Animorphs/Awesome

Crowner.

"Tobias:  Ax: "
 * In his first appearance, Jara Hamee of Animorphs slices into his own head and pulls open the wound, revealing his brain, to prove that he's not a Controller.

"Erek: "Juveniles or adults, they massacred my creators, they made refugees of the Chee, they murdered my world.""
 * Erek the Chee, programmed to be a Technical Pacifist, gets his in #26. Getting in touch with his inner Manipulative Bastard, he wants the Animorphs to kill the Howlers--the aliens that hunted his creators to extinction. After downloading the Howlers' memories, Erek learned that the species itself isn't inherently evil: evil chessmaster Crayak designed them so that they had a lifespan of only three years, and never became adults. They're eternal children who think that murder is simply a game; they don't know any better... and Erek deliberately held back this information, which, in many ways, set the tone for his role in the final battle of the war.

"Marco: Listen to me, you mall-crawling psycho, we have one hour and ten minutes to get Cassie out of the Yeerk pool. Now, I can come up with a clever plan. I can work all the angles. I can see the perfect solution. But that all takes time. We don't have time, Rachel. We don't have time for clever and subtle. We need reckless, we need impulsive. We need dangerous. We need out-of-your-mind, pure adrenaline, butt-kicking, total out-there insanity. He stabs his finger at Rachel's face Marco: We could have used me back at the Community Center. But right now we need you. We have an hour to save your best friend, Jake's girlfriend, and the entire human race. You got us into this, now get us out."
 * Had it not been for his actions directly after, Erek might have had his earlier, when he massacres a squad of Hork-Bajir off-screen with such little effort it's frightening. However, following this he requests that the Animorphs destroy the item that made it possible (by temporarily overwriting his pacifism) because he simply didn't want that happening again.
 * This troper argues that Erek overcoming that and sticking to his morals was an awesome moment as well, even though it could turn the tide of the war. Considering that whatever he did was so brutal it elicited tears from Rachel (and not the happy kind), it's likely for the best he went back to pacifism.
 * For the best for who? The Yeerks? It's not like Erek's only options were brutality that makes Rachel cry or staunch pacifism. He gets rid of every Kandrona that the Yeerks have in the area (which is just one Earth-based one and then one on some of the ships) and the war is over within three days. And his decision to allow children to fight his battles for him because it was just too awful when he did it...kind of the antithesis of awesomeness.
 * David, who, whilst a relatively minor character, was one of the most important and memorable characters in the series. Crowning moment? He's the only enemy who truly makes Rachel afraid, by threatening her sisters: "Here's my message, Rachel. I know where you live. You want to threaten my parents? I know where you live."
 * David turns out to be a huge Magnificent Bastard as well. The first night, he manages to take Tobias, Marco, Ax, and Jake out of action. It doesn't work out that way, and no one dies due to a couple happy accidents - but damn did he come close to killing them all in one night. His final plan is pretty impressive too, though the Animorphs' is even better.
 * And David managing to kill Saddler, hide the body and replace him flawlessly. It's possibly the most disturbing thing ever done during the series...but it's damned impressive that he was able to pull it off so perfectly.
 * Ax's CMOA came in the Megamorphs book "In the Time of the Dinosaurs", when, in his natural Andalite form, he KILLS A TYRANNOSAURUS REX that's chasing Marco. This alone might have been enough, but he truly sold it when he was able to convince his human friends, using his usual Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness, that this was a fluke, and that under normal circumstances, "I would lose ninety percent of the time."
 * And Ax gets one of these approximately every three pages in Back to Before.
 * Don't forget Ax taking down the newly-appointed Visser Two by threatening to drop a nuke on the Yeerks (and his allies' hometown).
 * By the time we meet Loren in The Andalite Chronicles, she's already taken over the alien spaceship that abducted her.
 * She later threw a rock at the eventual Visser Three's head, hitting him hard enough to make him bleed. And she was barely a teenager at the time.
 * Not to mention kicking the crap out of Chapman in the same book.
 * Let us not forget that the NEXT time we meet Loren, she totally takes Tobias' revelations in stride despite having no real memory of even having a son and then figures out morphing in roughly thirty seconds.
 * Marco chewing out Rachel for her screwing up as the team's temporary leader in The Weakness is a personal favorite of this troper:

"Marco: You're fast, Yeerk. I'm faster."
 * In the same book Marco also manages to kill the Council of Thirteen's inspector by using his cobra morph on the Inspector's very, very fast Garatron host body. The act is described as almost like catching a bullet in mid-air.

