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A closeup of the side of Shinji, scowling. He squints his (partially closed) eye and speaks.
SHINJI:“With my hands!”
SEELE-01: I think the manga gets an important point across: Shinji is partially to blame for what happened. He knew the pilot was in and didn't want to hurt him, but he also knows how to extract an Eva's Entry Plug (as seen in chapter 6). He once again let his emotions run wild at a critical moment and now he's running away from the consequences.
UrsusArctos: To me, the manga pushes things too far in driving home that point by killing Toji, which is the something that Shinji shouldn't be able to recover from. Evangelion 2.0's take on it seems to hit the right balance, making the same point explicit by removing the "who's the pilot?" dilemma from the equation. Shinji knows perfectly well that Asuka (Shikinami) is in the entry plug but refuses to take a more aggressive role in rescuing her because of his emotions getting in the way, thus dooming her to the Dummy System's savagery.
Zusuchan: Well, Shinji wasn't really offered a chance to "rescue" either Shikinami or Toji, only to kill them-and he considered that or "do nothing" as the only choices in both instances, it seems. He's always had a problem with thinking of possibilities beyond those he's presented. That said, I think Toji's death was one of the few improvements over the series that Sadamoto's manga managed to introduce-it's suitably tragic and honestly makes a bit more sense too. His survival isn't a flaw as such, but it does come off a bit too much like something that probably wouldn't have been done had there been more creative control for Anno and considering he drops off the map soon after, killing him now honestly wouldn't change much-even if I do appreciate the little moment between him and Hikari afterwards.
