Bouncing Battler

Speedball: Fighting evil one reckless ricochet at a time.

"New game! It's called dodgeball!"

— Cannonbolt, Ben 10

A Bouncing Battler is, quite simply, a character whose primary form of attack is to jump or bounce off everything in sight — walls, floors, ceilings, and especially opponents. While jumping is a common tactic for acrobatic fighters, the Bouncing Battler is distinguished because he typically doesn't have any extraordinary abilities or fighting skills; instead, he relies almost entirely on his mass and momentum to do the work, typically becoming a (figurative) living Hyper-Destructive Bouncing Ball in the process.

Frequently appears as the protagonist in Platform Games, largely due to the enduring influence of Super Mario Bros.. Not to be confused with fighting game females with buoyant bodies.

Also see Be the Ball, Hyper-Destructive Bouncing Ball, In a Single Bound, and Pinball Projectile. Compare Combat Parkour.

---

Examples:

Anime and Manga

• My Hero Academia:
  • Gran Torino, the man who trained All Might as a pro hero, can propel himself forward with bursts of air from his feet. He'll launch himself in every direction to slip past someone's guard and get in a solid hit.
  • Izuku Midoriya would emulate Gran Torino's attack style with "One For All: Full Cowl".
  • Mirio Togata, "Lemillion", has a quirk that lets him phase through solid matter which has a side effect of propelling him out when he goes solid again. He can weaponize that propulsion for his "Phantom Menace" technique.
  • Tsuyu Asui probably counts as well. Her quirk is “frog” which lets her do anything a frog can do, including frog-like jumping ability.
• Naruto: During the Chuunin Exams, Rock Lee demonstrates this in his fight with Gaara after unlocking several of his inner Chakra Gates. He leaps and moves all over the battlefield with such speed that Gaara's sand guard can't keep up, and he likely would have won if Gaara didn't get lucky and catch him with his sand long enough to break his arm and leg.
• One Piece:
  • Bellamy ate the Bane Bane no Mii (Spring-Spring fruit), a Paramecia type Devil Fruit that allows him to transform his body into springs. His main fighting style is bouncing around the environment by transforming his legs into springs, and then using the momentum of his bouncing to increase his power and speed.
  • Luffy's first Gear Fourth form "Bound Man". When using this technique, he cannot stop bouncing or sit still, but the sheer power behind his attacks resulting from the constant motion and his body's elasticity more than makes up for it.
• Rurouni Kenshin: More mundane than most versions, but Kenshin leaps off walls and ceilings quite often in order to get the drop on his enemies.

Comic Books

• Astro City: The Bouncing Beatnik, a mystical entity who's been shown fighting an army of shark-men by leaping around and throwing them. It runs in the legacy, as the Beatnik's predecessors have been shown doing similar things.
• Captain America: Batroc the Leaper has extremely well-developed leg muscles, allowing him to leap great distances. He supplements this with skills in kickboxing.
• Legion of Super-Heroes: Bouncing Boy combines this with Be the Ball. One story revealed that he'd studied advanced mathematics to learn to aim multiple bounces just right.
• New Warriors: Speedball, except for his stint as the Darker and Edgier Penance, bases his entire fighting style on this. He can create a kinetic force field around himself that allows him to bounce off obstacles at great speed, which he then uses to knock out opponents with twice the force.
• Spider-Man: The Fabulous Frog-Man uses a frog costume that jumps with powerful springs. His portly physique and lack of combat training means he typically defeats opponents by inadvertently bowling them over.
• Squadron Supreme: The 1985 limited series featured a B-grade villain named Pinball based on this trope. He'd inflate his jumpsuit into a giant ball, then bounced or rolled into his targets.
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: Glitch is a tiny fellow who uses their agility and very impressive jumping abilities to spam jumping kicks and leap over opponents when the situation calls for them to fight.
• X-Men:
  • In addition to being his primary means of locomotion, Toad mixes this with his tongue and other powers Depending on the Writer.
  • Bouncing Betty is a villainess with an extraordinary ability to bounce, leap, and jump. She is unusually large and unusually strong, and uses her strength and bouncing skills in combat.

Literature

• In Worm, the child supervillain Bambina combines this with Having a Blast; her power lets her ricochet off surfaces and create explosions at the point of contact.

Live-Action TV

• Ace Lightning: Googler's primary method of attack is transforming into a bouncing spiky ball.

