This is a flashy move that involves slashing a helpless enemy from different angles at a rapid pace. It usually involves reappearing in another position immediately after performing a strike to follow up with another attack (usually making the enemy go upwards while the performer strikes in a rising diagonal slash that zigzags upwards), or have dopplegangers attack with you. Sometimes both are used. If two or more fighters are in sync, it can even be a Combination Attack. The main idea is that it's a very fast attack that involves multiple strikes coming from multiple sides. At the peak of the attack, a downward blow is used like a vertical cut, or sometimes a throw, often found along with a Spinning Pile Driver movement.
A move that could be mistaken for be a Ninja move only, it's in general used by a Fragile Speedster that mastered a sword or maybe two. In fighting games, it's usually used as a Special Attack or Meteor Move to quickly end an opponent.
Compare Death of a Thousand Cuts, Spam Attack and Bouncing Battler. Contrast Single-Stroke Battle. See also Blade Spam, Flash Step and Speed Blitz. Related to Reverse Shrapnel, i.e "projectiles coming from all around you".
Armed Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- In Rurouni Kenshin, Kenshin and his mentor have the Kuzu Ryu Sen (nine-headed dragon flash) that involves the user striking the opponent with nine slashes that are so fast it looks like nine simultaneous strikes.
- In the Persona 5: The Animation OVA Dark Sun, Joker summons Yoshitsune during the fight against Shadow Shido. Yoshitsune's signature attack, Hassou Tobi, is portrayed as a series of rapid slashes from multiple directions.
Film - Animated
- In Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, Cloud's Omnislash gets upgraded to version 5: his Fusion Sword breaks apart, surrounding Sephiroth with floating blades, followed by Cloud flying from one blade to another, slashing him every time he passes by, striking from all directions.
- In How to Train Your Dragon, Hiccup and Toothless use this tactic against the gargantuan Green Death. The Green Death is twenty times bigger than Toothless, but is also much slower, so Toothless is able to literally fly rings around it, attacking from different directions and then vanishing into the clouds before the enemy can counterattack.
Print Media
- One illustrated Science Fiction story in Heavy Metal has Earth astronauts venture from their space station into an alien environment seeking vital resources. Always they come away empty-handed, many times with colleagues having limbs sheared off by nearly-invisible, lightning fast creatures. The last two intact astronauts make a foray, only to end up cut into sections like beef cattle after this kind of attack.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons 3.5: Tornado Throw, the capstone maneuver of the Setting Sun discipline from Tome of Battle, can be used in this way with or without a weapon. You move twice, and after every 10 feet of movement may grab an opponent and throw them in any direction (which in practice is most useful for throwing the same opponent short distances back and forth). Not only do characters with higher movement speeds get to attack more often, but each subsequent throw is more powerful than the last. The "Chuck E. Cheese" build is built around boosting the user's speed as much as possible in order to make Tornado Throw deal ludicrous amounts of damage (most infamously through the footsteps of the divine spell, which prior to errata could be "overcharged" to let a character move at supersonic speed for 1 turn).
Video Games
- ANNO: Mutationem: In the first battle against Absalom, just as Ann managed to land a few strikes, he unleashes a Counter-Attack with his blade that sends her upward while simultaneously attacking from several angles.
- BlazBlue
- Bang Shishigami's Unlimited Form has Chipp's Zansei Rouga as one of his Distortion Drives, one of many Shout-Outs from BlazBlue to Guilty Gear due to both series being created by Arc System Works.
- Valkenhayn's Astral Heat, Blut Vollmond, acts this way: after he somersault kicks his foe to the air, he morphs into a werewolf and starts slashing his enemies from multiple sides, ending with a heavy downward clawing attack.
- Taokaka gets this move in the third game, called Aerial Dancing Edge, where she uppercuts the enemy to the air, then she flies through them multiple times, slicing them with her claws. She ends it with a Diving Kick, aided by her fellow Kaka clansmen and sister figure Torakaka.
- Hibiki's "Shadow Dance: Hidden Phoenix" and his Astral Heat "Divine Nightfall: Raven" make use of his Drive "Double Chase" and insane speed to strike his opponents from various angles.
- Celica's Unlimited Form gains a Distortion Drive where her Robot Buddy Minerva transforms into a plane and knocks the enemy to the air, then flies up and rams them from all sides.
