Hanamichi Sakuragi

Hanamichi Sakuragi starts high school as the district's most notorious delinquent, famous for being rejected by fifty girls in a row. He falls instantly for Haruko Akagi, and when he learns she loves basketball, he joins the team to impress her — despite having never played a game of it in his life.

The joke is his towering self-belief colliding with total incompetence, and the show mines that gap for pure slapstick before slowly, believably turning it into something else: a genuine competitive fire. Kusao plays him loud, blustering, easily wounded, and impossible not to root for as the bragging starts to be earned.