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Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs - TV Tropes
"Ten seconds ago I was in a different time-zone. How many times do you think I'm going to hit you in the next ten seconds?"
A fighting technique in which a fighter punches an opponent dozens (if not hundreds, or thousands) of times a second sometimes to the point that their fists become blurred. Multiple hits are guaranteed, and even if each strike doesn't cause much damage by itself, the cumulative effect can be absolutely brutal. Common to animation, video games, and comic books, if you use one of these attacks in a fighting game, you can almost expect that this move's command will involve tapping the Attack button rapidly.
Rapid-fire fisticuffs are a staple maneuver by nearly every comic book speedster ever published. It is often combined with a Flash Step for extra effectiveness against a single foe, or for taking on crowds, resulting in a Criss-Cross Attack.
When a character does this while armed, it is a Spam Attack. This trope is a type of Death In All Directions. In trading power per hit for a large hit count, unless you're a Lightning Bruiser with both to spare, beware Punch! Punch! Punch! Uh Oh.... If punches are reactively weak, this may result Death of a Thousand Cuts. If two fighters capable of doing this attempt to outdo one another, the result is a Pummel Duel.
Note also that while this trope is traditionally done with punches, there do exist many kick-based examples; it's especially common when it comes to higher-level Kick Chicks.
This is, to a degree, actually Truth in Television, as chain punches are an actual technique used in the Chinese martial art Wing Chun. Jeet Kune Do features a similar technique called the "Straightblast" which also qualifies. Though it's really difficult to keep at it for very long. Or with any power whatsoever. So it's best used in short bursts to catch opponents off guard. (For those not in the know, Jeet Kune Do is a martial art developed by Bruce Lee. Yes, that Bruce Lee.)
Examples:
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Animation
- In Happy Friends, a few episodes have Happy S. deliver enough punches to whoever he's fighting in quick succession that his arms become big blurs. For instance, in episode 18 of Season 7, this occurs when he fights the dog-turned-vicious-monster.
Anime & Manga
- Eve uses her hair to do this quite often in Black Cat. Hers is called the Ougon no Rendan ("Golden Combo"), but is mainly read as "Gold Rush".
- Black Clover:
- Mereoleona can use Mana Zone to punch her target from every direction at once while burning off their skin. She first uses this to defeat Rhya, and later uses the same technique to engage in a Pummel Duel with Vetto.
- Dante can increase the weight behind his punches by using Lucifero's Gravity Magic. He uses this to brutally pummel Asta into the ground.
- Bleach:
- Grimmjow does this to Ichigo's face at one point in the anime. For a whole minute while laughing his ass off.
- Gantenbainne Mosqueda hits Chad in the gut this way, too.
- Surprisingly, Yoruichi manages to land rapid punches on Aizen of all people.
- Kensei can turn his unfortunate target into his personal punching bag if he gets particularly aggressive. He delivers such a powerful barrage to a Gillian's face that it explodes, and much later delivers a similar beating to PePe Waccabrada before sending him flying into a building.
- Mask De Masculine tries attacking Renji with his Star Murder Punch, and manages to keep him in the air while punching him through several buildings before attempting to finish him off. Renji shrugs it off before unveiling his true Bankai.
- Buso Renkin: Captain Bravo's Smash Bravo Rush attack sees him unleash a storm of punches at his opponent so fast that they almost hit simultaneously. As with all his attacks, this is achieved through his own skill and strength rather than with alchemical enhancement.
- Tomoyo Sakagami from CLANNAD has rapid kicks that can hit for about 1000 times. It is a kick variation.
- Digimon Adventure Mimi's partner Palmon's Champion form Togemon has an attack called Mach Jab in which it rapidly punches the foe several times. In the Dub, this is referred to as Lightspeed Jabbing.
- Digimon Frontier In addition to, a second appearance of a Togemon, introduces Lucemon: Falldown Mode, who has an attack called Paradise Lost which is a barrage of punches and kicks that ends in a piledriver. Aldamon also uses this to launche a barrage of energy shots in his Atomic Inferno attack.
- Digimon Data Squad while having the third appearance of a Togemon, gives us both Gaomon and his Gao Rush attack as well as Mercurymon (Merukimon in the dub) and his "Thousand Fist" attack.
