Marie Rose (Dead or Alive)

Marie Rose is a character from the Dead or Alive games.

Marie is Helena's new maid, hailing from Sweden and using the Russian martial art of Systema.

Appearance
Marie Rose is the shortest female fighter in the Dead or Alive series, standing at only 147 cm (4' 10"), with a small frame. She has blonde, bottom-length hair that's held up in twin-pigtails(Her hair is possibly much longer due to the fact that she seems to wrap up the base of her twintails) with black ribbons and has dark blue eyes. She is able to wear her hair down in Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 and a few outfits in Last Round, but like Kasumi her hair is drastically shorter; it comes down to about mid back level and is somewhat thin.

She appears very childlike, and looks younger than her actual age. Her initial design is inspired by Gothic Lolita Fashion, displayed by her default costume which is a modified strapless maid dress, with arm sleeves. Her other alternate outfits are quite modest, with a lot of Gothic Lolita implements; platform heeled shoes, black nail polish, Gothic arm accessories, and frequent use of the colors black and white are recurring elements in her additional outfits. Her ribbons are also always black, with the choice of pointed or tied ribbons, or a black and white bonnet.

While her revealing outfits are sexualized significantly (like the other female fighters' costumes), her outfits are mostly skirts, and aside from her bloomers in her signature Gothic Lolita dress, her underwear are basically the same as the other girls. With the exception of her Hot Summer swimwear, the swimsuits she gains in Dead or Alive 5 Last Round are generally one-piece suits, including a sukumizu.

Marie Rose possesses the smallest bust out of all the female characters in the series, a direct contrast to her friend and rival Honoka who possesses the largest bust, which was even the subject of a pun in their Japanese tag team intro.

Personality
From what little has been shown, she seems to be a very energetic, cheerful, gentle, teenage girl, and spoiled which given her youth, fits well but she is shown to be gutsy unlike many youngsters around her years.

She acts very childish, sometimes she acts like a drama queen, and doesn't seem to take losing lightly; she appears to be crying on the ground like a little girl when she loses a match, but if watched long enough, she lifts her face out of her hands before resuming her apparent fake crying. Judging by this, she seems quite aware of her cute appearance, and shows it through her win poses and taunts. Ironically, despite her often acting childish, Xtreme Venus Vacation reveals that she hates being compared to a child or treated like one. She also has little problem with wearing some revealing outfits, although she does have her limits, as during a Cover Girl photo op, even she was ashamed at having to show a significant amount of herself to Helena when she alongside Kasumi had to do a very suggestive "prayer pose" near the god statue, and she also objected to her Davi outfit's more revealing alternate form. She also at times tends to get distracted by other activities over obligations, as evidenced by how she got herself and Kasumi late for a meeting with the Owner to get a tan (with it being revealed later on that the Owner used that tendency of Marie Rose to do that in order to ensure both Kasumi and Marie Rose got enough of a tan to allow for the tan removal spa session to open without delays).

Aside from this, Marie Rose also tended to speak in a very formal manner, owing to her background as one of Helena's servants, although it's implied she has trouble trying to avoid acting formally to others in situtations not requiring it, such as when on vacation.

As seen in her console release trailer, she states "Bigger isn't always better, you know", showing that she doesn't care too much about her lack of physical body development in comparison to the other females. Despite this, however, she is implied to be jealous of Honoka for her large assets. She also admits that she at times wishes she had a more mature body, although only in the sense that she not be mistaken for a child by people. In addition, in the Japanese versions of Xtreme 3, Xtreme Venus Vacation and Dead or Alive 5 Last Round, she has a tendency to refer to herself in the third person.

Abilities
Marie Rose is a relatively easy character to use, and has a defensive and technical fighting style. She is a hold specialist on par with Leifang, with expert holds and several special moves to go along with her regular holds that enable her to counter any type of strike. Her "Rondo" special move parries high and mid-punches, similar to Leifang's Unshu and can be entered from various combos. Likewise, her "Minuet" special move evades low strikes. She can also do a forward roll ("Flower Wheel") from which she can deliver strikes or offensive holds, or evade high attacks.