- Vergil's infamous Judgement Cut End from the Devil May Cry series functions like this, with Vergil Flash Stepping and performing numerous ultra-fast slashes with the Yamato in less than a second.
- Guardians of the Galaxy (2021): Gamora's final ability, Executioner, sees her zig and zag through an enemy while cutting through it with her blade. It does more damage than any of her other abilities and those of just about any Guardian.
- Guilty Gear: Chipp Zanuff's Overdrive Zansei Rouga functions like this. He teleports and slashes the enemy as they both rise up, with Chipp using a downward slice to end his attack.
- The King of Fighters
- KOF XI: Eiji Kisaragi's LDM Yami Kari has him grab his foe and then suspends them in the air, then does multiple slashes through his foe alongside his shadow clone, ending with a powerful downward stab.
- KOF XIV: Choi's Climax is him launching the foe up with a Foe-Tossing Charge, then performing multiple flying claw attacks through the opponent before falling down.
- In Persona 4: Arena, Yosuke Hanamura's Instant Kill, Brave Blade,
has him use his Persona to send the opponent airborne with a tornado, before slashing them from all directions with his kunai, and finishing by throwing two shuriken at them.
- Samurai Shodown
- Iaijutsu Practitioner Ukyo Tachibana has a hyper move since IV in which he moves at lightning speed to the enemy between him and passing front and behind him as a shadow to get after the opponent and then he sheathes his sword. Next to that, the character get sliced by various slashes and goes to the ground.
- Being the child of Ukyo's mentor and having the same school that him (as well being a semi-Head Swap in-game), V's Sub-Boss Yumeji Kurokouchi can also performs this lethal Meteor Move as Ukyo.
- Street Fighter IV:
- Vega (Balrog in Japan) has an Ultra Combo called Bloody High Claw which is pretty much the zig-zag slice attack with his claw.
- Decapre in Ultra SFIV has "DCM" (an acronym for "Defensive Counter-Maneuver") in which she cuts the enemy with her claws attached to her arms.
- Though it never is seen in his home series, Strider Hiryu has a hyper combo called Ragnarok which appears in various installments of the Marvel vs. Capcom series as well as Namco × Capcom and Project × Zone 2: Brave New World. He brings the enemy upwards which he then delivers various slashing moves from all sides with his duplicates.
- Tales Series
- In Tales of Symphonia, two swordfighters using Sonic Thrust in a Unison Attack will follow it up with the Compound Special Attack, Cross Thrust, consisting of the two of them using Sonic Thrust again simultaneously.
- In Tales of Vesperia, while using his Savage Wolf Fury Mystic Arte, Yuri will strike his opponents from multiple angles before finishing them off with a powerful slash.
- Tales of Berseria
- Rangetsu's second Mystic Arte, the Rangetsu Heron, has him strike his opponent from various angles before finishing with a cross slash.
- Artoruis' Mystic Arte is also called the Savage Wolf Fury, which has him slice through his opponent before finishing them off with a Sword Plant-induced explosion.
- Velvet and Laphicet's combo Mystic Arte also features this. Laphicet uses his paper to boost Velvet as she zig-zags through their opponent before slamming them into the Laphicet's pillar of light.
- Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ken the Eagle from Science Ninja Team Gatchaman has a Hyper Combo called Science Ninja Attack: Inazuma Giri. He performs a somersault which lets him strike the enemy from all sides, ending with Ken and a clone of him performing a diagonal Bird Shoot on both sides.
- In Tenchu - Fatal Shadows, Ayame has the Wrath attack that lets her criss-cross through her enemies each time you correctly perform it.
- Touhou Shinkirou ~ Hopeless Masquerade: Byakuren Hijiri's Heaven Sign Master of the Great Trichiliocosm has her throw a vajra-blade at an opponent to immobilize them, then unleash a blindingly-fast series of attacks before finishing them off with a Diving Kick.
- Valkyrie Profile: The einherjar Jun's PWS attack, Senko-Jin.
- Hanzou from the World Heroes series has a move like this in Perfect called Slice The Shimmering Ligh in which he dives at his opponent from the wall, then teleports around while slicing repeatedly. This move also returns in his appearance in NeoGeo Battle Coliseum.
- World of Warcraft: The Demon Hunter's Blade Dance, in which the Demon Hunter dashes in multiple directions in short succession, striking everything within reach and increasing their dodge chance at the same time.
Web Animation
- Juuso Andelin's sanguine Bunnykill One has the Final Boss batter The Hero with this technique, stopping only to deliver a coup de grace on his downed opponent.
