Mary Onodera (メリー・小野寺 Meri Onodera), alternatively romanized as Merry Onodera, is a minor character appearing in episode 43 of the 2001 anime. She is a childhood friend of Joe, from his past at the orphanage.
Appearance[]
Mary is a dark-skinned young woman with reddish-auburn, slightly wild shoulder-length hair with side-swept bangs. She wears a white bandanna-style ribbon tied around her hair, a yellow-and-navy striped shirt, and white capri pants.
In her cyborg form, her skin dramatically lightens and she becomes visibly robotic, along with her hair lengthening and her ears becoming pointed. Her irises also turn red. She is nude in this form, and has a cat-like tail and moves on all fours.
As seen in a flashback in ep.43, she wore a pink dress when she was a small child.
Personality and Relationships[]
Joe Shimamura[]
Mary grew up with him in the orphanage and became a close friend to him, along with Shinichi and Masaru. The four insisted that even if they were never adopted, they would stick together as family.
By the time they reunited in their teens, Mary expressed regret that Joe couldn't have met up with them earlier, due to them being turned into cyborgs and being given the orders to kill him.
Abilities[]
As a cyborg, Mary can run on all four of her limbs like a quadruped beast, as well as fire shockwaves and control animals with a special sonic generator in her throat.
History[]
While Mary had been one of the children to be close to Joe in his youth, she was later believed to have been adopted out of the orphanage. However, at some point, the Black Ghost Organization had modified her, Shinichi, and Masaru into experiments and gave them the orders to take out Joe, who had betrayed the organization as 009.
During the battle against Joe, Mary wound up seriously injured. As Shinichi and Masaru drove her away to get back to their home, she emitted a sonic howl that caused wolves to attack Joe. However, Joe managed to track her and the others.
Though he pleaded with Mary and the others to stop, Van Vogt activated the bombs within their bodies. The three could not bring themselves to kill Joe, and ordered him to stay back. As the three embraced, their bodies exploded.
Notes[]
- For modernization purposes and diversity, Mary's design was slightly altered to further hint at her being mixed-race (with her father being a dark-skinned man), although Joe's own mixed status never came up in this adaptation.
- Mary's surname, Onodera, was Shotaro Ishinomori's actual surname before he adopted "Ishimori" (and then "Ishinomori") as a pen name. The surname can also be seen with his sons, Joe and Akira.
- As with her manga counterpart, the official English spelling of her name remains in question, though the "Mary" rendition is more common.
- In the original broadcast of episode 8 ("Friend"), an early character design of a younger Mary could be witnessed among the children that Joe knew at the orphanage, as well as designs for Shinichi and Masaru. However, when the series was released on DVD, this scene was redone to remove the cameos, and those three characters were replaced with generic children. This may have been due to their finalized childhood designs looking somewhat different when they ultimately appeared in the show. Mary was shown to have darker hair, lighter skin, and a sleeveless striped shirt as opposed to a dress.