She has very good combo potential, juggling the opponent with relative ease, even heavier set characters like Bass. Unfortunately, she does little damage, and as such she relies on combos and good reads to get damage via critical stuns or well timed expert holds. Her expert holds however are more advantageous ones, which means unlike characters like Bayman who have expert holds that'll deal high damage, Marie Rose will have to work for damage by performing a combo while her opponent is stunned. She also has an offensive hold that she can use while backturned that'll leave her opponent backturned to her, allowing the chance for a strong guaranteed combo.

Besides her lower damage however, Marie rose lacks swift mix ups, as her low attacks tend to be predictable and slow, and even her more straightforward follow ups are fairly reactable as well. As such Marie must play carefully to avoid getting countered although she's fairly safe in terms of attacks on block. She also is easy to sidestep due to lacking tracking moves, and the ones she does have tend to be slow. Overall despite her minor weaknesses, she's a defensive catalytic powerhouse when mastered and can hold her own.

In Dead or Alive 6, she has received a couple of improvements, such as her flower wheel forward roll's cartwheel now causing a fatal stun, now having a tracking spinning mid kick which while slow, it knocks down and also grants her another attack to go into Rondo from. She also has a new air kicking attack that acts as a launcher and she has a few new string options to make her more versatile.

Trivia

 * In Marie Rose's Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate concepts, the lower left concepts suggest that they were reused for Honoka.
 * Her nationality, birth date, as well as her physical appearance and to a certain extent personality is suspected to be a response by Team Ninja to Dead or Alive Dimensions being banned in Sweden due to it technically violating the country's child pornography laws.
 * In her tag battle intro with Honoka, Marie Rose reacts with a slightly irritated expression when the latter requests a practice round. This is because in the Japanese version, Honoka actually requested to borrow Marie Rose's chest, acting as a pun on both their radically different bust sizes and a common Japanese saying for requesting a sparring partner, derived from Sumo Wrestling where it is believed a wrestler's power is derived from their chest due to the heart being located there. This tidbit was left out in localization due to the pun being untranslatable in the West.
 * Marie Rose's birthday, June 6, is the same day as the National Day of Sweden.
 * She is technically older than Misaki, who is born on July 7, which may explain her constant irritation at Misaki interacting with her as if she were a child (referring to her with the honorific "Chan", meaning the addressed subject is younger than the speaker).
 * On that note, this also makes her the first character to have her birthday fall on a real-world holiday, followed by Misaki (who was born on Tanabata) and Nagisa (who is born on the Japanese holiday Children's Day on the Gregorian Calendar). Coincidentally, all three girls had their days have the same number as the month.
 * In Xtreme Venus Vacation as well as the Japanese version of Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate/Last Round, unlike other female characters, Marie Rose prefers to refer to herself with her name, "Marie" and rarely uses "Watashi" which is commonly used by children or younger girls to make it sounds cute. This trait was removed during localization in the overseas version of the latter games, where she instead refers to herself by the first person pronoun.
 * Oddly, this trait was removed from the TGS 2018 demo for Dead or Alive 6. In fact, Honoka ends up undergoing the aforementioned trait at one point in the same demo.
 * In the Japanese version of Dead or Alive Xtreme 3, Marie Rose's favorite color is stated as (lit. "navy blue color" or "dark blue color"). However, the English version of the game, it was translated as "deep blue".
 * Marie Rose was voted #1 in the Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 poll. It is due to this that Marie Rose (and Honoka in #2) is featured on the cover for the PS4 and Vita release. They also have special goods in each Collector's Edition for the PS4 and Vita releases respectively.
 * Marie Rose is the first character in the series to be released as DLC. Ironically, Yosuke Hayashi had earlier mentioned during an interview at E3 that he had no plans on including DLC characters due to thinking it was unfair.
 * In Warriors All-Stars, it is stated that she is the one who made her trademark maid dress. Whether this is canon to the Dead or Alive series is yet to be revealed.
 * On a similar note, Warriors All-Stars indicated that she was familiar with oil massages due to her giving them to Helena several times.