Mari is my favorite character and I'm wondering what other people think of her..

Her design looks really cool. But I think they could've done more with her story-wise.

I like her Eva Unit design, although that was actually a prototype design back from NGE days.

I don't feel anything for her character. If she's meant to embody optimism, or gumption, Gunbuster and FLCL were way better takes on inspiration and spunk. If she was to be a counter-weight to the more typically Eva elements, there needed to be as much development or effort put into her side of the equation. Even if her slight screentime is on purpose, and it's representing a kind of willfull refusal to overthink, the gravity of the plot of Eva doesn't make any sense with Mari/mental hygiene as a self-evident solution. No, global technocratic genocide will not be solved if you just vibe, not even if a million-billion deaths is merely a misguided visual substitute for being shy.

At first I thought she might be psychopathic, because she never showed fear or remorse.

I now think she was intended to be important, but was never developed as she should have been to engage us in the deeper attachment we had to the original characters, even in this version.

That said, I never really liked her and I thought she was weird and obnoxious. I had hoped I would find her really cool. But I think my interest also suffered because for the rest I had the bedrock of the original series to deeply feel like I knew who they were.

I like the fact that she is into books.... I can relate to that obsession. But I feel like we never got to know her as we should for that depth. However this is only my opinion.

Lastly I did not like her acting like an animal or calling Shinji a puppy. Others might dig that but I didn't.