- The characters in Dragon Ball do this all the time. There's almost always a portion of any major fight in which the participants are throwing rapid-fire punches at each other. Rarely do any of the punches actually connect, because when everybody's got Super-Speed they can dodge and block just as fast as they can punch.
- In Dragon Ball Super Buu creates 4 more hands to rapidly punch Moro. At one point he pauses to talk to the spectators and next to him the disembodied hands are still punching Moro.
- Fairy Tail: Natsu has a special attack which consist of this... with the twist that each punch is definitely more powerful than his usual attacks (the mere fact that they cause explosions, even for Fire magic...) and are delivered in a wide area.
- In Fist of the North Star, Kenshiro's Hokuto Hyakuretsu Ken (North Star Hundred Cracks Fist, actually "Hundred Rending Fists") became so famous that most Fist of the North Star parodies will need to involve this, or spoofing other examples of this trope with his battle cries ("ATATATATATATATA!"). He can also perform a similar version of the attack by kicking instead.
- Oddly enough, the "fist spamming" is also used several times by other fighters while bearing other names; Raoh's version, taken from the same martial art that Kenshiro uses, uses open hands instead. Moreover, Kenshiro's technique that dealt the final blows to the about-to-be-defeated Souther is (superficially) identical.
- The anime version of Great Teacher Onizuka has Onizuka not only pretend he's Kenshiro, but has him beat the crap out of some thugs with Hokuto Hyakuretsu Ken.
- Excel♡Saga has a great parody during their Fist of the North Star parody: Excel uses Hokuto Hyakuretsu Ken on a gang leader (who looks exactly like Zeed, the first poor bastard who got hit with it in the original series), but instead of exploding, he gets turned into a cutesy, cat-eared, maid costume-wearing midget... who still has his tough guy face.
- There was a Hokuto no Ken arcade game where the idea was to punch fast. Well, as close to rapid-fire fisticuffs as you can get in real life, anyway.
- Bonta-kun from Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu pulled this off once against a yakuza member then finished him off with a right hook. Even his video game adaptation (Super Robot Wars J and Super Robot Wars W) kept this attack.
- Ippo's Dempsey Roll in Hajime no Ippo qualifies, though a skilled enemy can counter to stop it.
- Fantine does this to Takashi in the second Satomi vs. Skylark race in IGPX: Immortal Grand Prix after her realization as to why she thinks they should break up. Doesn't work, he wins and they opt to remain Just Friends.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: A staple ability of many Stands is to launch a furious assault of fists.
- All of Kenichi's masters in Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple, but especially Appachai.
- Lyrical Nanoha:
- In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid, Vivio immediately forces her first opponent in the Tournament Arc on to the defensive by employing a one-handed version of this trope. Her opponent eventually tried to evade it by attacking from above, earning her a solid roundhouse kick into the face.
- ViVid Strike! has Vivio using this as her main fighting style, delivering several flickering jabs at her opponent whenever they leave an opening. This eventually leads to the introduction of Accel Smash Infinity, a Finishing Move where Vivio uses magically-enhanced punches to repeatedly strike her opponent at their vitals in quick succession until they fall unconscious.
- ''GodHand Smash'', the signature move of Rom Stoll in Machine Robo: Revenge of the Chronos, is also partially this trope. It consists of Diving Kick to Fist Spam Attack to Big Ass Explosive Punch, and the final words "Sebai!" (a.k.a Punishment!)
- In MegaMan NT Warrior (2002), Megaman seems to be fond of doing this.
- Midori Days did this in the manga once. In the chapter, Midori notices Seiji using his left hand a lot more instead of her. She pushes Seiji into several situations where he would have to use his right hand/Midori. One scheme was a fighting arcade game that required you to box. Midori was prepared, but Seiji used only his left hand to completely beat the game, in the same feel as Kenshiro's "ATATATA" but with "LEFTLEFTLEFTLEFTLEFTLEFTLEFTLEFT! LEFT! LEFT... PUNCH!"
