> SPOILERS FOR EVANGELION 3.0+1.0: THRICE UPON A TIME.
This is not a new debate but in light of the release of the final Rebuild of Evangelion movie — EVANGELION 3.0+1.0 THRICE UPON A TIME that debuted on August 13 on Amazon Prime Video and what happens at the end the theories have popped up again: just who is Mari Makinami Illustrious and why does she ship with Shinji after all we went through with him and Rei and Asuka and Kaworu for the past 25+ years?
Everyone is pointing to this one panel from the Evangelion manga to explain who Mari is:
So here are the actual manga pages for context — these are from the 14th and final volume of the Neon Genesis Evangelion manga published in 2013 (long after the first Rebuild movie but before the final movie went into production) in “Extra Stage: Eden in Summer” written and illustrated by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto — with little to no input from creator Hideaki Anno.
Before we get into explaining this, if you love Evangelion we highly recommend the manga — Sadamoto started it at the same time as the show was about to air but it came out first in 1997 and then finished 16 years later in 2013!!! 15 years after the series ended on TV! It was published monthly and is 14 volumes long or five 3-in-1 volumes. It adds a little bit more depth onto the story, not needed to understand but still amazing to read. A must for all fans.
What you see above is a flashback scene to Yui and Gendo working on the beginning of the Evangelion project. We learn here that it seems Mari has a thing for Yui and/or Gendo — or maybe their relationship in general, that she is 16 years old, very smart and she is moving to Britain. It is implied she knows about the Evangelion project and the EVA’s and is around when Shinji is born and still a little kid. It is then extrapolated from here that Mari was one of the first test pilots after/before Yui died and her soul transferred into unit EVA-01. So she was either testing the EVA with the LCL in Japan or in Britain. A line of dialogue would also suggest she never actually piloted one and maybe just was a test pilot for a long time (as we saw Shinji doing in the first Rebuild movie) Either way at 16 she was exposed to LCL thus the “curse” on her aging, an idea that was brought up in the Rebuild movies as a way to show the 14 year time jump in the third film and to have everyone look the same — well, except for Misato and Ritsoko and the bridge team.
One other theory here is that the Mari we first see in Evangelion 2.0 is a clone of this Mari. Since in 3.0+1.0 we find out Asuka is a clone too like Rei and that could be the real “curse” of aging. Either way though Mari was a contemporary of Yui and Gendo and it is even given away in dialogue in 3.0+1.0 when she refers to him as “Gendo-kun” with “kun” definitely not being use for your elder, and in fact the opposite as Misato always refers to Shinji as “Shinji-kun” in the Japanese version.
Sadamoto insists this chapter is “fan service” and not canon to the Rebuild movies but like a lot of his manga interpretations of the original 26-episode anime we think he has influenced Anno’s storytelling and no one wants to give a definitive answer because where’s the fun in that.
From what we surmise, Sadamoto’s story is in fact canon , or rather became canon — this story idea makes sense in the EVA universe especially with what we discover in 3.33 and how the LCL doesn’t age its pilots.
This in-movie photograph is enough for us to go all in on this Mari theory:
Someone cleaned up that shot so it’s easier to see Yui holding Shinji (so cute) with Mari to the left in the photo.
This photo obviously inspired Sadamoto to make his extra chapter and at the time considered it fan service since maybe he didn’t want to assume this was what Anno was planning to do.
The other point about Mari is how much she looks like Hideaki Anno’s wife, Moyoco — a mangaka in her own right.
Here is a photo of her probably from the early 2000s:
And a photo of her from 2020 from the 3.0+1.0 documentary (also available on Amazon Prime Video).
To say Anno is Shinji/Gendo and Mari is his wife/love/future and everyone else are his personal demons of depression and loneliness would be pretty accurate at this point — add in his personal love of giant robots and Ultraman, add in all that crazy Adam, Lilith, and Human Instrumentality stuff and you have New Century Evangelion.
So, if you, like us, watched the very last scene in the train station with an older Shinji and Mari (and everyone else), and factor in the Rebuild films are about growing up (in life or from the EVA franchise take your pick) and falling in love with reality after being King of Otaku for most of your young life, when the first bars of One Last Kiss start playing you are already an emotional mess and screaming YES at the screen.
The evidence is quite clear now, no? A reminder to never do documentaries if you want to remain obscure about the final work. We wouldn’t have googled any of this if we weren’t enthralled by it as much as we were. But we are also happy to have it to pick over and it explains so much of how the movie was made and what is going on in Anno’s mind.
This could all be debunked tomorrow, but for now, this looks good to us.
We love it. You love it. Evangelion Forever. Thank you Hideaki Anno for having such a life and being able to commit it to animated form. Your pain is our pain.
Bye Bye All of Evangelion.
If you are depressed there is no new Evangelion, we suggest you check out Anno’s SHIN GODZILLA if you missed it — it’s what delayed 3.0+1.0 so much and it was one of the best takes on The King of Monsters we have ever seen. Highly recommended and waiting for someone to redub it with Evangelion music. Oh wait:
