…what? I think it’s a stretch when the much simpler explanation is that they’re “advanced” because they’re basically just better dummy plugs, which also kinda fits with the Mks 10-13 (?) kinda being parallels to the MPE’s, which were powered by presumably more advanced Kaworu-model dummy plugs. Not to mention, it makes sense in context of the purpose of the Ayanami series in the first place which was to create a “perfect” Eva pilot. The “advanced” series has no humanity left and is completely subservient to NERV. Programmable, perhaps. Remote control… why? I’m pretty sure Gendo would prefer to have four pilots that will competently execute his every command without question vs. four meat puppets that he has to personally control in real time.

In and of itself it’s not an invalid interpretation that’s directly contradicted by any textual evidence, but it’s a big leap in logic to use this big assumption as the launchpad to make further assumptions about Mari’s background.

Yeah, I'm with Archer here: I get the point you're trying to make about Mari possibly being a clone of Maria with the latter's memories, and I even agree that it's a possibility: they can transfer souls from one clone to another, and implant them with basic knowledge such as speech, the ability to read... so transferring memories is within the realm of possibilities.

But I don't see how that ties into (and even less confirm) that Rei Q and the Advanced Ayanamis were actually remote controlled all along and even that Rei Q was a walking USB key with an program update for the 12th Angel uploaded to it with Mark.09's scythe actually being a data transfer device and that Rei Q looking at the weird SEELE glyphs in her cockpit while saying "What I am?" is the proof of that because for some reason Anno wanted to trick us and hide that she was freaking out for those glyphs instead of the giant Angel-dead god amalgamate of hell suddenly turning into her face. (that Rei Q apparently couldn't see, again because Anno wanted to trick us for some reason).
There's far fetched, and this goes even beyond that.

My assumption: Mari is literally the daughter or sister of Judas Iscariot, which would make her roughly 2,000 years old. She's naturally immortal because that's just how she rolls.

It makes as much sense as any other guess.

Blockio wrote:If memory serves me, the original draft for Q was said to not have Shinji in it at all, so probably, yeah

Konja7 wrote:When Anno mentioned the original draft for 3.0, he especifically mentioned Kaworu and Kaji becoming Commander and Vice-Commander of NERV.

You'd think that after all this time, Anno would have learned to plan things out in advance... (sigh)

Mr. Tines wrote:Merely carbonised.

And even then, it was only her arm, something she has no difficulty replacing when it is damaged or severed (EoE).

Zoop wrote:my point being she was very obviously not alive anymore.

That is FAR from obvious. What IS obvious is that, with an AT field stronger than Ramiel's (ep 24) and the ability to regenerate body parts at will, she should be much harder to kill than your average pilot.

Zoop wrote:Rei apparantly needs regular tuneups to be able to deal with the density, despite being able to walk around in high density areas, her composition will just fail over time

Rei does seem to need maintenance to prevent auto-tanging, but I see no indication that this has anything to do with "high-density areas".

TehDonutKing wrote:

Zoop#935633 wrote:I think it has been theorized that with each clone, lilliths soul gets split in half to put in Rei, so the more clones, the "less" soul left for Rei (and thus the weirder she gets).

I'm pretty sure Lilith's soul was split in two, and one half went into Rei I and then Eva-00, while the other half went into Rei II. After the Kentucky Fried Rei incident, both halves reunited in Rei III, which is why she seems aware of her identity as Lilith.

There's no indication in any continuity that souls can be "split" at all. An easier explanation is that Rei originally had her own soul, but at some point, her soul got sucked into Unit 00 and Lilith's soul got sucked into Rei's body.

Rei becomes "aware of her identity as Lilith", or at least an Angel of some kind, when Kaworu reveals himself to be an Angel, and she realizes what he meant by "you are the same as me".

ElMariachi wrote:We'll never know unless Khara explain it to us in the CRC

What's a CRC?

WDS wrote:What's a CRC?

"Complete Records Collection." They're companion books that have been published alongside each Rebuild film, not yet completed as Thrice hasn't had one (yet). They contain storyboards and concept art, sometimes for things cut or altered in the final product, detailed information of the film on a scene by scene basis, often with details not present or obvious in the film itself, and lengthy staff interviews.

Oh, cool. Have they been translated into English?

WDS wrote:Oh, cool. Have they been translated into English?

1.0 and 2.0 are partially translated, 3.0 as far as I know hasn't been touched. What translations there are are on the wiki:

https://wiki.evageeks.org/Evangelion_1. ... Collection
https://wiki.evageeks.org/Evangelion_2. ... Collection

I don’t believe the 3.0 ones have been released yet? Or if they were it must have been very recent. I remember they specifically held back on releasing them before 3.0+1.0 because they would’ve likely spoiled a lot of the movie.

Archer wrote:I don’t believe the 3.0 ones have been released yet? Or if they were it must have been very recent. I remember they specifically held back on releasing them before 3.0+1.0 because they would’ve likely spoiled a lot of the movie.

You're right, I confused them with the Groundworks. Totally forgot they were held back.