"Toby: "You only ask this [will Aldrea release the body she's possessing] because you don't trust Aldrea. As an Andalite you don't trust anyone who would choose to permanently become Hork-Bajir." Ax: (after a long pause)  Toby: (with "no sincerity whatsoever") "I did not mean to sound suspicious of my Andalite friend.""
 * What about how they got into the Yeerk Pool in that book in the first place:
 * Hello, aren't we forgetting Marco's best CMOAs? First, deciding to tell his Dad all about the Animorphs rather than lose another parent, and - after spending almost a whole series coming to grips with probably having to kill his mother someday - freeing her from Visser One. Hell, even Marco's mom gets CMOA then, when she
 * Don't forget Visser. It's never stated outright that the plan was Marco's, but it seems likely, and he's still enough of a bastard to make Visser One sweat when she calls to ask for his help. Read that again: he makes Visser One, the top military leader of an alien race that is slowly conquering the galaxy, fear for her life because he plays coy about whether or not he'll sabotage her trial. Despite the fact that anything that happens to Visser One could happen to his own mother. Visser-freaking-One calls him a monster. That's pretty Badass right there.
 * In the last book Jake gets a CMOA by facing down Captain-Prince Asculan, leader of the Andalite force tasked to destroy Earth and the Yeerk forces concentrated on it, despite the Animorphs having just defeated Visser One and captured the Yeerk Pool Ship. He does so in a way that is very polite and diplomatic in wording yet harsh in terms of the subtle barbs directed at the Andalites between the lines of said wording. And said discussion was patched through the Andalite civilian network, trapping Asculan and preventing him from going ahead with Earth's destruction.
 * Marco also has one here, as the entire time that Jake is going through his CMOA he is narrating in his head what it means in plain english in his own head and to the audience.
 * To this troper, Tobias forcing himself to act emotionless and apathetic as Visser Three - who had been masquerading as his last living relative - tells Tobias  has always been Birdboy's CMOA.
 * He also walked into that building knowing full well that he was dealing with Visser Three. And he never flinched.
 * It's nothing major, but this troper was reminded of just how much she loves Toby Hamee (Jara's daughter) when rereading #34. Keep in mind that Ax can be rather arrogant when it comes to his Andalite pride.

