Mario Gallo Bestino

Mario Gallo Bestino
Japanese name:	マーリオゥ・ジャッロ・ベスティーノ
Also known as:	Mario the Puppeteer
Portrayals
Japanese VA:	Ayane SakuraWP
Appearances
Primary franchise:	Tsukihime Remake series
Appears in:	Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon- Melty Blood: Type Lumina
Characteristics
Species:	Human
Gender:	Male
Height:	150cm
Weight:	45kg
Blood Type:	AB
Birthday:	August 3
Age:	12-14 (estimated) Unknown (actual age)
Personal information
Alignment:	Lawful Good
Likes:	Sweet food, piano recitals, competent subordinates
Dislikes:	Idealist arguments, gerontocracy, one of his brothers (the one born immediately before him)
Natural Enemy:	None in particular
Affiliations
Organization:	Holy Church - Assembly of the Eighth Sacrament
Family members
Father:	Cardinal Laurentis (Legally)
Brother(s):	Several unnamed brothers

Mario Gallo Bestino (マーリオゥ・ジャッロ・ベスティーノ, Mārio~u Jarro Besutīno^?) is a priest sent by the Holy Church to act as a deputy minister and oversee events in Souya, Japan in the Tsukihime Remake series.

Profile

Background

Mario is one of the many sons (legally on paper, one of the many grandsons) of Cardinal Laurentis, the cardinal viewed as being closest to becoming the next pope. He recently moved to Japan to act as a bishop, he serves as the superior to all Church agents in Souya.

Despite his estimated age of 12-14, he speaks as if he has met with Arcueid and Ciel before, and is stated to have at one point have fought and pacified a Demon Lord, implying he is significantly older than he appears.

According to the Holy See's records, during the events of Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon-, the real Mario Gallo Bestino is busy inspecting a databank in Iceland, and the individual operating in Souya claiming to be him is in fact someone else using that name as an alias. When speaking to Mario about Laurentis' situation, Roa addresses the Cardinal in the second person, implying his true identity may in fact be Laurentis himself.

Appearance

As you can tell from their size and emerald-green color, he's a character with powerful eyes. A pretty boy with blonde hair and fair skin, Mario tends to dress casually.

Mario is a young teenage boy with medium-length blonde hair, green eyes, and pale skin. He wears a red and black hoodie jacket with a decorative zipper, baggy white shorts, and matching red, white, and black shoes.

Mario in Melty Blood: Type Lumina

Personality

A pretty boy with a sadistic personality. Although he may not appear so, he holds a position of great responsibility while still in his early teens. He detests the inept and indolent, and often lashes out verbally, but he is also a compassionate, dutiful person at his core. Mario enjoys flexing his authority and causing trouble, only relenting when he knows he’s bitten off more than he can chew. He is extremely rude and vulgar to those under his command, frequently teasing and insulting them, especially when they condescend to him due to his age. While officially working to coordinate the Church's Executors in dealing with the vampire problem that has arisen in Souya, he has the ulterior motivation of acquiring Roa's research on immortality in order to extend the life of his grandfather. He is willing to betray the Church’s mission of eliminating Roa in pursuit of this research, offering to spare Roa’s life until he can obtain the information, and intending to keep his current incarnation alive long enough to interrogate him.

He shows a strong dislike for an older brother of his who Ciel rescued in the past. When Shiki asks about whether this sibling is genuinely his brother, he replies that it would be smart for him to leave things unsaid.

He has a low opinion of Noel, viewing her erratic behavior with suspicion and half-jokingly threatening to have her executed for disobeying him. He considers her completely incompetent as an ordinary person in over her head. Yuugo Ando speculates that he has some interest in her despite his dislike, since he rarely pays any attention to the individual character of ordinary Executors. When he discovers her actions brutally torturing young and starving vampires and even a human who was associating with them solely to vent her stress in Ciel's route, he is disgusted by her sadism, then how far she has fallen into a Dead Apostle during their intro in Melty Blood: Type Lumina.

Role

Tsukihime

He is present to cover up the true nature of the vampire attacks from the public, as well as managing the activities of other Church agents and pursue Roa's research. He works closely with his subordinates Yuugo Ando and Karius Berlusconi.

Arcueid Route

He briefly fights against Arcueid by controlling Noel's limbs. He provides some information to Shiki regarding the Church and Roa, then confirms he is not Roa's current host. After noticing Shiki's feelings toward Arcueid, he gets out of the way to let Shiki search for her by himself.

When Shiki encounters Roa for the first time at the school, Mario confronts him over a microphone. He offers to spare Roa for seven days in exchange for his research on immortality. Roa recognizes Mario as one of Laurentis’ children, and claims that it is impossible for a mere human like the Cardinal to obtain immortality, which is why he abandoned that research as a dead end. This leaves Mario shocked and devastated, and he orders Ciel to retreat so he can prepare reinforcements to deal with Roa.

