Maria is first seen in combat training alongside her other second-generation Neogene sisters (created by Tatsuoki Furumizu using his genetic code combined with that of 1st generation neogenes). During combat training, she goes overboard on her level of violence and beats her sparring partner to death, with her supervisor Rie Nishida remarking that this is the fifth time that she has done this.
When she visits Furumizu to thank him for everything he’s done for her, Nora arrives in the room and begins talking about their work, which infuriates Maria, who finds both of their behaviors rude. Resultantly, Furumizu orders Nora to take Maria shopping for toys to calm her down. When Maria sees a parent who won’t let buy her daughter a stuffed animal toy, she pushes the woman down the stairs in the store, and almost injures the girl by accident. Nora then takes Maria away and reprimands her strongly, telling her that she will inform Rie Nishida that she (Maria) is not ready for the outside world yet, and shouldn’t be let out yet. In retaliation, Maria tries to punch Nora, who grabs an twists her fist, visibly hurting Maria, who starts on a childish temper tantrum in which she tells Nora, “I hope you die.”
Training[]
Maria is later seen refusing to study for her school work, and being very childish about it, because with her IQ of 200, she sees it as unnecessary. When Furumizu offers an incentive to study, Maria demands to see her mother. Furumizu tells Maria to devote herself to her studies, and once she is able to wield the specially powerful Dual Cloneblade they have created, he will tell her everything there is to know about her mother.
This pushes Maria to train and study exceptionally hard, so when she is denied access to the Cloneblade a few weeks later due to it being unfinished, she had a tantrum alone in her room, and later began talking to her toys about her fantasies about how life would be if she lived with her mother (who she has never met due to living her whole life in a medical laboratory facility).
Weeks later, Maria is finally given the Dual Cloneblade and is revealed to be fully compatible, and receives its power. Resultantly, Furumizu reveals to her that her mother is Reina Soho.
Meeting Her Mother[]
When she visits Reina and discovers that she already has a daughter named Rihoko and that she (Reina) does not really love Maria, only fears her, Maria can’t cope with the concept of not being loved and cared for by her mother, she snaps, believing that the only way to her mother’s heart is to replace Rihoko in it. Resultantly, she tries to kill Rihoko, but Reina stops her, and the two engage in a violent confrontation that concludes with Maria killing her mother.
It is later revealed that Furumizu has been using Maria as the “perfect mother” to create a new, “true” body for Furumizu in his “next life”, as tells her (believing her to be asleep), which visibly distresses Maria. After he leaves, Maria realises that the Neogenes that Furumizu created are superior to him and to humanity due to their Cloneblade potential, and declares that they are not monsters, but “chosen ones.”
Betrayal[]
The next day in combat training, she easily defeats her opponent Oui, but does not go overboard with her anger as she has before, and offers her opponent advice on how to defeat her in the future. Furumizu believes that they should advance to the next generation in creating his “perfect humanity” as a result of Maria’s increased maturity.
However, Maria has no intention of being a part of Furumizu's plot, as she views him as “Nothing more than a pathetic, selfish old man”, and that “all he has is power. The power to get whatever he wants.” The next day, Nishida and Furumizu have used her DNA to begin work on their “perfect human”, and when Maria comes into the lab to visit him, he is initially congratulatory and ask what she wants, to which Maria replies “There is one thing… YOUR POWER!”, before stabbing Furumizu through the chest, while Nishida watches in horror. Maria then uses her hair as a weapon in a similar fashion to Nora by manipulating it to pierce the bodies of all of the nurses present, killing all of them instantly.
Furumizu, still alive, is then told by Nishida that she too had betrayed him, as the perfect humanity he desired could never be achieved with his genes. Thus, she had scrapped his genes from the Neogene project. Outraged by this, Furumizu angrily demands that the program be changed, but he is then fatally stabbed in the spine by Maria who calls him pathetic. She then tells Nishida not to go anywhere, as she may still be of use (with Nishida struggling to contain her joy at the ferocity and power wielded by her creation).
Searching for Witchblade[]
Maria then sent Aoi to oversee a combat contest between all of the Neogene sisters, so that the victor could help her find and take control of the Witchblade, unaware that Nishida secretly desires the Witchblade for herself and has formed a secret alliance with Mado from Doji Group Industries. The winner of Maria’s contest is named Asami.
Later, when Doji’s 3,800 malfunctioning iWeapons attack Tokyo while Maria is searching for the Witchblade, Maria, Aoi and Asagi enter Cloneblade form to kill as many iWeapons as possible. When they locate the Witchblade, Asagi points out to Maria that power is only a means, not an end, and that Maria doesn’t actually have an ultimate goal after she gets the Witchblade.
