NTE goes all over the place with the matter of people's age: Shinji is supposed to be seen as immature and unable to grow up compared to everyone else, but he's literally 14 years old in mind and body due to having been dead for 14 years, Asuka is supposed to be 28 years old and use the excuse that she "grew up first" to say to Shinji that it can't work between them, yet doesn't act adult a single time through Q and Thrice, and Mari (assuming the one seen in Gendo's flashback is indeed the same as the present one) is
thrice Shinji's age, yet still acts like an adrenaline junky teenager.
And then they're all 28 years old. Asuka because that's her supposed biological age (without having got through the slow process of maturing and growing up through puberty, not sure that it'll be without difficulties for her to adjust).
For Shinji, my interpretation is that it's as a reward for his new "maturity" (even though I have strong opinions about this movie's idea of maturity) and as a consequence of having gained the memories of countless timelines.
The weirdest one is Mari, because the prequel manga showed that she had an absolute blast with her unaging body, as it let her extra time to try out lots of new things and enjoy her youth, I guess that since the new world was expunged of everything Eva and Angel related, she couldn't keep the curse and while she was at it, decided to get herself a young adult body. (better than one around Yui's age I guess!)
sephiroth2004 wrote:Honestly, there's so little meaningful buildup to Mari x Shinji that I'd say it's plausible they're just good friends or some sort of mentor relationship. Shinji can handle sexually charged teasing and give back now because he's grown past some of his trauma. Remember Mari is old. Imagine your teenage self dating one of your grandma's friends who was hot for some reason. But you could see something where you because good friends with them and/or they had some sort of mentor relationship with you.
According to some members who follows the Japanese fandom, even there it's a 50/50 split on if their relationship is supposed to be romantic or a friendship.
The thing is that while Mari does always act flirty and very touchy, we don't have any frame of reference about adult Shinji to know if he's genuinely flirting back or if it's just who he is now, and playing along like Kaji would for everyone not being Misato.
And it's Shinji we're talking about, Shinji "I can't hold the girl I like even while she's kissing me" Ikari, who's now complimenting Mari about her boobs, removing her glasses while calling her "as cute as ever" to fluster her and then running hand-in-hand with her, in
Japan, a country where people tend to keep physical contact to a minimum. (I also recall seeing people arguing that their scene is typically how lovers behave in Japan)
On the other hand, they don't know each other at all, in-universe they formally presented each other less than half a day ago, so how could they be a couple?
As for the Asushin pairing, I think that it's being disserviced (if the intend was indeed to shoot it down) by how the last two movies continuously tease it, with the main wingwoman being... Mari. I've noted somewhere that of all the outside of battle conversations between Mari and Asuka, only
one is not about Asuka's feelings for Shinji (the hairdressing scene), then after Asuka says that it can't work between them because she grew up first, she ends in an actual adult body and is shown profusely blushing at Shinji's confession (strongly implying that she's actually not over him), and then some time later we get the prequel manga showing us that she was even
more head over heels toward him than we though, up to reciting ancient love poems to his memory and Mari going even more all-out on her teasing and wingwomaning of Asuka's feelings toward Shinji.
So yeah, in the end I don't get where they wanted to go with that: is their love really over and now Shinji is with Mari as a symbol of moving on, with his declaration to Asuka being a simple nod to EoE? Is it supposed to mean that they could meet up and be together in the future? Or that both could had been together but due to one final act of lack of communication, it will never come to be? Or is it just a non-committing "it's up to your interpretation" thing?