Nature of sync tests

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cyharding
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Nature of sync tests

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Postby cyharding » Mon Sep 04, 2017 9:07 pm

In both NGE & Rebuild, the pilots have to, from time to time, undergo sync tests. My question is, as it has been a good while since I've seen either iteration, what do those test entail? It seems the only thing the pilots have to do is concentrate while technicians analyze their connectivity to their respective Evas. What do they concentrate on, and for how long? Thank you for any information.
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Re: Nature of sync tests

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Postby Lyrical » Tue Sep 05, 2017 1:30 am

I mean, they're just behaving as they would when they sync to pilot, so I would guess same thing they focus on there, which is establishing a link to the Eva, their desire for it to respond to them, etc. The only difference would be that, since they don't actually want to manipulate the Units during the tests, they're not focussing on movement patterns or anything they way they would be in combat.

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Re: Nature of sync tests

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Postby imprimatur13 » Tue Sep 05, 2017 6:47 am

Sounds about right. I agree with Lyrical.
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Re: Nature of sync tests

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Postby StrokeMeGoat » Tue Sep 05, 2017 11:35 am

If I remember right, they remark on Shinji's synchronization level when he first enters Unit-01 to fight Sachiel without a plugsuit. Knowing that, synchronization data can be gathered by simply having a pilot sit in the entry plug. That doesn't mean they don't have diagnostic tests they could run that simulate encounters or stresses the connection between the core units and the pilots to monitor the response, of course. The pilot's themselves are probably just instructed to meditate or otherwise clear their minds to reduce the chance of some kind of interference arising and distorting the results.

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Re: Nature of sync tests

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Postby pwhodges » Tue Sep 05, 2017 1:43 pm

Similarly, at the start of 3.33 Ritsuko announces his zero synch without any apparent testing - indeed without him even getting in an Eva, because they want to keep him well away! Funny that it turned out she was wrong and he could synch just fine when it came to it...
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Re: Nature of sync tests

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Postby Reichu » Tue Sep 05, 2017 2:16 pm

View Original Postpwhodges wrote:Funny that it turned out she was wrong and he could synch just fine when it came to it...

With a completely different Evangelion, not the one he had a 0% synch score with.
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Re: Nature of sync tests

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Postby pwhodges » Tue Sep 05, 2017 4:14 pm

Sure - but while the pilots presumably have a differing sync rate with different Evas (is that actually made clear in the series?), a rate of 0.00% is really a difference of kind - suggesting (to the audience at least) that Ritsuko is claiming that Shinji can no longer synch at all.
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Re: Nature of sync tests

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Postby Reichu » Tue Sep 05, 2017 7:37 pm

Eva-01 has changed since the last time Shinji sat in the plug -- Rei's soul is in there now and the Eva is also in an extended form of "God Mode", requiring containment lest anything it touch be turned to core. Further, Shinji now has a restraint on him, the full effects of which aren't fully understood. When we're shown Shinji's "deep level sync" results with 01, all we know is what's in the graph. You can try to make a guess about what caused it, but until next movie it's not possible to isolate the exact variable(s).
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Re: Nature of sync tests

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Postby Celepito » Wed Sep 06, 2017 2:57 pm

There is also to possibility of them trying to make Shinji belive he couldn't pilot anymore so he would not try, if somehow getting the chance to.

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Re: Nature of sync tests

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Postby Joseki » Fri Sep 08, 2017 3:36 pm

View Original Postpwhodges wrote:Similarly, at the start of 3.33 Ritsuko announces his zero synch without any apparent testing - indeed without him even getting in an Eva, because they want to keep him well away! Funny that it turned out she was wrong and he could synch just fine when it came to it...


Maybe it isn't Shinji that is unable to synch with Unit 01, but it's Unit 01 that is blocking the synch with Shinji. Few minutes before turning into LCL Rei was very keen on doing whatever it takes to spare Shinji from piloting again, and we know that she is stored inside Unit 01 now.