While Masane, wielding the Witchblade, is fighting the iWeapons, Maria, Aoi and Asagi attack her using their Cloneblade powers, and when they seem to have the upper hand Masane surprisingly slashes Maria across the belly. This causes Aoi to go into an all-out rage and violently attack Masane with intense ferocity, only for Masane to stab her through the chest, killing her. When Asagi reprimands Maria for having no real end goal, Maria kills her by turning her finger nails into wires, and blasting them through Asagi’s head and torso.
While duelling Maria, Masane senses that Rihoko’s life is in danger and lets out a blast of energy to attract all of the iWeapons towards her and Maria. During the fight on Tokyo Tower, Maria meets her demise while either fantasizing despairingly about her mother. In her final moments, she asks either the hallucination or ghost of her mother if "she still loved her". Maria barely has the chance to finish her sentence as she turns to crystal dust.
Personality[]
Maria undergoes many changes throughout the series. She starts out as a hyper, mentally unstable adolescent with an extreme inferiority complex. This is apparent in Maria's many tantrums, demand for attention, childish remarks, compulsive actions, spiteful actions and very simple minded understanding of the world. This is seen in her remarks on how people either "hate" her or "like" her due to them attempting to scold or discipline her for her behaviors. This is seen where Rie Nishida attempted numerous times to teach her self-control during training to avoid killing the other sisters and immediately deemed that she "hates" her due to not understanding or refusing to understand or learn the error of her actions. Maria was also shown to be prone to tantrums and was shown to frequently throw angry fits and verbally screaming and irrationally blaming anyone when things don't go her way.
Maria is also shown to be extremely amoral and childish in regards to the lives of others, this is seen where she had little to no guilt for having killed five of her other sisters and showed no guilt for her actions. Maria simply deemed it to be surprising how easy it was to killed them.
These violent, psychotic traits are the obvious results of her life under Tatsuoki Furumizu and Rie Nishida, as both never truly put too much effort in being appropriate role models for her and their constant pampering and enabling of her behavior and actions, no matter how violent or destructive, inevitably lead to her becoming completely spoiled and detached from actually being able to empathize with other people. As seen where both Reina and Masane immediately analyzed that Maria had no boundaries, common sense or self-control that made her all the more dangerous and unpredictable both to herself and others.
While extremely strong and dangerous, she is little more than an insecure child, desperate for attention and a mother to call her own. This is first seen where she displayed subconscious jealousy at a normal mother and daughter's relationship and impulsively attacked them due to her acting on her emotions without really realizing the reason for her feelings.
This in turn shows how deeply Maria desires a mother, with her having been shown to be in extreme joy when she was promised information on her genetic mother. And later excitedly went out and snuck away from the training facility to meet her due to innocently believing that since she was her mother she "belonged" to her and should be by her side. Later after actually meeting her and shockingly seeing that her she had sister, Maria fell into a deep shock due to the first time in her spoiled pampered life, felt a sense of jealousy and rage realizing that she did not solely have her mother's love, albeit completely subconsciously since Rie and her Grandfather's constant sheltering and pampering never made her feel jealousy. This jealousy is evident by her constant dehumanizing of Rihoko by referring her to an "it" over and over.
Later upon seeing the obvious care and protectiveness Reina had for Rihoko and realizing that her mother didn't even know she existed prior to her just barging into her house, Maria went into a murderous rage because Reina did not express the feelings and reactions Maria thought her mother would have upon meeting her and their meeting not being what she had expected it to be.
This later caused her to enter into a homicidal rage in order to kill Rihoko and have Reina to herself. However upon seeing how her mother actively protected Rihoko, Maria fell into an even deeper rage due to her mother "hating" her too. Later after successfully inflicting killing wounds to Reina, Maria was initially uncaring due to, again, being too easy to kill Reina. Reina defiantly trying to stop her to protect Rihoko and her successfully injuring her, Maria fell into further emotional and physical trauma due to being injured for the first time in her life and at the hands of her own mother.
After killing Reina in a rage and realizing that she never had any maternal feelings for her or knew of her existence, Maria's personality becomes almost catatonic, having shown to have become very quiet and her previous childishness and selfishness was no longer evident.
Later, upon the true revelations of what her Grandfather's plans for her were and her now developing deep disgust and hatred for him, Maria had soon begun adopting a more mature and controlled behavior completely different from her previous childishness and bratiness. She also changes her appearance to match the deceased Reina's due to her unconscious/subconscious yearning/guilt for killing her.
