Daiki Aomine

Daiki Aomine is a character from the Kuroko no Basuke anime and manga.

Daiki was the ace player of the renowned Generation of Miracles and was the former partner/light of Kuroko in Teikō. He currently plays as the ace and power forward of Tōō Academy. He and Kagami are sworn rivals after their clashes in the Interhigh preliminaries and in the Winter Cup. He was the main antagonist until the first round of the Winter Cup.

Appearance
Aomine's brown skin is darker than most of the other characters. He has navy blue hair that is quite short. His hair is parted on his right side. He often has a frown on his face, with his dark blue eyes slightly squinted. Aomine is very tall and muscular.

He wears the black and red Tōō High jersey with the number 5. His casual summer clothes consist of a loose, white tank top and tan cargo pants. In the winter, Aomine is often seen with a light woolen shirt, a black hoodie and a dark bodywarmer.

Personality
Before he gained immeasurable strength, Aomine was outgoing and even friendly. He often fooled around with Kuroko and Kise. Momoi stated that the old Aomine was very similar to Kagami; he loved playing basketball and was very good at it too. However, he kept training and getting stronger, to the point that he often completely crushed his opponents' will to play basketball. He was initially sad about this, and searched for his equal on the court, but he never found one.[2] Eventually, he came to the conclusion that he is simply the strongest and that "The only one who can beat me, is me". He also cast his feelings towards his opponents aside and now views them as weak and wants to crush them. He often seeks to humiliate them in the worst kind of fashion. He has also become very lazy, only coming to training when he wants to, and slacking off even during matches, sometimes abusing his teammates in the process, because he became bored.

Aomine also has a short temper and some kind of admiration towards Kuroko even after his "change", as he threatened a Tōō player with physical violence when he badmouthed Kuroko. Also, when Haizaki stole food from Kuroko, Aomine told him, irritated, to get his own. He is also a big fan of Japanese idols. He appears to be interested in that field of entertainment and knows about many idols. He has also said he likes models with big chests.

Aomine is shown to be very protective of his former teammates in Teikō Junior High, something his current teammates in Tōō Academy refer to as Aomine's "soft side". This was first shown when Aomine attacked one of his teammates in Tōō after he badmouthed Kuroko's style of play. After Kise's match against Shōgo Haizaki ended, Aomine confronted Haizaki in order to make sure he does not attack Kise later on or get in the way of Kise's and Kuroko's match at the Winter Cup.

Abilities
As the ace of the Generation of Miracles, he was regarded as "a monster" in basketball, as he was leagues ahead of anyone that came second to him, even among the talents of the Generation of Miracles. His abilities can be described as extremely fast, extremely strong and extremely skillful. It is shown that Aomine can essentially score the basketball from any position on the court. He is very fast, agile, and powerful which enables him to get past even the strongest of defensive minded players. He accomplishes this by performing insane crossovers, changing his speed and direction of movement at an absurd rate, leaving his opponent behind. Overall, these well rounded and polished skills make him an amazing player who is often described as "a monster".[52] Aomine is so skilled he along with Kagami is called the double ace of Team Vorpal Sword (a team made up of the Generation of Miracles).

As explained by Midorima, Aomine learned to play basketball on the streets without lessons, so while not possessing the basic movements of basketball play, it is said that Aomine never has a non-changing movement, be it passing, dribbling or shooting. His play is described as limitless.[53] It's extremely difficult to guard him as only a hand-full of players could keep up with him. Kuroko and Kise are shown to capability of stopping Aomine predicting his movements based off their past experiences as teammates.

Aomine is described as a solo player, only playing one-on-one against his opponents and not passing the ball to his teammates even when he is cornered. His skill is reflected in the fact that he has beaten Kise in a one-on-one before, though this was before Kise acquired the Perfect Copy. At one point it even took a triple team of Kagami, Kiyoshi, and Kuroko to stop Aomine.

His other ability, is the control of his animal instinct, with his instincts comapared to that of a panther. This enables him to play purely on feeling and greatly enhance his five senses, making his reflexes and speed top notch. Since Aomine stopped playing seriously his instincts became dull. However it came back slowly during his battle with Kagami.

Speed and Agility
Aomine is not just extremely fast but his acceleration and deceleration is extremely fast too. As seen in the match against Seirin High, he broke free from Kagami with his speed than stopped in front of the defense and shot with a fadeaway in an instant. Aomine can also sprint back to defense and perform chase-down block.

As stated by Midorima, Aomine transcends even the rest of the Generation of Miracles when it comes to speed and agility. Aomine is so fast he has gotten passed all of Seiriens starters, taking the ball coast to coast with his speed.

Streetball
Aomine has the ability to an array of different movements based on his street ball background. He uses many feints, unnecessary movements and doesn't play a standard form of basketball. With this style of play, he can score many creative baskets from the oddest of places on the court or the body, like from behind the backboard among other places, and a behind-the-back flick after drawing a foul. Putting this all together, Aomine is very unpredictable and can easily crossover and get past Kagami at there meting in the interhigh. Kagami compares his style of play to the way they play basketball in the States.

