Gosh I adore this photo!! totally worth jumping in the water for~ eva is without question of my absolute favorite things but have a lot of mixed feelings about 3.0 as of right now (it may change when I see 4.0, who knows), and quite frankly hate Mari??? Besides being good fodder for lesbian porn with Asuka she hasn't really shown me that she matters at all in any way and I just?????????? MA IIR??I?????
I basically made this costume because my boyfriend absolutely loves Mari (???????????????????????????????????????????????) and I wanted to be plug suit babes with Skye and Mariel. I struggle a lot with costumes that aren't garments you can make in a "proper" way? Which is a major part of the reason I had put off trying to make a plug suit for so long. I can't say I'm very pleased with my results but considering it was my first plug suit I don't think it was terrible. Honestly until I had to start sharpieing and gluing the details on I was pretty happy with the body suit?? Which Ju$tin helped me pattern. Despite not really caring for mari I'm glad she was the first plug suit that I made, because to be perfectly honest if this had been an Asuka costume I would have been beside myself upset with how it turned out. I learned a lot from the experience which hopefully I'll be able to put towards future Asuka costumes!!!!!! But regardless of how stressed I was by actually making the costume I had a wonderful time wearing it with my sweet plug suit honey bunnies!!!
My half-serious theory is that Mari is actually a pilot from the Gunbuster universe (let's say some spacetime shenanigans happened when Buster Machine 3 became a black hole), and that's why she seems so incredibly out of place. She's operating by the Effort and Guts mindset in the Eva world, and getting away with it because with enough EFFORT AND GUTS you can do anything. Coach wouldn't lie to us.
I gotta say these cosplayers are spot on with the characters if they were real and existed in our reality. Not to bash anyone else who cosplays these characters, but damn, the portrayal is awesome!