- Mobile Fighter G Gundam has this all over the place. Domon, Master Asia, and Allenby all engage in both the punching and kicking variety (the latter two even use Rapid Fire Fisticuffs as part of their Handshake Substitute). Chibodee's ultimate attack, the Gounetsu Machine Gun Punch, does this with energy fists; it seems to be an evolution of his Burning Punch attack, as in an earlier episode we see him machine-gunning Burning Punches to take down a horde of Devil Gundam minion MS.
- Before that, the very first episode of Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ has Judau take over the Zeta Gundam and, not know how to work most anything on there, defends himself by making the mech do just this!
- My Hero Academia:
- All Might makes excellent use of this in his fight against the Nomu in the Unforeseen Simulation Joint Arc, noting that the Nomu's Quirk is shock absorption as opposed to shock nullification, and wears it down by hitting it with more punches than it can handle.
- Kendo Rappa's Quirk, "Strongarm", lets him rotate and move his shoulders at intense speeds, which he can leverage into this trope. And boy, does it work for him.
- At full power, even Izuku Midoriya can pull off this stunt as he pulverizes Overhaul with this at one point.
- The best examples of this in Naruto are Naruto, Might Guy, and Neji. Naruto can and has used his clones more than once to deliver a massive number of punches to large foes; Might Guy uses a technique where he punches so fast that the chakra around them is lit ablaze in the form of a flaming peacock, and Neji's technique involves striking the opponent quickly to simultaneously shut down their chakra points.
- Also, Might Guy's Asa Kujaku/Morning Peacock — which was also a Moment of Awesome for him.
- Minor villain Sakon achieved light-speed punches and kicks because he and his brother Ukon shared a main body, and the latter could throw his body parts out of any part of the former, combined with someone who's naturally quick and you have punches you can barely see.
- In NEEDLESS, we have Demon Drive Foxhound that, when used by both the main character and his counterpart, starts a brief scuffle between them in midair where they keep punching each other for almost 10 seconds. The Rival is able to levitate, one of the few abilities seen that is unrelated to Demon Drive Foxhound. Blade himself, however, is not.
- In Negima! Magister Negi Magi Takamichi's teacher was capable of this (note that his punches have over cannon-level strength). Several other mages also display this ability.
- A comedic version of this happens to Hikage in Episode 11 of Non Non Biyori when she tries to forcefully peek at Renge's New Years cards before they're ready. Renge jabs her sister repeatedly in the collarbone with a speed that would make Kenshiro proud. The anime even outsourced this episode to David Productions, the company that produces the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure TV anime.
- One Piece
- Luffy's Gum Gum Gatling move (having its kanji literal translate to Heavy Wild Strike), as well as its glorious upgrades, culminating (so far) in a move that is basically a Rapid Fire Megaton Punch. Bad guys do not get back up. In most of the video games, Luffy often has a finishing move right after the barrage just because.
- Luffy's fight with Rob Lucci is full of this. It's pretty much mandatory anytime either of them level up, or even downgrade. The fanbase now jokes about how Luffy and Rob Lucci are officially "true bros" with all their bro fisting. Even the finisher is Gum Gum Jet Gatling, an improved Gum Gum Gatling.
- Even more so after the timeskip. You think Jet Gatling was awesome? Allow us to present to you Gum Gum Elephant Gatling. Take the standard Gatling, increase each fist to the size of a tank, boost it with Armament Haki, and let loose at a speed no slower than the standard. Mind you, a single Elephant Gun can punch out a Kraken, and Luffy nearly destroyed a ship the size of Fishman Island with this technique. This move is a potential island-buster. Yeah.
- And let's not even get started with Gear Fourth's Gum Gum Kong Gatling. Kong Gun alone was strong enough to send Doflamingo flying halfway across an entire city. Add in advanced Armament Haki to bypass physical defenses, then throw a barrage of those focused at a single target. Even Kaido's dragon form felt that one.
- Gear Fourth's Snakeman form also provides Black Mamba, which lays on hundreds, maybe thousands of punches from unpredictable angles while sacrificing Boundman's strength for indefensible speed. It's such a powerful attack that even Katakuri's advanced Observation Haki has trouble keeping up. The improved version, Gum Gum Hydra, infuses Conqueror's Haki into the punches for devastatingly increased damage. Not even Kaido's Super-Toughness can withstand it for long.