Formless Shot
Apart from his ball handling and speed, Aomine can get a shot off from essentially any position on the court. One of his signature shots, the formless shot, is where Aomine lowers his posture to bypass the defense, as he shoots when his body is nearly parallel to the ground. Another one of Aomine's formless shot is where he throws the ball in a gridiron-like motion while performing a fade-away. It was deemed impossible by many to block such a shot, but Kise and later Kagami were able to stop it.

As stated by Midorima, it's not his agility or unpredictability that made Aomine the super scorer even among Generation of Miracles, but his ability to score in virtually any position and angle, even from the behind the board.

Zone
Zone is a state of being that Aomine can access once he has found a worthy opponent and reached his full potential. Under this influence, he is "in the zone", which means that nobody else can stop him unless he or she is in the Zone as well. When a person is in the Zone, streams of sparks or currents of electricity seem to gather in the player's eyes, indicating that the individual has entered the Zone and gained his full potential as a basketball player.

When entering the Zone, one forgets everything and focuses solely on the game. It is a superlative of regular concentration. Only the elite of the best of the best of players are allowed to enter the Zone, and Aomine seemed to have forced his way in. Opening the gate to the Zone means opening the gate to your full potential, the full 100% of one's capabilities and abilities. In Aomine's case, his speed doubles at the least, his power increases drastically. His ability to score from anywhere escalates and Aomine's skills become even more overwhelming.

Because of Aomine's past filled with victories, he hadn't been pressured as much as his match against Seirin High, more specifically, Kagami. He started to enjoy playing against his first real opponent in some time and this feeling of enjoyment and excitement opened the gates of the Zone for him. In other words, his main condition to enter the zone is a "worthy opponent" whom he can give his all.

He is also vey knowledgeable about zone, and because of this, he was able to give Kagami some information about the Zone.

Trivia

 * In the fanbook, CHARACTERS BIBLE, an early character concept sketch of Aomine is seen. His face and eyes haven't changed, but accompanying a sketch of his original hairstyle, is a sketch of Aomine with longer hair, reaching his eyes and the back of his neck.
 * On the first character poll, Aomine ranked 6th, with 710 votes. He went up one place on the second poll, this time with 1021 votes.
 * Aomine's play-style could be inspired by the NBA players Kobe Bryant & Allen Iverson, since both of them are very fast, agile and strong. They both can also chase down block their opponents and Kobe Bryant has been seen speaking of entering the Zone (In addition to many of Aomine's moves being compared to Kobe Bryant's on YouTube.)
 * The kanji (Ao) in his name means blue, hinting to his hair color, but in Chinese, it could both mean blue and green.


 * The kanji for his last name (Aomine) shares the same first name of Greeny Wu Tsing-Fong, the lead singer/songwriter of Taiwanese band Sodagreen. He is known for his singing voice that is androgynous, unusually high pitched and boyish.
 * Aomine and Momoi are childhood friends, and her nickname for him is Dai-chan.
 * Aomine has called Kuroko "Tetsu" ever since they started training together back in Teikō.
 * According to the CHARACTERS BIBLE:
 * Aomine's type are girls with big breasts.
 * If Aomine had an alternate job it would be a police officer.
 * His favorite food is Teriyaki burger.
 * His hobby is looking up gravure idols.
 * His specialty is catching small animals like cicadas and crayfishes, and he writes his own autobiography.
 * The player he has his eyes on is Kagami.
 * As stated by Momoi, his shoe size is similar to Kagami's, 29.5 cm. In fact, they both use the same brand of Air Jordan shoes.
 * He is the only member of the Generation of Miracles to have defeated Seirin so far.
 * Aomine resembles Keigo Atobe from the tennis manga/anime series Prince of Tennis, in terms of arrogance and abilities as all-rounder. Furthermore, they also share the same voice actor, Junichi Suwabe. Suwabe also does the voice for Kyosuke Kuga on Prince of Stride. He also resembles Arata Samejima from the anime, but Arata has light grey hair.
 * In a Kuroko no Basuke -Replace- Novel, Shoichi Imayoshi points out that everything Aomine writes is in katakana.
 * Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan do in fact believe in the state of the Zone.
 * In a Q&A section in the manga, it is revealed that:
 * Aomine was 175 cm tall upon entering Teikō.
 * He is an only child.
 * Aomine hates bees (he was stung by one).
 * One time he put a frog on Momoi's head and made her cry, causing her to dislike frogs.
 * Aomine's best subject (amongst his terrible grades) is Japanese History.
 * He hates goya because it tastes bitter.
 * Similar to Kagami's nickname Baka-gami (Kagamidiot), Aomine has been dubbed by the fans as Aho-mine (with aho meaning stupid).
 * Aomine’s pet theory is “anyone who likes basketball can’t be bad”.
 * Aomine likes banana milk; Imayoshi thinks that is cute.
 * According to a Replace Plus chapter (Momo Talk):
 * Aomine's favorite actress is Marilyn Monroe.
 * His favorite basketball player is Allen Iverson.