Interface Headsets - How necessary are they?

[jojojoker]

Just curious about them. We see in the NGE battle with Zeruel that Shinji is wearing them, naturally.

SPOILER: Show

but in NME, the same battle shows that Shinji, while fighting his best battle with unprecedented skill and control, does not wear the headsets.

SPOILER: Show

I always thought they were pretty essential for pilot-eva synchronisation, even in the diagnostic tests they needed to wear them. This is excluding Kaworu. Any takers?

[Hyper Shinchan]

There's a similar discussion here, but actually I think that we were dumb enough to miss that he wasn't wearing them in NME (the thread was about Kaworu's missing headsets, and I simply mentioned EoE as an example of a pilot without them but it's controversial how much he was synchronized with the EVA, probably enough to receive the stigmata).
It's one more proof that probably they're used only to monitor or at best to help the synchronization.
Thank your for noticing that.

[jojojoker]

Yeah, I read that thread. Just a while ago I was thinking about how God-mode Shinji didn't seem to be wearing them but I thought it was because he went all "spirit"-ish. Then just before I actually bothered to watch the scene again and saw he never had them on. Yeah, the monitoring theory works out but it still makes you wonder about the discrepancy here.

[Azathoth]

Yeah, I read that thread. Just a while ago I was thinking about how God-mode Shinji didn't seem to be wearing them but I thought it was because he went all "spirit"-ish. Then just before I actually bothered to watch the scene again and saw he never had them on. Yeah, the monitoring theory works out but it still makes you wonder about the discrepancy here.

Well, ultimately, all you really need is the pilot's soul interfacing with that of the Eva, right? It's strongly suggested that Shinji's physical body no longer strictly exists by the time he pulls Rei out of Zeruel - when it comes down to it, the headset is just as superfluous as the plugsuit and the stupid little control handles.

[Hyper Shinchan]

Yeah, the monitoring theory works out but it still makes you wonder about the discrepancy here.

EoE that I've mentioned can work as backup of NME at this point, we can't be 100% sure without official confirmation in some canonical source but it's quite likely at this point.
Which kind of discrepancies are you referring to? To the fact that he was wearing them in the same battle in NGE but not in NME (hence their function could have been changed between the two series)?