- In Egghead, when Luffy starts really getting used to Gear Five, he unleashes the even more devastating Dawn Gatling, which can cause serious trouble to even one of the Five Elders.
- To a lesser extent, Sanji and Bon Kurei sometimes do the same with their feet, and members of CP9 did it with their fingers.
- Whenever Luffy was hit with the Slow Slow Beam, Foxy would hit him repeatedly; making it seem like fisticuffs on speed to Luffy.
- Franky finishes off Señor Pink with one of these after tanking his strongest attack. His fists are made of iron.
- Charlotte Katakuri takes a page out of Luffy's book and imitates his technique by growing extra arms made of mochi. Having stronger Haki, he easily overpowers Luffy's version.
- Happens quite a lot in One-Punch Man. Most well-known examples where it's used is in Saitama vs Boros, Bang and Bomb vs Garou or various fights with Dragon level monsters.
- Ironically averted by Saitama, who just like the title of work says, only needs one punch to beat his enemies. Its both played for laughs and drama.
- Invoked by Deep Sea King, when he notes that Puri Puri Prisoner and few other heroes use this a lot. During his fight with Prisoner, he says that every punch needs to be used with the intention to kill, demonstrating brutally on him. PPP takes this lesson as important advice later.
- In Overman King Gainer, Yassaba's Rush Rod pulls one of this as a last ditch-effort attack. Doesn't work. He also has it Super Robot Wars K, where it's the Rush Rod's strongest attack (Go figure).
- Pokémon: The Original Series: The Punching Pokémon Hitmonchan made its anime debut as natural rapid fist fighter, and it demonstrates its prowess by mercilessly pummeling Pikachu.
- Cure Black in Pretty Cure does this, in what is probably a Shout-Out to Dragon Ball series.
- Ranma ½ has the Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken, taught to Combat Pragmatist Ranma Saotome courtesy of the Old Master and Miniature Senior Citizen Cologne. Cologne's Training from Hell involves him attacking her as well as taking chestnuts from a flame while trying not to get burned; Ranma develop a training using the piranha.
- In the manga, the first combat application of this training technique consisted of throwing hundreds of punches into a single spot so superhumanly fast that, even to a trained eye, they looked like the one punch accompanied by a "brrrrt!" machine-gun-like boom. Its weakness is that, since they're all full-power punches, Ranma can only let loose a few volleys of these before tiring himself out, which is why subsequent shows of speed use a flurry of faster, but less-powerful punches in a wide cone to press the opponent on the defensive instead of breaking through said defense.
- Consequently, the anime and video games mistook the training's name for the technique's name, which led to them depicting Ranma shouting "Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken!" when he launched his volley of ultra-speed punches.
- In the first Non-Serial Movie, he uses it to pelt an opponent with splashes of water so fast that they were like miniature cannonballs, after realising said opponent can use overlong chopsticks to catch his fists in midstrike.
- Prince Herb of the Musk Dynasty can also punch hundreds of times in an instant, overwhelming even Ranma.
- A subversion. Kodachi was able to jab like this with her clubs during the Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics competition until Ranma-chan caught her hand and revealed that Kodachi was actually holding a dozen clubs in one hand to simply create the illusion of such a barrage.
- Rebuild World: With the capability for "compressed time" (a more grounded equivalent to Bullet Time), which Akira learns to do on his own and others use drugs or implants to achieve, occasionally fights look like this, in particular when Akira fights Zelmo.
- Rurouni Kenshin:
- Sanosuke attempts to use this tactic against Saitou, reasoning that he can only counterattack once he has finished attacking. Saitou manages to block all of his punches, and returns the favor at a much higher punching power.
- Kaoru has rained (harmless, of course) blows on Kenshin to the sound effects ATATATATA and ORAORAORA.
- Saint Seiya
- Seiya, the Saint of Pegasus has a spam attack as his signature secret move, launching dozens (initially) of ultra-fast hits per second. Say it now:
"PEGASUS! RYUU SEI KEN~!!!!!" (PEGASUS! METEOR FIST~!!!!!)
- Initially, the Pegasus Ryuusei Ken is depicted as Seiya rushing the enemy and connecting with each fist on his opponent's body. Later on, the "meteors" were shown as hundreds of actual bolts of cosmo launched from each punch that Seiya starts firing off while still at range from his enemy, and, if successful, they all hit the opponent simultaneously just as Seiya dashes past them.
