Shinji Ikari

Fourteen years old and summoned by the father who abandoned him, Shinji is handed the controls of a giant bio-mechanical robot and told to fight monsters no one will explain. He's timid, self-effacing, desperate for approval, and mostly just wants someone to tell him he did well. He gets in the robot anyway.

Anime protagonists are supposed to grow into confidence; Shinji is written to resist that arc, and the show treats his fear and neediness as the actual subject rather than an obstacle to heroism. Both Ogata and Spencer play him raw and unguarded, letting his flinching honesty feel less like weakness than like the truest thing in the room.