Jornophelanthas wrote: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.
On top of what nerv bae wrote, just after his line, Fuyu adds "do with it as you see fit", then the three remaining Adam's Vessels appears, to which Mari notes "they're all lined up, just as expected of Fuyustuki-sensei's finesse" before utterly curb-stomping and absorbing them, putting out of fight the three battleships with it and thus securing the Wunder, which all but states that he ordered them to nicely get in line so Mari can absorb them.
And once you see that scene, you also see several of Mari's previous scenes under a new light, notably in how she seems to stay calm even in pretty bad situation, and mentions things that no one else in WILLE mentions ever again, suggesting that she was talking to herself:
- in the prequel manga, she was the one who suggested that Asuka get in the frontline to wake-up the dormant Shinji, despite Asuka telling her that Ritsuko (WILLE's reference in everything Evangelion related) said that Shinji was gone for good. And this turned out exactly how she said, as if she knew how Unit 01 worked better than Ritsuko and thus that Shinji could still intervene and be retrieved. (fitting with my use of Mari as an "extra-technobabbler" for things that even Ritsuko doesn't know)
- in Q, during Operation US, Mari seemed to not worry much for not being able to cover Asuka anymore, even doing a playful bow of apologize with her Eva, despite Asuka being in an objectively very bad position, attached to the tesseract with only one arm free and without weapons while an enemy drone was frying her alive, as if Mari knew that this ambush would happen, and that Unit 01 would intervene to save her, exactly like she said during the prequel manga. (and remember that neo-NERV and SEELE also counted on it, since Shinji coming back was essential to their plan to break the seal to Lilith's corpse). And we know from Thrice that Mari can be worried about Asuka, as seen when Unit 13 devours her.
- again in Q, during the battle in Terminal Dogma, after Shinji removed the spears and the weird Lilith-12th-Rei fetus thingy appeared, Asuka was panicked at the prospect that Third Impact would resume, while Mari... was completely calm, even playfully telling Asuka if she's not curious to see what will happen, as if she thought that there wasn't any danger, as it would be Kaworu's plan to double-cross Gendo and SEELE and use the spears to restore the world that was about to happen. Then Kaworu, the 1st Angel, becomes the 13th Angel, Mari's Eva detects it and states that there shouldn't be a 13th Angel (something that no one else in WILLE mentions afterwards, Sakura's talk with Asuka in Thrice even implies that they don't even seem to know who was piloting with Shinji) and immediately know that this means that Gendo has something else planned and double-crossed everyone, again something not mentioned by the rest of WILLE, implying that in both cases she was talking to herself about things the rest of the organization didn't know.
nerv bae wrote: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.
That moment goes in my category of Mari being used as replacement to Asuka when the later is used somewhere else by the story: in Thrice is was as WILLE's remaining pilot so Asuka could stay in the village. In 2.0 it was to replace Asuka and Kaji's roles in the fight against Zeruel (the former having been "used" for the Unit 03 plot, and the later too busy staying close to Gendo)