Mari Makinami Illustrious

Mari wears her brown hair in twin-tails beneath an indigo headband marked with a white mechanical motif, her bangs parted to either side. Teal eyes sit behind burgundy-framed glasses, the detail that had fans calling her Glasses Girl before her name was revealed. Her school outfit combines a dark grey tie over a white shirt bearing a small emblem at the chest, a pleated skirt in red and green, black knee socks, and brown tasseled loafers.

Her original plugsuit is dark green, loaded with connectors and paired with a helmet, equipment built around Provisional Unit-05 and its mechanical prosthetic limbs. The suits that follow are pink with stylized accents, stamped first with 05 and later with 08 to match her machines.

Alone among the pilots, Mari admits she genuinely loves the work. She sings decades-old Showa hits inside her entry plug, savors the scent of LCL, and identified Shinji as a pilot at their first meeting by crawling up and sniffing him. Nicknames are her social currency: Asuka becomes Princess, Shinji becomes Puppy Boy, and even Gendo gets a familiar Gendo-kun. Friendly and upbeat outside the cockpit, she turns ferocious inside it, taunting her opponents, refusing retreat, and riding Unit-02's Beast Mode with animalistic abandon. Her nobility shows just as clearly: against the Third Angel she was fully prepared to die in her Eva's self-destruction, and she treats the Evangelions themselves with compassion, whispering a goodbye to the wrecked Unit-05.

The films seed constant hints that she is far older than she appears: the antique songs and mannerisms, her presence beside Yui in an old photograph, her greeting of Fuyutsuki as sensei and his answering name for her, Maria Iscariot, and the finale's revelation that she knew Yui and Gendo in college. Her official standing is just as slippery; she operates for an unknown third party as Kaji's subordinate and holds no confirmed pilot designation.

Mari debuts in Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance at Bethany Base, meeting the Third Angel head-on with no tactics whatsoever: she chases it out of the base, pins it, and self-destructs Provisional Unit-05, her entry plug ejecting seconds ahead of the blast. When the Tenth Angel later tears into Tokyo-3, she launches Unit-02 with IPEA backing, empties twin pallet rifles at it, then abandons ranged combat for a screaming charge with the Thunder Spear before unlocking Beast Mode, pressing the attack until the Eva is damaged past fighting.

The 3.0 prequel stories show her flying an Eva transport plane after Near Third Impact, singing at the controls while following Asuka's search for survivors, the sweep that turns up Midori Kitakami. Before the operation to retrieve Unit-01 from orbit, she prompts Asuka with the question of whether the moon is beautiful and gives up the mission lead so that Shinji will wake to a familiar face. In Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo she supports that rescue in her Type-08 unit, blows the head off Evangelion Mark.09, fights it again as Fourth Impact looms, and finally hauls Shinji's entry plug out of Evangelion 13, shouting at him to act like a man and get acquainted with the world.

Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time opens with her winning the Paris Assault Mission, though Unit-08 loses its legs in the process. Reunited with Shinji and Asuka when the AAA Wunder collects them, she teases the Princess about her unresolved feelings and congratulates Shinji once the two finally clear the air before the Antarctica mission. In the last battle she shields Asuka from waves of Mark.07s, then shifts Unit-08γ into its overlapping state, absorbing Marks 09 through 12, and sends Shinji off to save the Princess once more. She sacrifices the combined Evangelion trying to stop Instrumentality, and Gendo's Additional Impact reveals her past as the college friend who helped bring Yui and Gendo together. At the end she surfaces from the ocean, remarking that she is just barely on time, and removes Shinji's DSS Choker. In the epilogue at Ube-Shinkawa station, an adult Mari covers an adult Shinji's eyes, notes that he now carries the smell of an adult, offers her hand, and walks him out into the new world.