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Re: Nature of sync tests

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Postby Merridian » Sun Sep 10, 2017 12:21 am

Spiritual harmonics. Pilots have to stop thinking. Higher stress levels screw around with their synchronization. The soul trapped inside Eva dominates in typical Anno-Jungian fashion. Throw in your Japanese Zen crap and it starts to make sense. The pilots have to concentrate on no-mind, but they're pubescent kids, so naturally the best they can hope for is being relatively even-tempered and not simply crazy. Imagine if you piloted your mom to go get groceries, but your mom had no way of telling you what she needed, so she just influenced you unconsciously and periodically threw you into fugue states wherein she assumed DIRECT CONTROL. Bad news. NERV wants to avoid that (the Sachiel thing notwithstanding). The soul in the Eva can't act directly; it needs an actor to work through. That actor is the pilot. The pilot can only be that actor if he lets it happen. Anno's bedside reading dictates that the best person to make any given fourteen-year-old relax is probably MOTHER, so naturally the easiest way to reach no-mind is to literally crawl back inside mother's womb and chill out for a while. Mother's there to protect you when you're under fire, but you have to want to be protected. Pilot mommy to victory, tho angels bar the way. Receptiveness to mother doesn't matter; it's receptiveness to comfort which allows the self to chill the hell out and stop inducing the self-reflexive doubt that plagues all NGE's characters. Mother isn't the end, pilots don't look for opening up to mother--they don't even know she's in there, at first. Mother's presence simply allows the pilots to disengage with themselves, thereby allowing themselves to reach outside of themselves (literally) and pilot themselves, with mother's help, out of crisis. Mother is a means to an end. The sync tests just measure the degree to which the pilots are either willing to or are capable of resonating with this mother-presence.

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Re: Nature of sync tests

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Postby imprimatur13 » Sun Sep 10, 2017 12:34 am

Hmm... I like that, Merridian. It has earned a place in my head-canon. :asuka_thumbsup:
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Re: Nature of sync tests

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Postby StrokeMeGoat » Sun Sep 10, 2017 8:18 am

@Merridian:

Not bad ideas at all, although I can't say I'm comfortable leaving something as general as your idea that the pilots need only be calm and receptive to states of calmness. It seems rather lacking in nuance, if for no other reason than because there can be several factors and causes that lead one to experience a state that everyone might recognize as being calm. Because of that, the way in which somebody is calm can vary greatly, and I can easily see this difference in the type of calm people experience possibly having some ramifications in regards to one's sync ratio.

On the other hand, there are a few things in the show and movie that contradict your idea altogether. As a matter of fact, now that I think about it, most instances of Unit-01 going berserk or when Unit-02 got all glowy eyes when fighting Gaghiel and when Asuka wound up getting the Eva to go berserk in EOE contradict your hypothesis. Shinji wasn't calm at all when Unit-01 went berserk against Sachiel, neither Asuka nor Shinji were calm in the fight against Gaghiel, Shinji was some of the least calm I could imagine him being when he fought Zeruel and his sync ratio exceeded 400%, and Asuka was bleeding from her eye and suffered all kinds of injury to the gut (read: pretty much dying while experiencing intense, agonizing pain) when she managed to get Unit-02 to go berserk in EOE.

The likelihood of an Eva to go berserk seems more dependent whether or not the pilot is experiencing intense emotions. That, and that seems to coincide most often when they could be described as being "in the zone" like people who play sports sometime experience, which in itself is really just a specific dissociative state that one enters as a result of the body's adrenal response and how one happens to perceive the situation they are in. Typically being in the zone isn't something somebody can experience unless they're specifically performing some sort of (proactive) action related to the impetus for the adrenal response. If someone resolves to run away or try avoiding whatever is causing the adrenal response, for instance, they're pretty unlikely to wind up in the zone.

Then again, it's definitely worth considering that you're most specifically referring to the pilots achieving a no-mind state, despite some of your word choice. I just got finished admitting that being in the zone is a mild dissociative state brought on by the adrenal response, which is basically just another way of saying that the person in the zone is experiencing a no-mind state. But, this is pretty much exactly why I found the idea that sync ratios depend on the pilots' level of calm or receptiveness to being calm to not be quite satisfactory and lacking in nuance. What seems to be most important factor is the mildly dissociative no-mind state, which isn't necessarily dependent upon calmness to be experienced.


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