List of Slam Dunk characters
Despite being the runner-up representative for Kanagawa, they are ranked as a C-class team and placed into a tough tournament bracket during the national championship, facing Toyotama and the reigning champion Sannoh.
After being rejected fifty times by girls during junior high school, Sakuragi meets and falls in love with Haruko Akagi, a basketball fangirl who is also in grade ten.[ch.
Sakuragi's most recognizable trait is his red hair, though he later shaves his head as reparation for an error that led to a loss in the Interhigh Tournament against Kainan.[ch.
Before he met the current Shohoku members, he had to overcome ridicules from his classmates (for dreaming of winning the national championship), doubts from bystanders, and the frustration of losing his teammates, as they found Akagi's training regime to be too difficult and harsh.
Before the final four of the Kanagawa Inter-high Tournament, the other four have to beg their teachers to be given the chance to retake some exams they had flunked, otherwise they would have been academically disqualified from playing in the national championship.
Despite spending a lot of time on the bench, Kogure brings experience and considerable firepower to the team when on the court and is most likely to be subbed in to replace one of the starters.
When Mitsui meets Anzai again, all his adamant, seemingly unrelenting thoughts of revenge had vanished immediately and replaced by remorse; he tearfully begs to rejoin the team and vows never to fight again.
Like Sakuragi, Miyagi is motivated to play by his love for a girl: his best friend and classmate Ayako, the manager of the team, whom he refers to as "Aya-chan".
His skills are typical of a point guard: strong passing, dribbling and stealing, as well as an understanding of the game that allows him to be a floor leader.
He also shares a similar level of arrogance with Sakuragi, saying that he is the number one point guard in the prefecture, though popular opinion among characters in the series ranks him just behind Shinichi Maki of Kainan and Kenji Fujima of Shoyo.
In the anime, during their match against Miuradai and Shoyo, with less than two minutes remaining, Kakuta dives for a crucial save to get a loose ball, which was key to Shohoku winning the game.
His calm and collected attitude contrasts with the temper he had in the past, when he was nicknamed "White-Haired Devil" (ホワイトヘアードデビル, Howaito Heādo Debiru) as an extremely strict and demanding college coach.
Five years passed and Anzai learned from the press that Yazawa died in a high-speed head-on car collision, reportedly under the influence of drugs.
Devastated over the loss of Yazawa, Anzai resigned from college basketball coaching and changed his strict attitude to his now mild temper, for which he is now known as the "White-Haired Buddha" (ホワイトヘアードブッダ, Howaito Heādo Budda).
His scoring ability is incredibly difficult to stop and in one game, four players from Shohoku (Akagi, Rukawa, Mitsui and Miyagi) are needed to completely shut him down.
This incident resulted in Fukuda's suspension from all games up until the Interhigh Tournament, thus explaining his absence in the practice match against Shohoku until Ryonan plays Kainan.
In the manga 10 Days After, Sawakita is shown to be on a plane bound for America, praticising basic English language and becoming drunk from drinking grape wine, which he accidentally orders from a stewardess.
Like Riki Takato of Kainan, Domoto also has a tough training regimen, which has motivated his key players such as Sawakita and Masashi Kawata to have previously skipped sessions.
Toyotama's captain, Tsuyoshi Minami, known as the "Ace Killer," injured Fujima in a match resulting in his removal from the game due to his injury.
He is the only starter shown to wear glasses, though they are knocked off his face when Sakuragi commits his fourth foul, and Hanagata plays the rest of the match without them.
Toyotama's main weakness is the replacement of their previous coach, Kitano (北野), who nurtured the team's offensive philosophy and is widely respected by the players.
Sweet and with a captivating personality, she is always around to cheer on the players, especially her brother Takenori, who is extremely protective of her and taught her the basics of basketball, Kaede Rukawa and Sakuragi, whom she considers her best friend.
Haruko was responsible for uncovering Sakuragi's athletic talent after seeing him try to dunk a ball at her request - she was impressed by the height of his jump and considered him good enough to join the team.
Despite her emotional denseness and sweetness, Haruko is a pretty good student, helping Akagi tutor Sakuragi and Rukawa as well as the other two starters when they had to retake some tests they had failed or be disqualified from the National Tournament, and is not afraid to stand up for others when needed.
She confronted Sakuragi when she mistakenly thought that he had attacked Rukawa, and she also defended him many times from his most rabid fangirls (one of them even knocked her to the ground in the anime series).
In spite of all this, along with Yohei they are among Sakuragi's most loyal supporters, going to his games to cheer him on, and helping him out when he had to make 20,000 shots in one week to prepare for the national championships.
He tries to get Hanamichi Sakuragi join the judo team because he considers his fighting skills exceptional, and to achieve this, "bribed" him with some photos of Haruko when she was younger.
Hotta and his cronies later become supporters of the basketball team during the National Championship Tournament (though even they get scared by the aggressiveness of the Toyotama crowd), largely because of their friendship with Mitsui, who they give the epithet Honoo no Otoko (炎の男, lit.
Tetsuo (鉄男) is a biker and the only adult member of Hisashi Mitsui's gang, which included Norio Hotta and his cronies, in addition to some other delinquent high school students.
Tetsuo makes an additional appearance in the anime when on the morning of Shohoku's match with Shoyo, he is chased and cornered by the non-Shohoku members of his gang, who beat him up in a bid to challenge his leadership.