After hearing of Furumizu's plans to use her as a surrogate mother for his "perfect" clone, her disgust transforms her into a megalomaniacal psychopath who seeks power at all costs. She kills Furumizu and seizes control of the NSWF. She pledges to transform the NSWF into an army that will secure power for herself as well as the Neogene "chosen ones" and finally obtain everything she "desires."
In truth, however, Maria is the leader of the organization in name only. With no clear goal other than to obtain power at all costs, Maria becomes even more secretive and reclusive than her late "father". With the exception of Aoi, Cloneblades such as Asagi view her as an insecure child trying to "act tough". As Maria drifts aimlessly, Nishida effectively runs the entire organization and continues to use its resources to hunt for the Witchblade.
Physical Appearance[]
Abilities[]
Transformation[]
Maria's Cloneblade form.
ClonebladeForm: Her Cloneblade form is not quite as heavily armored as the others. Nevertheless, it is by far the strongest.
Enhanced Strength: In her Cloneblade form, Maria possessed enhanced strength and could overpower even Masane in her Witchblade form.
Enhanced Agility: The Cloneblade enhances Maria's agility and speed above ordinary human levels.
Weapon Creation: Like all Cloneblade wielders, Maria can create her own weapons while within her transformed state.
Dual Pincer Blade: In her Cloneblade form, Maria can grow two blade from both sides of her wrists that she can dual wield. Maria herself showed enough skill in them to fight against Reina Soho, the strongest Neogene of the first generation of Sisters.
Spike Creation: In her Cloneblade form she is able to extend her fingers and impale her victims multiple times. The extent of her power can be seen when she pierces Reina's armor blades, which supposed to be virtually indestructible with ease.
Scythes: Maria has shown that she could also use her "hair" in her transformed state as two blade weapons as well; this is seen where used them to counter Masane Amaha's surprise attack while pursuing her across the city.
Physical Abilities[]
Maria was shown to posses several enhanced physical abilities due to her being a second generation Neogene.
Peak Physical Condition: Maria was shown to possess several enhanced physical abilities equivalent to a top athlete prior to obtaining her Cloneblade. Maria herself was also stated to be the strongest and most physically gifted of her generation of sisters and was deemed to be the best work of Rie Nishida so far.
Peak Physical Strength: Maria was shown to possess immense physical strength, with her punches and kicks being strong enough that two other sisters where needed to provide suitable resistance to her punching bag for it not to recoil too much. Maria was also shown to be strong enough to accidentally beat another sister to death while sparring with her, having successfully killed five of her sisters during training by accident.
Peak Physical Speed and Reflexes: Maria was shown to be fast enough to easily out pace several of her Neogene sisters with apparent ease. She was also shown to be fast enough to reflexively overpower several of her sisters and Neogenes without them even being able to react in time.
Intellect[]
Genius Level Intelligence: Maria was also shown to possess immense genius level intelligence. As seen where it was stated that she had an IQ of over 200. Allowing her to easily understand and learn several complex subjects with apparent ease. As seen where through her schooling under Rie Nishida and her own self education, she had managed to easily obtain the necessary skills and knowledge to run an entire mega corporation like the NSWF with ease and actually call managing its entire corporate levels and departments, manipulating all of its staff and board members and hiding her position as its new CEO from all of its employee's as "easy".
Photographic Memory: Maria was also shown to possess photographic memory, having been able to immediately remember and memorize all of the knowledge and contents in her school books by simply sifting through them in seconds and later memorized all the knowledge of her genetic mother's file.
Skills[]
Advanced Hand to Hand Combat: As seen during her sparring matches against her Sister Neogenes, Maria possess immense skill and natural talent in hand-to-hand unarmed combat and was shown to easily overpower and defeat several sisters with ease and apparently kill at least five of her sparring partners, with her enhanced physical strength only further reinforcing this skill.
Armed Combat: As seen with her usage of her Dual Cloneblades, Maria possess immense skill and natural combat in armed combat. Having been shown to easily adapt to and utilize her Cloneblade forms bladed weapons with apparent ease.
Trivia[]
Maria appears much older than she truly is, which suggests that the Neogene Sisters age (or were aged) rapidly, as she is younger than Rihoko.
This would explain why she once referred to Rihoko as her "big sister".
Maria has an obsession for cat and dog-themed stuffed animals.
Maria's Cloneblade form bears some resemblance to her genetic mother's own Cloneblade form, as seen where the shoulder armor is similar in design to Reina's own.
Gallery[]
Maria equipped with the Dual Cloneblades.
Maria's Cloneblade form.
Maria in a hospital.
Maria with Aoi and Asagi.
Maria killed by Masane as she hallucinates Reina.
Maria turning to crystal dust.
Character card.
Promotional art featuring Maria's Cloneblade form.
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