 Rachel snarled. '' "Commander Galuit:  Jake:  Galuit:  Jake:  Galuit:  Jake:  Galuit: (Privately to Ax) "
 * According to Erek, Cassie's CMOA is performing brain surgery on Ax.
 * This troper agrees and forgave Cassie a lot for that one scene.
 * Cassie, sweet, shy, tree-hugging Cassie once made Visser 3 and several Hork-Bajir flee in horror. How? She morphed into a skunk and sprayed them!!! CMoA for Cassie AND for Mother Nature.
 * This is one-upped when the team holds the secret to removing the smell as their ransom for him to stop his current plan... and then lies about it for a few days to make sure he actually stopped.
 * Truly Cassie's most epic moment of all took place in Megamorphs #3, when in the midst of all the time travel mayhem it seems that  have been killed, and the Animorphs find themselves in the 1930s, confronted by some racist idiot named Davis who used 'a word Tobias wouldn't repeat' and was a general Jerkass to Cassie. Cassie, rather upset over recent events, pleasantly says, "You don't like black people, Mr. Davis? No problem. I can turn white. Watch me." She then procceeds to morph a polar bear, pin the guy to a wall, stick his face in her jaws, and ROAR. Davis, for his part, babbles an apology and continues to apologize long after he's been released. It's a damn good thing.
 * I also personally liked Rachel's threat in the second last book, when Tom is trying to make a deal with the Animorphs. Tom's acting cocky, until Rachel growls, "Don't even listen to him. We grab onto him now, hold onto him for three days and wait until that slug in his head starves to death. Then we have Tom back." This is the first thing said that legitmately scares Tom's Yeerk.
 * Tom shook his head. "Crazy cousin Rachel. I always knew you were too much for your own good."
 * Also, Rachel from the final book, when she faces a handful of dangerous morphs for her final battle: "This was my place and my moment and my own perfection. I was no longer afraid. If I had a mouth, I would've smiled.  I said. No one moved.  I asked. No answer.  I said, almost laughing."
 * Tobias got a CMOH here, when he morphs into human so that he can cry. This troper cried too.
 * One of Ax's best moments came in #18, when he tells the Andalite commander who is trying to give him orders (and totally ignoring his human friends) that if he wants Ax to do something, he has to go through Ax's Prince - Jake. The commander is absolutely floored.
 * Followed immediately by a pretty good one for Jake when the commander doesn't even finish explaining what he wants the Animorphs to do before Jake agrees to do it.

"< By the way, the banquet is tomorrow night. >"
 * Alloran has a CMOA when he begs Ax to kill him, knowing that his body will otherwise be recaptured by the Yeerks.
 * Ax and Alloran get a joint CMOA in the final book, when Captain-Prince Asculan flat-out refuses to honor Jake's promises to the Yeerk prisoners. Jake feels defeated, but Ax surprises him: under Andalite law, it is "the right and obligation" of any soldier to challenge the actions of a superior when he feels there's been an injustice. Asculan just laughs at him, because Ax is of insufficient rank to issue a formal challenge. He needs the support of someone of princely rank or higher... so Alloran, who's been Visser Three's host body for years upon years, points out that hey, he's still a War-Prince. The consequences of the challenge failing are that Ax will be exiled and his tail-blade cut off, but he and Alloran still risk it. At this point, Asculan confers with his staff, and ultimately concedes. The best part is that Asculan promotes Ax to prince by a proxy, without even stopping to make him a full warrior first--something not even Ax's legendary brother, Elfangor, could manage. Arbron teased him about it way back in The Andalite Chronicles.
 * Since he's the enemy of all these CMOA characters Visser Three doesn't get very many of his own. But one moment that stands out for this troper is when there was a big complicated Yeerk plan to infest the leaders of the world powers. The Animorphs go through a big complicated plan of their own to stop him...only to discover that it was all a trap and they had ended up right in V-3's clutches.

"Jake:"
 * But let's not forget how the Animorphs retaliated after they barely escaped from the trap. Outplayed and outmaneuvered, the heroes dispensed with any elegant strategies, morphed into elephants and rhinos, and simply charged through the compound causing as much damage as they could. The banquet, understandably, was canceled. Cassie compared it to preventing a loss in chess by throwing the chessboard across the room.
 * We seem to be forgetting the best line in the whole series. It's Jake's and the writer's CMoA.

