Пишет darylchan
I'm back again, and I come bearing this little monster of speculation. I have too much time on my hands, I know.
...I hope this thing makes sense. Most of it was typed up late at night when I should have been asleep. XD
Exhibit A: his skin tone.
All of you have probably seen this picture a million times...

Maybe it's just the lighting in the scene, but his skin looks kind of dark for a Japanese person. Especially when you consider that people like Uryu or Tatsuki (who we know to be Japanese) are drawn with a much lighter skin tone than that.
That's not the only time we see Mayuri's bare skin, either. The Japanese animators made a pretty big goof during 12th Division's "Houki Boshi" ending: they apparently forgot that Mayuri wears makeup on his hands as well as his face, and painted his hands in his actual skin tone. Note that this mistake was fixed in the English dub!

His hands look a bit dark there. Yes, they're partially in shadow, but even the part that's in the light looks a bit dark. So maybe it isn't just the lighting...
Exhibit B: his name. (I know very little about Japanese as a language, so bear with me on this one...)
I'm sure some of you know this already, but Mayuri writes his name...strangely. His last name literally means "black soil," so logically it should be written 黒土 (kuro+tsuchi). Instead, he writes it 涅 (ne), which does mean "black soil" but is not pronounced "kurotsuchi." He also writes his first name in katakana (マユリ, thus giving it no meaning (although you could argue it means "demon lily" (ma+yuri, 魔百合 or "cocoon clever" (mayu+ri, 繭俐, both of which make sense given other aspects of his character). Now, he could just be writing it like that to be weird, but I found out something interesting about his first name from this site...
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