Rurouni Kenshin/Awesome

""Even a fledgling can break your arm.""
 * Three Words: Gatling Gun Scene.
 * Kenshin: "WHERE'S YOUR MONEY NOW, KANRYU?!!"
 * English version: "Why don't you ask your money to save you!?"
 * VIZ Manga: "If you're going to beg for your life... PRAY TO YOUR BELOVED MONEY!!!"
 * Chapter 4 in the manga, Kenshin cuts a cannonball in halves.
 * Kenshin's fight with Shishio,.
 * Shishio's own moment comes
 * Actually, that scene might be even better in the English version of the manga,
 * In this troper's humble opinion, Shishio's defining CMOA was his
 * Sanosuke's fight with Anji where both go to their limit, and then just keep slugging away with each other.
 * An even earlier CMOA comes when he faces Shishio's battleship with Kenshin and Saitou. Shishio recognizes the other two, but ignores Sano. The crew fire on him with a gatling gun, he responds by deflecting the bullets by hitting the water really hard with his Futae no Kiwami technique and throwing several experimental grenades at the ship, setting off a chain reaction in the engine room and completely disabling the ship.
 * This also prompts Shishio's first CMOA in the series. When his entourage is fretting about how the plan failed, he calmly says it was his own fault the ship went down for underestimating Sanosuke. To have a villain recognizing his weak spots and doing it without freaking out or having all of his gambits crumble like a card castle is awesome with an A, and cements Shishio as a brilliant Magnificent Bastard.
 * You've forgotten Sanosuke's first major fight after his heel-face turn; against Shikijo, Aoshi's subordinate. Both are power fighters and are evenly matched. But Shikijo seems to only care about strength which is why he follows Aoshi. unlike Sanosuke and comes off as somewhat arrogant. Sanosuke delivers a lecture about how Kenshin is strong because he has people he cares about, while Aoshi just wants to be the strongest. The outcome? . Sanosuke's fights are all a reflection of his first fight with Kenshin; trying to influence his opponent for the better. It's ironic because he states to one opponent that "personal matters aren't his thing." Badass.
 * While it was awesome how Saitou curb-stomped Sanosuke in their second fight, you have to give Sanosuke some credit for standing up to a guy who was Kenshin's level and relentlessly mocking him the whole time. Sano even acknowledges that he's weak now, but neither Saito nor Kenshin started out strong either. He kind of gains Saitou's respect, and as a result, Saitou informs of him of his main weakness.

"Aoshi:"
 * When Shishio's headquarters are blowing up, the way is blocked for Saito, and it looks like certain doom..
 * Enishi's first fight with Kenshin has him defeating Kenshin's ultimate attack, Amakakeru Ryuu no Hirameki. That's not the Crowning Moment of Awesome..
 * Enishi's second fight deserves some credit as well. After all, he did
 * Aoshi not only figures out Enishi's true plan,.
 * Aoshi gets another in the Jinchuu arc when he faces Suzaku of the Su-shin.

"Yahiko:
 * Yahiko's got quite a few. He beats He then proceeds, despite being  However, what is quite possibly his coolest moment comes . Bad. Ass.
 * No, while it's great, it's not his most coolest moment. His coolest moment came during Jinchuu arc, where That's, my friends, is true CROWNING MOMENT.
 * And that moment has a Crowning Moment of its own. After getting the aforementioned officers motivated to help him, a child wanders into the fight. Hyogo's rage leads him to start firing on the child. Yahiko leaps to protect him, Hyogo fires at them IN MID AIR AT ONE POINT and they end up in a pile of rubble. After a moment, a battered Yahiko gives us this:

Officer1:

Officer2:"

"Saitou:"
 * The officers also had their another moment:
 * You should watch it directly. This pages can't describe sheer awesomeness on that scene.
 * Yahiko is generally just a complete badass, if you think about it. Not only does he regularly go toe-to-toe with older, more experienced opponents and win, but he does it armed with a bamboo shinai.
 * Saitou's fight against Usui culminates in
 * I'm honestly surprised this one hasn't been mentioned yet. During his fight with Kenshin shortly after his introduction, Saitou is disarmed by Kenshin (who is in full-blown Battousai mode, and looking for a kill for the first time in the series). When Kenshin dashes in for the kill, Kenshin gets out of it, but it was still so mind-blowingly awesome that it pretty much cemented Saitou as my favorite character in the series right there.
 * Let's not forget what happens AFTER that battle, which contains not one but THREE of the most badass lines in Rurouni Kenshin.

"Saitou:"

"Saitou:"
 * And then finally, you get this line...

