Ro-Kyu-Bu!/Awesome

Ro-Kyu-Bu!/Awesome

Don't let the Moe Moe aesthetic fool you. True to form as the Distaff Counterpart Spiritual Successor to Slam Dunk, Ro-Kyu-Bu! definitely has its share of awesome moments as a sports series.

Ro-Kyu-Bu!

 * A minor one in Episode 2, with Subaru making 10 free throws in a row in the arcade. While it's not exactly as awesome as it sounds, keep in mind that he has been out of practice for quite some time since his team's one-year suspension.
 * Tomoka taking on boys her age all by herself during gym class. This single act alone inspired Maho take up basketball, without which Saki, Airi, and Hinata would never have, and Keishin would never have a girls' basketball team.
 * Tomoka challenges Subaru one-on-one on their first ever practice session together with the condition that he continues coaching her team if she wins. He proceeds to wipe the floor with her without even jumping to block (though to be fair, he did place a handicap on himself not to jump, and she did not take any jump shots either, so all of her shot attempts were drives to the basket that he can easily defend against).
 * However, after Subaru learned about Tomoka's back story, he was so moved by her desire to play basketball with her newfound friends even if it means she will have to quit playing otherwise that it got him back to basketball and he decides to stay on to protect her dream.
 * The boys vs girls match. Before proceeding, this has to be gotten out of the way: Subaru literally had only two weeks to prepare a ragtag bunch of cute little school girls against the defending boys' basketball division champions.
 * With a little bit of trickery, he had Airi feast on the boys' non-existent frontline to draw double teams on her, freeing up either Maho or Saki for an open jump shot. If that fails, it's down to Tomoka going one-on-one on Natsuhi, and if that fails, Hinata's Innocent Charm should do the job. Subaru blasted Ogasawara's superior strategy with nothing but some information from Mihoshi and the basics he taught the girls.
 * With the game and their team on the line in the final minutes, Tomoka once again takes on the boys by herself. But when they triple-teamed her on the last play, she did not win the game for her team. It was Maho who won the game and kept her team from disbanding! A ragtag bunch of cute little girls defeated the defending boys' basketball division champions with only two weeks to prepare!
 * Tomoka taking on Mihoshi's challenge to make 50 free throws in a row so that Subaru can keep coaching the girls, and with massive persistence, eventually pulling it off in the rain! Shiny Gift, indeed!

Meta

 * Hinata's Character Development is definitely a Crowning Moment of Awesome in itself. To wit:
 * She made the game-winning shot against the boys' team, this time in the inter-class tournament.
 * The BOSS HAND reverse shot against Suzuridani in their practice match, which she does again in their official match.
 * In SS, she managed to curb-stomp an opponent who was giving her a hard time before.
 * While Ro-Kyu-Bu! almost certainly did not influence the rise of Japanese basketball today in the same way Slam Dunk did in The Nineties, it may not be a mere coincidence that the Japanese women's senior national basketball team won the Asian women's basketball championship three times in a row since the anime series aired in 2011.