It is very clear to me that Mari is actually the oldest pilot by far and that she has been afflicted with the “Curse of Eva” for decades. This is probably why we only see her drinking and not eating. There's a big emphasis on that, by the way (at the very beginning of Q). She was most likely a test pilot for the very first Evangelions, as Yui was in the anime. Yui herself is probably not even human in this continuity and is much more involved with Seele and stuff. She and the Fuyutsuki were probably working on these Evangelions even before Mari introduced her to Gendo. Mari was probably already their test pilot at that point.
She's an older, more experienced woman trapped in a child's body and she's okay with that. She embraces both of her sides...

(I won't go into the merits of the kids being reincarnations of the four Adams so as not to complicate the discussion)

BernardoCairo wrote:This is probably why we only see her drinking and not eating. There's a big emphasis on that, by the way (at the very beginning of Q).

I don't remember Mari drinking anything at the beginning of Q, the only instance of Mari drinking something in Q (and the rest of the saga now that I think about it) is when she's seen selecting flavors for the bottled drink in her hand, and that's during the fight in Terminal Dogma at the end of Q.
It's interesting to note that the writers played with the idea to have a scene of her eating ramen with the other pilots in 2.0, which either means that they didn't settled on the Curse of Eva back then, that Mari wasn't cursed yet, or simply that she can eat and drink food, but isn't required to do so to survive.

And for what it's worth (not a lot admittedly), in the 2015 calendar she's depicted with her plugsuit littered with bottles of drinks and junk food, which makes me wonder if they didn't planned at a point to have her snack during battle as part of her laidback attitude.

In any case, the fact that we see her select flavors for her drink in Q contradicts Asuka's words to Shinji in Thrice that he should "savor the taste while he still can" that implied that the cursed people can't taste things. I've seen the theory that this might be a psychological effect of Asuka's depression, or maybe self-inflicted (she can drink things with taste, but chose to limit herself to plain water).
Which if you think about it fits very well in how Mari and Asuka are foils to each other on how they deal with their curse: Mari sees the bright side of it and take the extra time it gives her to experiment new things (through her books) even though they aren't "essential", and thus drinks beverage that still have taste even though it's not required that it has a taste, she prefers it like that (I wouldn't even be surprised if she does eat from time to time just to feel the sensations again), and still has her old clothes because why the hell not, she's still human after all. Asuka on the other hand took an utilitarian life to the extreme: she doesn't consider herself as a human but as an object, a weapon of war (or a monster "at best") and thus content herself with the strict minimum to function: she doesn't have any clothes, only drink water, doesn't require any space to live aside a chair to sit at the minimum (her shared room with Mari has the later taking all the space), doesn't interact with anyone outside of work with only a couple of exceptions (Mari and Kensuke), doesn't have any hobbies (her Wonderswann is just her way to cut herself from the world, like Shinji's SDAT). In fact, writing about it, Asuka's way of life post timeskip is very similar to Rei's at the beginning of the story.

BernardoCairo wrote:It is very clear to me that Mari is actually the oldest pilot by far and that she has been afflicted with the “Curse of Eva” for decades. This is probably why we only see her drinking and not eating. There's a big emphasis on that, by the way (at the very beginning of Q). She was most likely a test pilot for the very first Evangelions, as Yui was in the anime. Yui herself is probably not even human in this continuity and is much more involved with Seele and stuff. She and the Fuyutsuki were probably working on these Evangelions even before Mari introduced her to Gendo. Mari was probably already their test pilot at that point.
She's an older, more experienced woman trapped in a child's body and she's okay with that. She embraces both of her sides...

(I won't go into the merits of the kids being reincarnations of the four Adams so as not to complicate the discussion)

See, I would prefer this theory to be true as well because it’s really the cleanest explanation that requires the least number of assumptions… but unfortunately it is critically contradicted by her line at the beginning of 2.0 which really makes it pretty clear that this is her first time piloting, like, ever. link to thread I made asking about this

I think the next-best explanation is that she was one of the scientists heavily involved in the creation of the Evangelions, who suffered an accident similar to Yui, but unlike Yui they were able to pull something out of the entry plug, similar to how Shinji was recovered in 3.0. This would explain why she knows so much but would also justify 2.0 being her first time piloting, as before she was only ever involved in “contact experiments” (presumably merely synching with the Eva) and not full-on piloting.

The main thing that might contradict this is that Gendo’s flashback seems to imply that the Mari depicted is the teenage Mari we know, since she has her hairband and present-day hairstyle rather than the hairstyle of the “woman in the photo” (who for the purposes of this theory is assumed to be adult Mari/Mary Iscariot). But with the sketchy art style and the IMO intentional shot framing that makes it difficult to scale Mari and Gendo, there’s enough ambiguity to say that she could be an adult in those flashbacks.

Well, I've always assumed that she talking about her first time piloting an actual Evangelion or something. As in, this was her first battle and experience with a finished unit. I say that because she was pretty familiar with how to control Unit 05 (she showed expertise on a level similar to Asuka's, just a bit less glamorous). Considering this and the fact that Shinji and Yui participated in tests that used just the entry plug or unfinished versions of Evangelions, I believe she could have been exposed to the curse's effects years before Asuka and everyone else.

