Rukawa Kaede

Name : Kaede Rukawa (surname last)
Height : 187cm
Weight : 75 kg
Class : Junior, First Year, class 10
Jersey number : 11
Position : Small Forward
Birthday : January 1
Shoes Brand : Nike. Air Jordan.
Middle School : Tomigaoka
Seiyuu : Hikaru Midorikawa

We first see Rukawa when he strolled along the corridor, the girls blushed at the sight of him. And Sakuragi Gundan glared at the sight of him as Rukawa was as tall as Sakuragi. Then we saw him sleeping on the school's rooftop. The seniors kicked him hard to wake him up. Rukawa replied that no one is to disturb him from taking his nap. And the fight begins. Sakuragi got into the picture. And punched Rukawa for being rude to Haruko. And from that, you can say that he and Sakuragi are enemy for life. He entered Shohoku's basketball team and people know him from his playing back in middle school. He was well known in middle school. He is even well known in high school! He has even has his own fan club which follows him when he's practicing and cheers for him during matches.

He..well... not exactly dumb but he sleeps a lot. In class, even when cycling!! He once beat up a teacher for waking him up. He is very hardworking too when it comes to basketball. He practices day and night at the Shohoku basketball court. In my opinion, he thinks that his purpose in life is to sleep and to play basketball. He doesn't talk much unless when he insults Sakuragi. In fact, he seems to talk to Sakuragi more than anyone else!

He helped a lot during the match against Kainan. He is supposedly the star of the show. But eventually his stamina ran out and he collapsed during the game and had to rest for the whole game. While the match to Ryonan, he and Akagi planned to let Rukawa attack in the second half so that he wouldn't lose out on stamina. In that match he was put up against Sendoh, Ryonan's Ace player. He wanted to go to America to pursue his basketball carrier but Anzai Sensei objected and told Rukawa to be the best among the high school first. Rukawa agreed (reluctantly).

And during the match with Toyotama he faced the 'Ace killer' Minami. Minami punches Rukawa right in the eye. At first it does effects Rukawa as he can't calculate the distance that well. But some how, his years of experience, helped him a lot even though he can see with one eye. But when they went to face Sannoh, Minami came and apologized and gave Rukawa a medicine for his injury hoping that Rukawa could beat Sawakita of Sannoh. Rukawa managed to beat Sawakita because Rukawa finally change his ways of playing basketball. Although Rukawa is the star player, he is also one of the reason why Shohoku can't be better. He is not a fan of teamwork and prefers to do the attack by himself, but in the Sannoh game, Rukawa finally does a lot of passing and assist which, I think, makes him a greater player than before.

Towards the end of the series, Rukawa is chosen to join the Japan Youth of Basketball Federation.