[Jan-Poo]

In order to explain logically and consistently how Maria could be still alive you need to come up with a lot of unmentioned background set ups.

That is however the same that you needed to do to explain the "burned corpse" in Higurashi. Who the hell could have imagined that in the earlier episodes without going onto the field of wild speculations?

I always maintained that the "work" of the reader should be limited to pinpointing the hints and realizing the possibilities of certain plot points beforehand. Or in other words you can only guess what the author made guessable, if you go too far you are jumping from the field of speculations in that of fanfictions.

For example understanding that "Kinzo is already dead" or "shannon is kanon" are the only things you could rationally deduce as possibilities due to the hints given, but as for the exact reasons and the why, it wasn't really possible with a sensible margin of certainty.


That being said... I did try to imagine a logical explanations for Maria to be still alive as part of certain fan fiction idea that I had, but then discarded.
What I'm going to explain now is just a fan fictional idea that tries to explain how Maria could be alive logically within all that was said in the original story. I'm making this clear: I don't think this is what truly happened, nor I even remotedly think that this is what Ryuukishi had in mind. Okay?

So in a few points:

1) When Eva escaped to Kuwadorian, she wasn't alone, Maria was with her.
2) After the huge explosion happened the military reacted promptly and arrived to the site before everyone else. So unlike what was stated officially Eva and Maria were found almost instantly, but that wasn't disclosed until later
3) The military quickly realized what happened and the grave consequences that such story would cause if spread. They couldn't just tell that they let a madman hold onto a secret military base and 900 tons of explosive that they (whops) forgot to retrieve, and in the confines of the Tokyo district no less.
4) So the secret services promptly came up with a cover up story to pass it as an "unfortunate accident", most likely a volcanic eruption, seeing as how the izu islands are volcanic and all.
5) That was easily done, now as for the witnesses... after discussing with Eva they found that she was cooperative, she actually didn't want to tell a thing of what really happened on that island. Obviously they had suspicions on her. I mean... how in the world she conveniently escaped the explosion while almost the entirety of her family was left behind? Something must have happened. But as long as she was willing to keep silent about certain military secrets, they were more than willing to let every suspicions drop.
6) Now as for Maria... while Eva was willing to take costudy, common practice dictates that when you find a child you try to contact his parents first. So they retraced Maria's father and they found him in europe or america (whatever) married with another woman.
7) Surprisingly enough the man once contacted declared that he was more than willing to welcome Maria into his family. Why? Because the woman he ditched Rosa for turned out to be infertile and they have been trying to adopt a child for a long time without success. What more "fortunate" event could they wish for?
8) For the military that was a win situation, the less witnessess around the better it was, Eva was cooperative, but Maria was a wild card. Getting her out of the country was just perfect. But then why not make it even "more perfect"? They completely erased Maria's existence and replaced it with a new identity exclusively tied with her natural father and the foster mother. Even if she later tried to expose the truth once grown up, she'd have no way to prove she was Maria Ushiromiya, and she'd be just labeled as yet another rokkenjima mistery maniac trying to draw attention. Obviously her father was "adequately compensated" on top of the child, and in the first place he was more than glad to sever any connections he and Maria had with Rosa. Those guys even justified the whole thing from a moral stand point, because "it is a lot healthier for this child to grow up without the burden of this messed up tragedy on her life". Should they let the general puplic know that she was still alive, as one of the two witnessess, she'd keep being pestered by people and reporters about what happened on that day. Apart from how bad that woud have been for Maria, they also absolutely didn't want anyone to ask her questions, because she wasn't exactly capable of keeping secrets. She would have ended up telling sensible informations that they tried to keep under cover.
9) The last problem they faced was the lack of corpses. In all honesty they themselves couldn't be sure how many died and if there were other survivors, as unlikely as it was (and we know it actually happened) there were too many unanswered questions about the whole deal to be sure of anything. So they fabricated an evidence to at least one corpse. Why Maria? Because they were certain of her whereabouts and they already tampered with her records enough. What if they forged an evidence for... let's say... Battler, and then he showed in front of some reporter showing how he was still alive and well? Better if it was someone whose fate was known and they could control.


So that's basically it. It's not 100% perfect since there isn't really such a need to create fake proofs for dead bodies, but I think it generally works enough.

There is a plus point on that. This scenario can give an explanation regarding Maria's diary and the stake of Mammon. Ange was simply told that they retrieved those stuff from Maria's house, in reality they ended up somewhere in Eva's house because in all the mess that happened Maria forgot to take her purse oversea. The purse obviously contained her diary and somehow even one of the stakes. Eva not knowing what to do with all that stuff placed them among the various other belongins of her deceased relatives. Ange later found them while rummaging between them in the attempt to reminisce the lost ones.