- Eagle Marin has a very similar technique, the Ryuseiken, and is initially faster. Justified as she's Seiya's teacher.
- Inverted with Shaina, who can do Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs block, as she demonstrates every times she fights with Seiya and casually blocks every single one of his attacks, even as he grows strong and fast enough to throw hundreds of hits per second (Seiya cannot defeat her until he manages to throw a single fist that is just too powerful for her to block). In their first battle she even berated him for going against her when he could launch a mere 85 fists per seconds (yes, she counted them).
- Aeolia, the Gold Saint of Leo takes this to a whole new level. His attack, Lightning Plasma, delivers 100 billion rounds of plasma per second! Eventually, Seiya manages to match or possibly even surpass that.
- The Seven Deadly Sins: The closing credits for the first half of season 1 feature Ban hitting Meliodas with a machine-gun punch. It shows up for real in Episode 11 when Ban and Meliodas are fighting in the Vaizel Fighting Festival.
- Shin Mazinger states that its last episode has 100 Rocket Punches in it. It exceeds that.
- Slayers has both Amelia and Philionel do this in one episode of Next (Amelia probably does it elsewhere as well), combined with their signature attack that turns their fists into magic weapons capable of harming low-level Mazoku.
- ST☆R: Strike it Rich: Riku's "Carnage Rush" is a barrage of punches, elbow strikes and knee strikes.
- Symphogear. Hibiki Tachibana finishes the fourth season's Big Bad Adam Weishaupt off in this manner.
- That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: Shion delivers one to Clayman during Walpurgis. Then she asks Rimuru if she may beat him up.
- Toriko has an attack call the 'Kugi' or 'Nail' punch, were he strikes at a precise point so fast that several punches can land simultaniously. The number of blows he's able to land increases throughout the serious going from '2 Ren' or 3 punch attack to being able to land 18 blowswith each arm.
- By this time in manga. He is capable of landing more than 50 with a single arm.
- Then there is the end of the anime and now the manga as of chapter 293 which features with Infinite Kugi Punch!!!.
- In Transformers: Super-God Masterforce, the wandering warrior Sixknight uses a series of rapid fire punches to bring down the Decepticon Pretenders in one episode. In an ironic twist, he is killed in the penultimate episode when Black Zarak bombards him with Devil Power, causing Sixknight to explode not unlike the results of a Hokuto technique.
- During Yusuke's fight with Sensui in YuYu Hakusho, Yusuke counters Sensui's Counter-Attack fighting style by binding their arms together with his wet shirt, leaving Sensui unable to block. Yusuke then delivers rapid-fire fisticuffs with one arm. If it weren't for the whole Split Personality thing Sensui had going on, Yusuke would have won the fight right there.
- Also, in the final tournament, Yusuke takes out forty-nine minor rivals at once with one of these.
"Hey, ref? What happens if everybody gets knocked outta the ring like that?"
- Earlier, at the preliminaries for the Dark Tournament, Yusuke does one of these in his sleep when he's attacked by an opportunistic demon, mumbling all the while about how Genkai's training sucked, he was tired of training, and he wanted to sleep. Which was probably the Funny Moment for that arc.
- And then Yusuke delivers an insanely fast barrage of punches to Toguro after releasing his Spirit Cuffs, hitting him so rapidly that his muscles deflate like a punctured tire.
- In a nutshell, expect this to be one of his signature moves in most mediums.
- Hiei also has this in the form of his Jaou Ensatsu Rengoku Shou (Wicked King Immolation Purgatory Scorch) AKA Fists of the Mortal Flame technique, where he coats his fists with fire and wails away. Some mediums may switch between either normal fire of demon fire, but Hiei clearly used normal fire during the attack's first showcasing in the Dark Tournament.
Comic Books
- The DCU:
- The Flash makes constant use of this trope, since he can rapidly move his arms with his Super-Speed. The more his punches approach the speed of light, the more mass they carry, and the more force they deliver, leading to his signature attack "Infinite Mass Punch".
- In Issue 36 of Outsiders, a villainous speedster punches Grace Choi in the face 25,000 times in just a few seconds. Even with her regenerative abilities, she looks like raw hamburger afterward.