""The EF [Evolutionist Front] ''is certainly a force to be reckoned with," I said.  "Action is the surest path to change. No question there." <But you would fight them differently? Sabotage and terrorism make you uneasy. You want a better way.> "What I want is to go home." <Too much for you?> Elfangor was an awesome presence. I'd be lying if I said he didn't intimidate me some. But I was a leader, too. I saw the war for Earth as more my fight than his. I wanted to be respectful, but he had made a huge error in this war, and I had to call him on it. "No. I want to go home so I can stop all this from happening in the first place. I can stop the Yeerks without sacrificing my friends, without botching the war, and without stumbling into your brand of terrorisms and half-freedoms. I can stop this before we sacrifice the things we're supposed to be fighting for!" Elfangor laughed. <Victory without sacrifice? You know better than that.> "You don't always have to give up your principles to win. Isn't there always an alternative to sacrifice if you just step back, look at the big picture and -" <You know better than that.> The repetition stung. How had he known I was just talking big? It was like he was inside my mind, rifling through my personal file of fears and mistakes. Now I was angry. "It's all your fault," I shouted suddenly. "I always saw you as a hero, Elfangor. A leader. But the truth is you just couldn't see another way out! You sentenced us to hardship and pain and suffering. We were just kids! You made us question every value we had ever learned! You had no right to heap that weight on us, huge and impossible. You used us!" <That's funny coming from you, Jake. Let me guess what comes next. You didn't ask for this, right? You didn't ask to be the leader. You never wanted to make the tough calls, decide how to put your friends in harm's way. You're blameless. The role was thrust upon you. Well, I don't buy it, Jake. Every choice is yours. Always has been.>''"
 * In #41, when Jake hallucinates a Yeerk-controlled future, Jake speaks with who he believes to be Elfangor (it's actually an aged Tobias in Ax morph):

""You appear to be experiencing some engine trouble, Visser," Tom said, gloating. <The Empire will hunt you down and kill you for this, you do understand that, I hope?> Visser One asked. "Oh, I doubt it," replied Tom cheerfully. "The Andalite fleet is rather close by. It's possible that I misled you on that part." He was all but giggling."
 * If David gets a Crowning Moment, Tom (/his Yeerk) does too:

"Yeerk: Animorph! Rachel: <That's right, Yeerk. Animorph.>"
 * Alloran gets one in The Andalite Chronicles that is also a rare CMOH, considering that at this point, he was a General Ripper and treated the humans with contempt. When Loren explains that her father was a Vietnam Veteran and that he came home crazy, Chapman mocks her father, saying he was weak. Alloran asks Chapman if he fought in a war. Chapman answers "no", then Alloran tells him to shut the hell up because he has no idea what horrors soldiers go through.
 * Tobias has a CMoA that is nearly series-long, but never focused on. Whenever the group directly engages Visser Three, there is almost always a line about Tobias charging him- while in his default hawk form. A teenager trapped as a bird of prey attacking a trained killer in an Andalite body head-on. The CMOA comes from the fact that Tobias has a tendency to win these duels.
 * Another one for Rachel during the David trilogy: while in rat form, she chews her own tail off to stop his attempt at Taking You with Me.
 * How has Elfangor yet to be mentioned, practically everything that he did before and after the series began was a CMOA from his first adventure that changed history to his death where he refused to let a world go down in flames due to some old code and die fighting his nemesis than bowing, all amazing, simply amazing
 * Rachel manages to morph grizzly bear to tunnel her way out of a Kronosaurus in In the Time of Dinosaurs.
 * Most of Visser Three's morphs. Eating Elfangor in one bite, right at the start of the first book? Check. Something that is essentially made of fire? Check, if impractical. At least two large creatures that fire deadly-looking projectiles? But of course!
 * In #38 The Arrival, The Animorphs really show the Andalites who's boss. For those curious, that included showing up with the intention of being treated as equals, storming out upon being denied that request, overpowering the Andalites when they try to force them to stay, making it clear that Jake is in charge of the entire operation, and later pulling a Batman Gambit to top it all off.
 * In The Hidden, a buffalo acquires the ability to morph. Through a series of accidents and reflexes, it lays dying, then acquires and morphs Visser three's host, then goes tail-to-tail with Visser three and comes out ahead. It makes Alloran, and anybody whose ever fought the visser, look bad.
 * In the last book,.


 * In book 34, Cassie morphs to whale, while still demorphing from osprey. Every time someone does a rapid switch from one morph to another, they have to revert fully to humans before they can start morphing agin.
 * Megamorphs #1: Marco and Ax escape captivity on the Blade Ship by jumping out of it into outer space, at which point Marco demorphs out of his Gorilla morph and into an osprey just in time to save himself from falling to his death. Bonus points for pulling this off while scared out of his mind, despite the fact that morphing typically requires concentration.