- Dead Fantasy 2: At the end of the battle inside the tornado, a winged Rinoa performs multiple attacks with her Gunblade from all directions against the members of the opposing team.
- DEATH BATTLE!:
- Strider Hiryu uses his Ragnarok attack during the battle to finish off Ryu Hayabusa.
- Zero briefly pulls one of these on Metal Sonic at the start of their fight. The hosts note that his reflexes and speed are able to keep up with, if not surpass that of Metal Sonic.
Western Animation
- The eponymous Samurai Jack sometimes suffers this from particularly adept opponents, such as the Minions of Seth.
Unarmed Examples:
Films — Live-Action
- In X-Men: Apocalypse, Quicksilver uses his super-speed to viciously beat up Apocalypse by punching him from several angles, but Apocalypse is able to use his powers to speed up his own senses and trap Quicksilver in mud while he's running, and then breaks his leg.
Video Games
- Dead or Alive 5: Hayate's Power Blow sees him strikes his opponent a couple times before finishing them off with a final ninpo blast.
- Diablo 3 has the monk's Seven-sided Strike which at its most basic, allows a monk to attack an opponent(s) in a teleporting criss-cross up to seven times.
- Guy and Maki, the "street ninjas" from the Final Fight series, occasionally employ moves of this sort in some of their fighting game appearances (Street Fighter IV and Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium/Street Fighter Alpha 3 respectively). While these are Meteor Moves in which they attack (or merely pass by) their opponent in the air to set up an Izuna Drop for the finisher, neither of them use swords or any other cutting weapons in their attacks (or in general as characters).
- The King of Fighters XIV
- Mai Shiranui's Climax is similar than Choi's (described in Armed Examples) but unarmed, with her finishing by grabbing the foe between her legs and slamming them down to the ground alongside her.
- Leona's Slash Saber involves her slashing through her opponent multiple times with her hand before blowing them up with and explosion.
- Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Spider-Man's Maximum Spider gets reworked to work like this in this game. He first does a diving kick that launches the foe up, then does multiple flying kicks through the midair foe that slowly covers them in webs, and then does a final kick down the foe that sends them to the ground.
- Albert Wesker’s Phantom Dance hyper combo is another example, similar enough that fans sometimes refer to it as “Maximum Wesker”.
- Street Fighter
- Cammy's Killer Bee Assault and Cross Stinger Assault have her pulling the Meteor Move variant, launching her opponent into the air and proceeding to kick them in multiple angles before finishing them with a Cross Scissors Pressure/Spiral Arrow respectively.
- Akuma's Shun Goku Satsu when shown in Street Fighter V. He repeatedly strikes his opponents from multiple angle until the combo ends.
- Super Smash Bros.:
- Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. Greninja's Final Smash, Secret Ninja Attack, starts with him flipping a mat (a nod to his signature move, Mat Block). Enemies struck by that will be stunned and sent to the sky as Greninja appears from the shadows, striking the enemies from all directions before ending with a downward blow. Poké balls have a chance to summon Zoroark, which dashes around until it hits an opponent, at which point it slashes them and launches them to a point high above the center of the stage, then does the same as Greninja.
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. In addition to Greninja and Zoroark from the previous iteration, various other characters are given the same Final Smash.
- Touhou Project: Aya Shameimaru's signature move Illusionary Dominance (and its Lunatic version Peerless Wind God) takes this appearance in both the shooting games and the fighters. It's noted as something of an I Am Not Left-Handed technique for Aya, who usually prefers to project a friendly journalist image rather than throwing around her full power as a millennia-old Tengu. An unusual example in that it does not trap the opponent — Aya keeps zooming around the screen for quite some time, during which she can be dodged.
Web Animation
- DEATH BATTLE!: Rainbow Dash opens the fight against Starscream with such a move, leaving rainbow trails behind her that are soon criss-crossing. It's of little affect against the giant robot, but it's just a warm-up.
Western Animation
- Done piecemeal in the Justice League Unlimited episode "Divided We Fall", wherein Lex Luthor, Brainiac and the Dark Heart all fuse together into a nigh-omnipotent cyborg that promptly hands the Justice League their asses. The Flash, however, begins running at Luthor from different directions at increasing speed, until he's circling the Earth between blows. In less than a minute, Luthor is reduced to a normal human, gasping and naked in a blast crater.