- Superman occasionally uses rapid-fire fisticuffs, but only against his more durable opponents.
- DC × Sonic the Hedgehog:
- In Issue #2, Shadow uses Chaos Control to stop time and freeze Stepphenwolf in place, unleashing a barrage of punches that ends up defeating him.
- In Issue #3, Sonic snatches the cyan Chaos Emerald out of Reverse Flash's hands, and proceeds to take him out by punching him so fast that several afterimages appear as he punches him. As Reverse Flash is reeling, he questions if it was Sonic was using the Chaos Emerald to warp time and space, similar to Shadow's Chaos Control, while Sonic plays coy about if it was his own natural speed or if he used the technique to deal the blows.
- The mime Emilka Sza does this from time to time, whenever she tries to tell person something in mime very quickly.
- Marvel Universe:
- Primal Warrior Draco Azul: In the second issue, Draco Azul engages a Diablo with Rubber Man powers in a barrage of rapid punch parries.
- Blurr from Transformers used this technique a few times, but lacked the physical strength to make it very useful. Lampshaded once when fighting Thunderwing, who reacted far faster than Blurr was used to.
Fan Works
- A Diplomatic Visit: During the battle in chapter 7 of the sequel Diplomat at Large, Pharynx sees one Earth pony (Maud Pie, though he doesn't name her) using this to shatter a massive rock. He later uses the same trick, while shifted into her form, to shatter the Storm King's armor.
- Total Drama Legacy: The Thundercrack Fist, an attack used by Storm in "A Shocking Twist" that consists of a barrage of rapid-fire punches.
- With This Ring: The mind-controlled Flash pounds on Paul's construct armour faster than even his power ring can track, with only a red blur visible, but they're fighting in a near-vacuum, and Flash doesn't break through before collapsing.
Films — Animation
- The Incredibles: Dash is surprised (and delighted) when he discovers he can do this; however they end up being more annoying than anything else. Granted, while the mook he delivers them to does shrug it off, that's only because Dash had an Oh, Crap! moment at the sight of the cliff face the glider was on a collision course with.
- The Flash defeats Weather Wizard with this method at the end of their fight in Justice League vs. Teen Titans.
- Snowball does this to the circus monkey during their fight in The Secret Life of Pets 2.
- Superman/Batman: Apocalypse: Superman does this to Darkseid at the end of their fight.
- Wreck-It Ralph: Ralph can punch extremely fast. So fast, that his fists look and sound like jackhammers.
Films — Live-Action
Literature
- The Truth:
- Otto Chriek during the climax. Described in the text as having fists that blurred into invisibility as he pummeled a man like a punching bag.
- Not quite as fast, but Wee Mad Arthur (a six-inch gnome) uses his forehead to invoke this trope on an enraged bull's skull in Feet Of Clay. The sound of his repeated Rapid Fire Headbutts is compared to that of a very determined woodpecker.
- Light Fingers in The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School and The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School can do this.
- In the Wild Cards series, Croyd Crenson at one point wakes up with his reflexes so heightened that he can use rapid-fire fisticuffs. He's also superhumanly strong, meaning when he does use this, he tends to turn the person he's hitting into hamburger.
- Not as fast as some of the other examples, but Wes Janson, seriously outclassing his opponent, manages a reasonable facsimile of this trope.
Janson fired off blows into Thanaer's midsection. When the Adumari pilot tried to block those shots, Janson concentrated on his ribs, and Wedge could hear occasional cracks as bones gave way under his blows.
Live-Action TV
- The Seattle-based comedy show Almost Live! regularly did "Billy Quan" sketches, kung-fu movie parodies in which the two combatants would sometimes engage in a humorous version of this, simultaneously whaling away on each other in high-speed with no visible effect on either target.
- The whammied Flash does this in "Flash vs. Arrow" to his friend Oliver (AKA Arrow), who tries to stop Barry from murdering Iris's boyfriend Eddie. This show just how outmatched a guy with a bow-and-arrow against meta-humans. Sure, he's Crazy-Prepared, but that can only get him so far. It's surprising that Oliver doesn't have multiple broken bones from the scores of punches.
