Marielle

"You are right, everyone loves Akiba after all!"

- Marielle, Volume 2 Annex

Marielle (also spelled Maryele) is an Elf Cleric-Woodworker and the guild master of the Crescent Moon Alliance. She and her guild provide valuable assistance for Shiroe and his party in the first several months after the Catastrophe.

Like Shiroe, Marielle is deeply concerned about Akiba's uncertain future in the post-Catastrophe world, and rallies the first attempt to unite the smaller guilds to stand up to the city's major guilds. While it failed, it inspires Shiroe to form the Round Table Alliance, which she assists in establishing.

In the old world, she was Marie Sakamoto (坂本鞠絵, Sakamoto Marie), a 28-year-old unemployed woman. She has been friends with Henrietta since high school, and has organized in-person meetings with her guildmates before the Catastrophe hit.

Appearance
Marielle is well-known in Akiba for not only her sunny personality but also for her looks. A tall, slender, and voluptuous Forest Elf, she has long, wavy hair (green in the novels, blonde in the anime), hazel-colored eyes, and a wide mouth used for smiling. Like all Elves, she sports pointy ears, although hers tend to be hidden under her hair.

Her usual outfit is a green, collared tunic with brown and yellow stripes, with another black shirt underneath that still reveals some cleavage (removed in the anime). She wears blue pants and boots. During wintertime, she wears a blue dress with a short shirt, pants, and a white jacket.

During battle, she changes into a different outfit that includes a white tunic with a leather breastplate and tall boots.

Personality
Marielle is an eccentric, energetic, and affectionate person with a playful Kansai accent. This bright personality manifests itself in her choice of clothes and the way she greets people&mdash;which involves jumping on them and squeezing tightly, with enough ferocity to leave a dent in the wall in the anime.

She is prone to becoming pouty and throwing a small tantrum in order to get things her way, especially if it's to let her slack off more. She also tends to a bit too open about her body, directly asking Naotsugu if he wants to touch her breasts and calling them "wrinkly old puddin'" when he rejects the offer, without a care as to who was around her.

Despite these child-like tendencies, she is an experienced player, is well-versed in the game, and is popular among other players. Female guild leaders are actually quite rare in Elder Tale, so her position as one is a mark of status. She dislikes those who hold little concern for others, explicitly mentioning Isaac when talking about the Black Sword Knights' usage of EXP Pots, calling him "elitist" for his refusal to accept anyone below level 85 into his guild.

She also shows great concern for her guild members and the other people she keeps under her wing. Unlike some female players who tend to band together, she is open, caring, and helpful toward both her male and female friends. At the age of 28 years, she is five years older than Shiroe, and despite her youthful behavior, both he and other players sometimes call her (マリ姐 Mari-nee), which is essentially "elder sister Mari."

In the anime, she can also be overly-curious, meddlesome, and prone to quickly jumping to wrong conclusions; for example, when seeing Akatsuki, she immediately assumes her to be Shiroe's girlfriend, and when meeting Naotsugu, she believes that he is buff when in reality, he just wears big armor.

Before the Catastrophe
Marielle was a 28-year-old NEET and high school friends with Henrietta. According to Henrietta, Marielle's personality is the result of going to an all-girls school and being a native Osakan who "wasn't diluted" with anything else. Whether Henrietta attended that particular school with her is unknown.

When she began playing Elder Tale, she partied several times with Calasin, which is how the two got to know each other. After creating the Crescent Moon Alliance, she began having real-life meetings with its members, which led to Shouryuu having a crush on her.

The Catastrophe
After being trapped in Elder Tale, Marielle forces herself to stay strong in order to help her guild members. She later learns that Shiroe, the strategist of the Debauchery Tea Party, a group famous for completing multiple raids in the past, is online and invites him over to her guild hall. They exchange information and Marielle later offers him and his friends, Naotsugu and Akatsuki, a place in her guild. However, the trio declines and leaves.

After some time, Marielle is contacted by one of her guild members, a Druid named Serara who is alone in Susukino and is being chased by members of the Brigandia guild.

Saving Serara arc
Marielle stays silent for the most part while Henrietta explains the large amount of PK'ing going around. Shiroe notices this, causing her to reveal that she is going to travel to Susukino to retrieve Serara from her savior. She then explains that since things are bad in Susukino, she and the highest level members will go to retrieve her and asks Shiroe to stay and take over the Crescent Moon Alliance while she's gone, however, Shiroe volunteers himself and his group to go instead, prompting her to accept.

Marielle gave Shiroe a call and asks him for his current location. When he tells her that they are in The Depths of Palm, she finds herself shocked that they managed to get that far within the course of three days. While she expresses worry for Shiroe and his plan, she explains that she is in telepathy with Serara, and that she is being safely guarded by her savior. Afterwards, Henrietta asks her how Shiroe plans to cross the channel, Marielle admits that she does not know but Henrietta assures her that Shiroe probably has a plan. This begs her to question why the Debauchery Tea Party's strategist wouldn't want to join the guild in which Marielle answers that she's sure he has his reasons. The two are then greeted by Liliana who informs them that the other Guild Masters had arrived. She asks how many are there and is informed that only 60% of who were invited showed up while 10% hadn't replied, and 30% refused.