Video Games

• The Super Mario Bros. are undoubtedly the most famous example. Mario's tendency towards this is lampshaded in Super Mario RPG. After Mario beats Jinx, a professional martial artist, in an Optional Boss fight, Jinx and his student decide to incorporate Mario's jumping techniques into their own fighting styles and spend the rest of the game bouncing up and down on one spot trying to emulate Mario.
• Kirby's Ball ability, from its singular appearance in Kirby's Adventure.
• The Wii Play: Motion minigame "Jump Park" is based on this — the player must gather gems while bouncing around the playfield nonstop.
• The Nintendo Wii game FlingSmash combines this with Be the Ball. The player throws the rotund hero, Zip, around a series of playfields so that Zip will bounce off obstacles, collect treasures, and defeat bad guys. Some enemies are only vulnerable from certain angles, so strategic bouncing is required.
• Sonic the Hedgehog most commonly jumps into enemies or uses a homing attack, but in Sonic Adventure 2 he gains a move called simply "Bounce" where you can endlessly bounce, letting you annihilate any mooks in the area. In the 2d games, he can also perform this move if he has a Bubble Shield.
• Mega Man:
  • From the Classic series, Strike Man from 10 curls himself up into a ball and bounces around the arena after throwing fastballs at Mega Man. Bounce Man from 11 bounces against the walls if hit with a charged Mega Buster shot and will bounce even faster when Speed Gear is engaged.
  • Armored Armadillo from Mega Man X. He does have other attacks but will mainly use the one where he bounces all over the place.
  • From Mega Man Zero, Hanumachine can wreath himself on fire and then flies and ricochets off walls, while Rainbow Devil literally bounces around.
• Mewgenics: An inversion, in the sense that the Tank class deals Knockback or otherwise moves entities around with almost every ability they use.
  • The Chain Knockback passive ability dials this up by making collision damage- the end result of having a knockback victim knock into something else- also deal knockback, and also makes all knockback dealt by the cat with it go a tile further. Put that all together and you can make the enemies into bleeding, battered pool balls.
• Helter Skelter's nondescript and nameless player character can be taken as one, since it's a ball that attacks monsters by bouncing at them.
• Puyo Puyo has Dongurigaeru, a round frog that rolls around in an acorn top.
• Yuuki Terumi of Blaz Blue Chrono Phantasma does his in his Screeches of the Condemned Distortion Drive. In his finisher, he covers himself in his Sickly Green Glow and dunks the opponent into the floor, complete with dragon roar.
• Pulseman of the same game has access to the Volteccer move, where he turns into a small sphere surrounded by electricity that goes ricocheting off every surface he hits at high speed. He can plow through weaker enemies with this move and bounce off tougher enemies to hit them again when he comes back in their direction. It's fast, nearly unsteerable (due to the way the bounces work), and a lot of fun to use. It also helps you move around quickly and is instrumental in defeating The Rival in a Mirror Match.
• The Slylandro Probe in Star Control II is unique among all the other starships in that it cannot stop moving. Ever. It's always charging ahead at its maximum velocity, unaffected by gravity, and hitting the thruster makes the craft reverse direction instantly, maintaining its momentum. Coupled with its weapon being very short-range and auto-aiming at the opponent, the Probe will be zooming all over the place, Cherry Tapping the whole time.
• The indie crossover game Indie Pogo is built entirely around this idea; every character jumps nonstop and attempting to Goomba Stomp your opponent is one of the main methods of combat.
• This is the basis for the Pokémon move "Bounce". It is a two-turn ability in which the first turn sees the Pokemon bounce itself high into the air and the second ability has it come flying down.
• Dead by Daylight: The Blight, one of the game's Killers, has as his ability the Blight Rush, which allows him to charge at high speed. If he runs into an object he stops, has a few seconds to re-orient himself, and charge again. After the first bounce, he becomes able to attack while rushing and the Blight Rush becomes a Lethal Rush. By default, the Blight can bounce off of objects up to five times before he's forced to stop and the ability has to recharge. Add-ons can raise or lower this maximum while adding other powers to his ability.
• In Bloons Pop, several of the monkeys fight by bouncing around the play field, popping bloons on contact and firing projectiles. For example, Obyn will bounce several times, creating a Spread Shot of four wolf spirits every time he hits a bloon.

Webcomics

• From Heroine Chic, superhero Khatie's powers came from getting hit with a radioactive rubber ball. She gains energy every time she ricochets off a wall, so her fighting style is based on evading hits while she charges up her powers by bouncing (or getting thrown by another hero). From Chapter 12's narration:
  Khatie's powers are kinetic— enabling her to "bounce" off objects like a rubber ball. The energy created by those bounces increases her mass. Basically, the faster she moves, the harder she gets.

Western Animation

• The Spectacular Spider-Man: Ricochet tucks himself into a ball and becomes a living Pinball Projectile once he gets a super suit.
• Similarly, Rikochet from ¡Mucha Lucha! has his "Pulverizing Pinball" finishing move, in which he turns into a giant pinball.
• Gummiberry Juice is a special potion that gives the Gummi Bears the power to bounce for a limited time, which they use to escape danger or defeat their enemies.
  • The show's lore and by association Gummiberry Juice became part of the Ducktales 2017 Shared Universe in "From the Confidential Casefiles Of Agent 22!", though without the word "Gummi" for the sake of Writing Around Trademarks given the real world candy. The secret recipe is even recited exactly the same!
• Ben 10:
  • Cannonbolt from the original series combines this with his weight and Rolling Attack.
  • Crashhopper, a grashopper-like alien from Omniverse, can bounce around rapidly and at great heights.
• The Harlem Globetrotters Animated Adaptation The Super Globetrotters features Curly Neal as "Super Sphere". He could transform himself into a basketball and dribble himself. It's every bit as amazing as it sounds.
• In He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2021), Ram Ma'am could tuck herself into a magenta energy sphere that would crash and bounce around like a giant ram ball. Ram Ma'am is well protected inside the ball and is great for a Fastball Special, but spinning inside too long can leave her nauseous.

---