ElMariachi wrote:I don't remember Mari drinking anything at the beginning of Q, the only instance of Mari drinking something in Q (and the rest of the saga now that I think about it) is when she's seen selecting flavors for the bottled drink in her hand, and that's during the fight in Terminal Dogma at the end of Q.

As for this, go back and take a look at that scene in which Asuka contacts her right after her one sided talk with Shinji. She's drinking something and there are several of these fastfood like cups all scattered around her entry plug. It's a nice visual cue, in my opinion.
The ramen scenario is a good argument, but it was scrapped in the end (alongside that whole rivalry with Asuka). We can't say for sure what was kept "canon" after "2.5" was cancelled, but I prefer to assume that it's everything that wasn't shown to us later.

BernardoCairo wrote:As for this, go back and take a look at that scene in which Asuka contacts her right after her one sided talk with Shinji. She's drinking something and there are several of these fastfood like cups all scattered around her entry plug. It's a nice visual cue, in my opinion.

I don't see this when Mari's sniping during Operation US:



Nor during the Rei Q / Unit 00 attack scene:



Are you thinking of a different scene at the beginning of Q?

BernardoCairo wrote:Yui herself is probably not even human in this continuity and is much more involved with Seele and stuff.

Yui looks human. What evidence do we have that she's not?

nerv bae wrote:I don't see this when Mari's sniping during Operation US:

Mandela effect? But I do remember her drinking something from a plastic cup and being surrounded by several other cups in her cockpit in at least one scene... I rewatched these movies a year or so ago several times and this image sure left an impression on me. I'll watch them again.

nerv bae wrote:Yui looks human. What evidence do we have that she's not?

That's a bit tricky. I have a lot of thoughts on that. I'll have to ask for Ms. Reichu to help me out XD
I'll then answers you properly.

BernardoCairo wrote:Mandela effect? But I do remember her drinking something from a plastic cup and being surrounded by several other cups in her cockpit in at least one scene... I rewatched these movies a year or so ago several times and this image sure left an impression on me. I'll watch them again.

In Dogma during the 02/13 fight.

Here is a shot:

ElMariachi wrote:In any case, the fact that we see her select flavors for her drink in Q contradicts Asuka's words to Shinji in Thrice that he should "savor the taste while he still can" that implied that the cursed people can't taste things. I've seen the theory that this might be a psychological effect of Asuka's depression, or maybe self-inflicted (she can drink things with taste, but chose to limit herself to plain water).

We should consider that Asuka was speaking about food at that moment. So, it is possible that Asuka means that she cannot taste the food because Eva cursed people couldn't eat anymore.

However, Asuka and Mari could still drink. So, they may feel the taste of drinks.

JoelcrNeto wrote:Here is a shot:

SPOILER: Show

That makes me realize: I remember that we managed to see what was written in the holographic cube (that was different flavors of tea that Mari was scrolling through), but did someone managed to get what is handwritten on the bottles?

Also, I found the calendar illustration of Mari with junk food on her entry plug:

I wonder if at somepoint they wanted to have Mari regularly stuffing herself with snacks and tea between two sniper shots, that would had been hilarious.

Konja7 wrote:We should consider that Asuka was speaking about food at that moment. So, it is possible that Asuka means that she cannot taste the food because Eva cursed people couldn't eat anymore.

However, Asuka and Mari could still drink. So, they may feel the taste of drinks.

It's honestly confusing because while she was saying to Shinji that he should savor the (bad) taste while he still could because all the pilot gets are water, if she was talking about savoring the ability to still eat, she would had said that he should savor the fact to eat, especially since we saw Mari in Q with a drinking bottle of something that definitively isn't water, of which she can somehow select the taste, which contradicts Asuka's affirmation that Shinji should savor the ability to taste.
That's why I think that she's projecting her own behavior (refusing to take something with taste or having lost the sense of taste due to disuse) as a way to reconcile her statements with Mari drinking tea(?) in Q.

But in the end, we know so little about the specifics of the curse that it's impossible to say if she was telling the truth or notA. Still, the only times we see Mari and Asuka drink, the former have a variety of differently flavored teas while the later just drinks plain water, on top of their different lifestyles (eccentric and trying a variety of new things vs spartan and utilitarian to inhuman extremes), so it really wouldn't surprised if Asuka just chose to only drink plain water to the point that she atrophied her sense of taste.

It could also be psychological. I've been depressed to the point that my sense of taste is reduced or nearly absent, and I've heard that full-blown clinical depression can go even further, removing taste entirely or making everything taste "like ashes."

Axx°N N. wrote:It could also be psychological. I've been depressed to the point that my sense of taste is reduced or nearly absent, and I've heard that full-blown clinical depression can go even further, removing taste entirely or making everything taste "like ashes."

I've seen a fic with that premise: that Asuka could actually eat and even sleep if she wants to, but doesn't need to do it, and her not doing it for so long, combined by her depression, atrophied her sense of taste and ability to sleep to the point that she's incapable of tasting anything or take a nap even if she wants to.