>>10115646Ok, I'll give you a qrd without trying to explain the clusterfuck the story becomes.
>2.0 she gets her introductory scene showing that she like piloting the Eva.
In her second scene, she meets Shinji, sniffs him and says she likes that he smells like LCL, refuses to elaborate, and leaves.
At the end of it (Zeruel attack) instead of semi-comatose Asuka being sent out to fight it, Mari steals Unit 02, hacks it to do a lite version of Berserk mode, still loses and gets saved by Rei kamikazeing, and then gives Shinji a motivational speech to get in the robot.
>3.0 I have watched several times, and I still don't remember much from that piece of shit. She's Asuka' s best friend, and they always go into combat together.
That's it.
>Thrice Upon a TimeShe does a solo mission in her Eva because the other pilots are off somewhere else. Now I'm just going to skip to pretty much the end, because this was where it just gets fucking whacky.
In no particular order, she tells Shinji she will be waiting for him after the final battle, it's revealed that she was Shinji's mom's best friend in college who now doesn't age because of the curse of the Eva, and then after the final battle and reality is restored because Shinji chose to get in the robot willingly and confront his dad, they live happily ever after.
That's right, after 3 scenes of them interacting, and only 1 of them actually having any substance, she wins the best girl war with absolutely no character development, or any insight to her personality beyond "I have a crush on my dead best friend's son who is half my age."
There have been rumours that Mari was based on Anno's real life wife, which makes it even funnier.
I don't hate the rebuilds, they aren't good, but 2.0 has two of my favourite scenes from the entire franchise in it.
But they are hollow compared to the original series.
