits of such a device, but it remains that she was created more as a meta-tool to "break" the Evangelion formula than a proper character, and that it was made on purpose.
Last edited by ElMariachi on Sat Aug 13, 2022 5:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Breaking the stalemate: Mari's role in NTE

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Postby Jornophelanthas » Thu Aug 11, 2022 7:26 pm

View Original PostElMariachi wrote:In the final battle, as the bad guys are about to win due to their overwhelming strength and the fact they prepared for it for decades, like in EoE, Mari is the proverbial wrench in their plans by revealing that she turned Fuyutsuki to her side, which gave her the four Adam's Vessels and the means to unblock the situation by bringing Shinji to Unit 01 and freeing the Wunder


Is it the case that she converted Fuyutsuki? It seems to me that the three ships were either defenseless against her Evangelion, or no longer served any purpose after Gendo had taken what he wanted (Unit-01) back into the Anti-Universe. (Remember, this left the AAA Wunder without a power source, so Neo-NERV would no longer see it as a threat.)

Either way, Fuyutsuki admitted that his part was finished, he had been abandoned by Gendo, and Mari only made an appearance in his command bridge (presumably aboard one of the three ships) as a courtesy to send him off. They do not seem to have much to say to each other, either. Really, all they do is reminisce.

If you disagree with this interpretation, please feel free to elaborate.

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Re: Breaking the stalemate: Mari's role in NTE

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Postby nerv bae » Sun Aug 14, 2022 11:31 am

View Original Postnerv bae wrote:
View Original Postdzzthink wrote:I would also like to mention the scene in Evangelion 2.22 where Mari breaks into the evacuation centre and drags Shinji out so that he can see the devastation and go fight Zeruel. It is not clear how she conveniently found him or how her battery reserve lasted that long, so I can see what AxxNN means, but this moment is critical to the series of events leading to the third impact. Without Kaji talking about his watermelons (though he does this earlier on in the film), she must act as Shinji's support and driver. Even when third impact occurs, she seems rather supportive.

Mmmm, yup. In that scene Mari functions both as an Axx°N N. contrivance insofar as Unit 02 just happens to conveniently collapse into the specific shelter where Shinji is running-away-in-place, and as a Blockio-Jornophelanthas thematic bridge between Shinji and Rei.

While rewatching NGE recently I noticed in episode 19 that Unit 02's severed head crashes into Shinji's shelter after being cut off by Zeruel, in a coincidence just as great as Mari's Unit 02 full body crash in NTE. So, correction: I actually don't think this incident is a good example of the writers using Mari as a contrivance, because the same plot beat happens in the same way in NTE and NGE, with and without Mari.

View Original PostJornophelanthas wrote:
ElMariachi wrote:In the final battle, as the bad guys are about to win due to their overwhelming strength and the fact they prepared for it for decades, like in EoE, Mari is the proverbial wrench in their plans by revealing that she turned Fuyutsuki to her side, which gave her the four Adam's Vessels and the means to unblock the situation by bringing Shinji to Unit 01 and freeing the Wunder

Is it the case that she converted Fuyutsuki?

I'm not sure which one of them originally converted the other, but their dialogue on Fuyutsuki's bridge makes it clear that they've been collaborating somehow.

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Re: Breaking the stalemate: Mari's role in NTE

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Postby Jornophelanthas » Sun Aug 14, 2022 8:15 pm

View Original Postnerv bae wrote:I'm not sure which one of them originally converted the other, but their dialogue on Fuyutsuki's bridge makes it clear that they've been collaborating somehow.

My take is that they appeared to share a mutual understanding that they were each game pieces on opposing sides of a board. They both acknowledged that Fuyutsuki was being taken off the board now, in a conscious act by his player (Gendo).

However, when Fuyutsuki called Mari "Mary Iscariot" in his parting words, that seemed like him recognizing that Mari was actually a player, and not a pawn. And she reacted mildly surprised that he realized. This moment could be linked to her final line in the Unit-05 battle where she first appeared, expressing regret at manipulating all the adults. So this could mean that Fuyutsuki realized that Mari had played him (and possibly even Gendo), but he had stopped caring at that point.

Also, Fuyutsuki's final words ("Is this what you wanted, Yui?"), directed at himself after Mari left the scene, are the same as what he said to himself in 3.0, right after he told Shinji about the disappearance of his mother, when Shinji had just stumbled out of the room in shock. This shows Fuyutsuki's own doubts about the agenda he was serving all the way to the end. As well as his own lack of agency, which cements his status as a pawn.

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Re: Breaking the stalemate: Mari's role in NTE

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Postby nerv bae » Sun Aug 14, 2022 10:04 pm

That's an interesting perspective. What do you make of Fuyutsuki's line "The things you wanted have been gathered" (Reichu) / "I've assembled the things you wanted" (Prime subtitles)? I had always understood this to point to prior collaboration between the pair -- you don't think so?


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