Ciel Route

After Ciel kills Vlov Arkhangel, he converses with Andou and Noel about covering up the battle. He threatens to have Noel executed for her highly risky behavior during the hunt for Vlov, but admits that his threat was an empty one as he lacks the authority to do so in the first place. He also states that ability and achievements in killing Dead Apostles have little to do with one’s rank in the Church hierarchy, before ordering Andou to continue the search for Roa and his immortality research. The next day, he is able to track Roa down, but is too late to arrive before Arcueid has already killed his current incarnation. Arcueid tells him to wait for his next reincarnation, but he claims he does not have the luxury to wait for a decade or more. When he suggests she should have kept Roa alive, she threatens to massacre him and the other Church agents the next time they meet.

As Noel’s behavior grows more erratic and unnecessarily sadistic, Mario tells her that he intends to have her quarantined in a convent and investigated under the suspicion that she may have become a vampire. Despite this, he allows her to continue seeking her revenge on Roa before taking any such action.

Upon learning that Roa has persisted within Shiki, Mario decides to remain in Souya to continue pursuing his research, attempting unsuccessfully to broker a deal with the vampire. He then moves to eliminate the rampaging Arcueid with a force of over thirty Executors equipped with anti-True Ancestor weaponry. She easily neutralizes the Executors using Marble Phantasm to momentarily stop their hearts and render them unconscious, then tears Mario's limbs off and leaves him for dead.

In the route's Normal Ending, he is shown to be alive and fully well despite his dismemberment. He recruits Shiki into the Holy Church as an Executor, stating that he estimates Shiki has about a decade left to live before he succumbs to the side effects of his Mystic Eyes of Death Perception. His ultimate fate is left unknown in Ciel's True Ending.

Melty Blood: Type Lumina

Mario's ending

In Aoko Aozaki's Arcade Mode, Mario hires Aoko to eliminate Roa and obtain his research, but distrusts her due to her penchant for destruction. When she succeeds at both tasks despite massive collateral damage, he threatens to dock her pay, but she offers an emergency solution to Laurentis’ aging problem that he needed Roa’s research for, and is rewarded handsomely by the Cardinal.

In Powered Ciel’s Arcade Mode, she discovers that the individual going by Mario Gallo Bestino is not in fact the real Mario after consulting with the Holy See and discovering the real Mario's location, then eliminates the "Mario" in Souya for operating falsely under that name.

In Mario’s own Arcade Mode, he decides to directly intervene alongside his subordinates in pursuit of Arcueid and Shiki, and decides against hiring Aoko to obtain Roa’s research. When Aoko eliminates Roa of her own accord after a tip from Zelretch, destroying his workshop in the process, Mario is infuriated with her. After they fight, Aoko recommends Mario see her sister for a puppet body in order to solve Laurentis’ aging problem.

Abilities

As an acting bishop of the Church, Mario has absolute authority over all agents of the organization operating in the Souya area, save for Ciel due to the special privileges of the Burial Agency. His connections and authority inside the Church allow him to quickly muster a force of over thirty Executors and outfit them with anti-True Ancestor weaponry in an attempt to subdue Arcueid during her rampage in Ciel's route. His intuition is such that he can determine that Shiki is not in fact Roa’s current host simply by observing him. He has experience subduing True Ancestors, and under normal circumstances does not fear them despite the enormous threat they pose. In Ciel’s route, he prepares a strategy that would have easily killed Arcueid had she not been overtaken by her lust for Shiki.

Mario's Piano Machine.

Mario uses a technique that allows him to completely control the movements of another person like a marionette. When doing so, he makes use of a Mystic Code known as the Piano Machine, a pair of gauntlets that bear resemblance to a musical instrument and which control the limbs of his target by means of thin piano wires, that appears magically onto his arms. After being controlled in this way, targets of his ability will find themselves temporarily unable to move their limbs on their own. In Arcueid's route, he controls Noel and guides her body in martial arts to the degree where she is able to fight briefly against Arcueid.

Mario with his team of Executors.

While he does not fight directly in Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon-, instead using his knowledge of martial arts to control others, in Melty Blood: Type Lumina, he is shown to be a capable fighter himself. He uses the wires of his Piano Machine as both weapons to slice and ensnare opponents and as mobility tools to swing himself around and launch himself into the air. He fights alongside a team of female Executors armed with various weapons such as swords, spears, knuckle-dusters, and halberds identical to Noel's, which he commands and controls using the Piano Machine. Mario’s nun subordinates include individuals by the names of Alto, Soprano, and Undeux, of which Alto can be seen wielding a pair of thrown bladed weapons when assisting Mario in battle. His talents in assessing characters and abilities, his skillful balance of soft and hard power, his leadership and ability to use resources to control the game, and his fighting style using a Piano Machine to control nuns like marionettes, have all earned him the nickname "Mario the Puppeteer."

Through some unknown means, he is able to survive having his limbs completely dismembered, and is shown to have made a full recovery only several days later.

Development

Creation and Conception

According to Nasu, Mario was added to the story of the Tsukihime Remake in order to give players more information about the Church and the background of the world. He is still hiding secrets about himself, but the story contains all the hints a player needs to figure everything out.

Early design of Mario shows him with shorter orange hair, using a white shirt with a red coat over it.