Return of the Goblin King arc
When thousands of Sahuagin began invading the beach at Sand Leaf, Marielle hurriedly calls Shouryuu, who arrives with Kawara and Shigeru. Most of the level 90 trainers, aside from Marielle, stay behind to delay the monsters while she accompanies the low-level players back to safety. After Serara and Isuzu contact some of the Crescent Moon beginners that had been training at the beach, Naotsugu and Marielle contact each other to devise a strategy. They agree to meet up back at the school.

After meeting up, Marielle listens intently to the other leaders' reports on the situation and opposes Touya's Party's plan to attack the goblins. However, she is eventually persuaded into allowing them to "inform the villagers" (their excuse for going after the goblins), although a group made up of Naotsugu, Shouryuu, Rezarick, and Nyanta trail them.

As Krusty's forces go up against the main Goblin army, Marielle's group is still the sole defender of Choushi and the Sand Leaf beach. Even with the Ocypete charging at full speed towards Choushi, the group finds themselves facing thousands of Sahuagin. They decide to attack the monsters first, defending the beach to the best of their ability. She acts as the force's motivator, giving them a small pep-talk before the attack and announcing to them that the Ocypete would arrive in an hour. She and Rezarick are in the backlines, healing the injured. After the reinforcements arrive and help defeat the Sahuagin, she sits at the beach, exhausted, where Naotsugu joins her.

Fallen Guardian/Gold of the Kunie arc
By this point, Marielle and Naotsugu have been having daily calls, after dinner at 9 p.m., something that seems innocuous to the two participants but are sure signs of a relationship to others. When Naotsugu fails to call her after the Abyssal Shaft Raid Party wipes out, she becomes worried. To counter the threat of the murderer, Marielle becomes a member of the Akiba Raid Party; for both her and Akatsuki, this is their first major raid. She serves as Akatsuki's healer, traveling throughout the city to stop by different groups of members who would provide assistance. While on patrols, Enbart Nelles jumps out in front of them.

Noosphere arc
During the Round Table Alliance meetings, Eins comes into conflicts with the rest of the members when he attempts to improve the situation for those unable to adapt to this world, which involved forcing the production guilds to reveal all their recipes and to openly share the Overskills. When Marielle proposes having more festivals to recreate a home-like atmosphere, Eins quickly reprimands her, telling her that the festivals weren't helping homesick people any.

Marielle, along with Henrietta, Shouryuu, and Hien, is one of the members of the Shibuya Raid Team.

Honey Moon Logs
Marielle is one of the main characters in Honey Moon Logs, a Crescent Moon Alliance-centric manga.

After the Catastrophe hits, she finds herself on a rooftop in Akiba with Henrietta. While making their way down, they encounter Ashlynn, a new player terrified by the events surrounding her. After convincing the young girl that she could stay at her girl, both Marielle and Ashlynn end up falling through the floor and are trapped under the rubble. During Shouryuu's attempts to help her, Naotsugu ends up giving him a hand.

Log Horizon: West Wind Brigade
Marielle's first appearance in Log Horizon: West Wind Brigade is during her attempt to unite the smaller guilds in Akiba. Soujiro Seta and the West Wind Brigade were invited to this meeting. Throughout the meeting, some of the female members of Soujiro's guild harass her by sending threatening notes telling her to stop seducing Soujiro (which she wasn't doing at all). After Soujiro declines to join an alliance, thinking that this was no different than what the larger guilds were doing, he hears from Marielle that Shiroe was on his way to save Serara and remembers how he had admired Shiroe.

She later appears to announce the opening of the Crescent Moon Refreshment Stand.

Volume 1
Marielle's items are seen on Chapter 4's cover spread.

Volume 6

 * Morning Aqua: A staff that Marielle uses in the Akiba Raid. It was introduced in the mobile game Chain Chronicle, which had a crossover with Log Horizon.

Trivia

 * She appears to have a crush on Naotsugu, as seen when he was coming to help her, she insists that she will take a bath because "It's rude for Naotsugu to see me all sweaty." Although it went unmentioned in the anime, her crush on him began during their first meeting, where he showed his mature, calm side by reassuring her that they would be alright in this world.
 * By volume 7, she and Naotsugu are dating in all but name. One of Shiroe's reservations about bringing Tetora back is that he was afraid she would disrupt their relationship. (Tetora is much more disruptive in the anime than she is in the light novel, though she picks on everyone and not just Naotsugu and Marielle.)
 * Among the alternate spellings of Marielle's name are Maryele (Japanese light novel) and Marriyell (seen in a Weekly Famitsu article).