"Kaoru: But, when I take the ribbon from my hair and put this uniform on my shoulders, I have the resolution of a swordsman and gender no longer matters. So in that aspect, I'm no different from you."
 * After listening to Sano whine that the only reason Saitou was able  was because he had surprise, Saitou agrees to fist fight him right there in the street.
 * This troper thinks Saitou's first Crowning Moment (the moment that truly revealed how easily he can turn Kenshin's life into a living hell) was when he used Akamaru, a goon to the man who had hired him, to distract Kenshin in a meaningless battle far away from the dojo while Saitou, wearing his police officer disguise to gain their trust, came to the dojo and was let in by Kaoru, then proceeded to simply sit inside sipping tea for hours until the battle ended. When Kenshin returned that night, the moment when he realized that he had left his friends totally unprotected and Saitou could've killed them all at any time was chilling.
 * And not only the boys get to shine! The Medic and Team Mom of Kenshin's group, Megumi Takani, has *three* of them:
 * First one: After acting as a mix of Damsel in Distress and Clingy Jealous Girl, as soon as Yahiko takes a dart containing a lethal poison for her and falls in a coma, Megumi immediately takes charge and saves him.
 * Second one: The whole "Fake Faith Healer" filler episode in the anime.
 * Third one: In the Kyoto arc,
 * Kaoru, who is usually stuck as a Faux Action Girl, gets one when she beats one of the Juppongatana with nothing more the hilt of her broken wooden sword (and a bit of assistance from Misao, who gets a mini-CMOA in this same battle by continuing to fight with a set of broken ribs).
 * Kaoru prior to that, gets one before fighting Kamatari. Kamatari tells her that he's impressed with Kaoru's calmness when compared to Misao. However, Kaoru actually admits that she is no different from Misao, but that's not the real crowning moment. The crowning moment is this line...

"Bakumatsu...In Kyoto, there was once an Imperialist known as the Hitokiri Battousai. He was a man who killed like a demon and cleared the way for the new Meiji era with his bloody sword, but with the end of the upheaval, he disappeared without a trace."
 * Misao's true CMOA comes after that, though.
 * This one is often denied by her rabid bashers, but it's still nice: Kaoru freeing herself from Jin-E's hypnosis and her And I Must Scream state, via pure sheer willpower. No, haters, she didn't do it because Jin-E killed himself; actually, Jin-E commited suicide because he had been defeated by both Kenshin and Kaoru: he beat him as Battousai, she undid his "unbreakable" hypnosis.
 * Yumi's  is both a Tear Jerker and her CMOA, specially for
 * Shishio`s main CMoA was defeating not one, not two, not three, but four of the most powerful fighters in Japan all at once. Admittedly, they've all come out of brutal fights but the ease with which he completely defeats their ultimate techniques (or, in Sano's case, taking it head on and not even flinching, then defeating the Made of Iron Sano in one punch) marks him as the most Badass Rurouni Kenshin character right there.
 * The height of Shishio's awesome comes after he takes the Amakakeru Ryu no Hirameki. Keep in mind, this attack has floored and incapacitated both people who have felt it thus far. Well, Shishio takes it at double strength - and gets back up. Cue Oh Crap reaction.
 * Not only did Shishio take the Amakakeru Ryuu no Hirameki, but before that he'd taken pretty much every OTHER attack of Kenshin's moveset in a row. After he got hit with the A Rn H, his body temperature exceeded his limits and he started thrashing about and clawing at his chest to relieve the excess heat. A few seconds later, he's calm again and ready to fight
 * Everything you need to know about Shonen in general is this: going against two hundred mooks and wiping the ground with them (as Sanosuke did in Jinchuu arc) is nothing to write home about.
 * Let us note that Sano was on vacation from the problems of the main cast, and just trying to relieve some stress.
 * If Shishio takes the gold for "Most Badass Villain", Soujiro definitely takes the silver. In his first appearance,
 * Also, when Sojiro
 * He got better. And decided to
 * The whole Shishio fight in general for everyone involved.
 * Early moment: when Kenshin bashes a Yakuza's head through the ceiling and says "I wasn't finished speaking." Makes me smile to this day.
 * The pure awesomeness when Kenshin,
 * The final moments of the first OVA definitely qualifies. The icing on the cake is in the Director's Cut where Kenshin is going through literally hundreds of soldiers without pause. Then after the war is over, Kenshin leaves his sword in the ground and a subtitle appears that quotes the very beginning of the series.

"Aoshi: It's still too early to gloat. One width of paper closer, and I'd have sliced your jugular.
 * Unbelievable that no one's added this quote from Kenshin's fight with Aoshi in the English manga:

Kenshin: But the width of that paper... is the gulf between us."

""I don't know, I just came for the fight...but if you arrest this woman, I'll have some more fighting to do.."
 * An early quote by Sanosuke

"One fist...against two tekkou and two arms...""

"Kenshin: I WON'T LET YOU LAY A FINGER ON KAORU DONO!!!"
 * A subtle CMOA for Magdaria from the Filler Shimabara arc. She, her bodyguard Shouzo and Sanosuke have barely escaped a lethal trap, but poor Shouzo has been pinned under debris after a Diving Save to help her. Her reaction? "I... I won't let you be buried!", and calmly starts doing her best to push rocks off him. What makes it awesome is how she is a very delicate Ill Girl almost in the last stage of tuberculosis, so any big physical efforts will make either her collapse or downright kill her -- but she refuses to let that stop her.
 * A more open one
 * And aside of his Diving Save, Shouzo earns two massive CMOA's. First, via . And then, via
 * Kenshin in both fights with Kujiranami Hyougo . Let's not forget his first fight with Enishi, right after the  and starts bolstering about how awesome he is, Kenshin bitch-slaps him and then says the next line:


 * How is Hiko Seijuro not mentioned yet? Besides being introduced as the most badass sword master ever (a man who raised, trained, and can constantly beat and ridicule Kenshin with no effort), his only official fight that wasn't training counts. For those who don't know, during the Shishio arc, all of the allies of Kenshin are beating the Juppongatana when Fuji, a freaking GIANT, shows up, ready to kill them all. And then Hiko appears, and not only treats the massive Fuji as an equal, but beats him in two moves while sparing his life. Watsuki said that this character was too powerful to be used in the story too much for a reason.