- Oliver does manage to escape his assault through quick thinking, hold his own, block critical strikes and thanks to his skill restrains Barry. More powerful or not, he's still less experienced in battle and it shows.
- Meanwhile, Shado can just about keep up with The Flash, as she demonstrates when fighting Ivo.
- Kamen Rider Accel's Maximum Drive in his Trial form is a storm of kicks, delivered in under 10 seconds. Played with in this parody.
- The titular Kamen Rider OOO also does a kick variant with the Cheetah Medal.
- Super Sentai
Pro Wrestling
- Shane McMahon's signature move (other than jumping off a tall structure) is to deliver a quick series of badly-worked punches to his opponent's abdomen.
- The Rock is renowned for delivering rapid-fire strikes to his opponents during matches and ambushes, which he delivers with great wind-up, before culminating with a final strike with a bit of pizzazz.
Tabletop Games
- Champions speedsters commonly buy this as an Autofire Hand Attack.
- In Dungeons & Dragons, The Monk class has the ability Flurry of Blows, which has more hits as you level up.
- Several Charms in the tabletop RPG Exalted allow you to do this with both unarmed attacks and melee weapons. Iron Whirlwind Attack, Ringing Anvil Onslaught, Octopus and Spider Barrage, Metal Storm, and so forth.
- Better yet, they let you do it with weapons that require time to reload and aim after every shot because Solars are just that awesome.
- Spam attacks are not only possible, they are the best possible strategy against worthy enemies.
- GURPS: Martial Arts spends a few pages discussing the utility of this. Long story short, you're probably going to want some level of superpowers.
- The flavor text for Tachyon's Lightspeed Barrage card (which features her doing this in the card's art) from Sentinels of the Multiverse provides the page quote. The quote is also a Badass Boast.
- Starblazer Adventures, based on the 1980's British science fiction Comic Book. The Fists of Fury stunt allowed you to strike at an opponent again and again, wearing down their defenses. Opponents don't get the normal +2 bonus when using All-Out Defense against your attack.
Toys
- A set of toys created for Dragonball Evolution involved characters made sort of like Rockem Sockem Robots. However, to increase the effect, the toys actually had two sets of overlapping arms and a ripcord start to simulate this effect.
Video Games
Web Animation
Webcomics
- In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, Nemesites come from a low gravity planet and so are physically weaker than humans. Fructose Riboflavin makes up for not being able to hit very hard by hitting many times, very fast. Having four arms helps.
- Mob Psycho 100:
- Reigen has a move called the "Justifiable Self-Defense Rush" which is him laying into an enemy with his fists as fast as he can while yelling "SELF DEFENSE!" As Reigen doesn't always know if he's using the move in self-defense, he yells out just in case. The first time we see him use it, Reigen blindsides an otherwise insanely powerful Esper that had defeated several other Espers in a few seconds.
- At another point, Onigawara gets angry at one of his subordinate punks for calling him an idiot and promptly beats the crap out of him with his Demon Rush, apparently as an overt reference to Josuke Higashikata, right down to a muffled "Dorararara!" behind the commentary.
- This occurs twice during Nixvir:
- Erik does this to the Emperor Telisconius, who clearly isn't amused.
- Erik and the Saucepan Man do this to each other as they spar.
- No Need for Bushido gives us The Thousand Fists of Fury, a Dangerous Forbidden Technique which, if done wrong, may break the user's hand.
- One-Punch Man:
- Alex's go-to move in Weak Hero. What he lacks in raw strength he makes up for with the speed that he can launch punches, smacking his opponents too quickly for them to react.
- Wigu's Show Within a Show features Topato, who will hit you with thousands of tiny punches.
Web Original
Web Videos
Western Animation
- Ben 10: Ben's fast alien, XLR8, can perform a quick succession of kicks that sound like machine-gun fire.
- Used occasionally in Celebrity Deathmatch, one notable example is Steven Seagal when he repeatedly pummeled David Spade with his martial arts before he threw him out of the ring.
- Hak Foo does this in Jackie Chan Adventures against Captain Black when he's wearing an Oni mask. Captain Black, to emphasize how badass the mask had made him, blocks all of them easily.
- Happens in the John Kricfalusi cartoon "Boo Boo Runs Wild" during Yogi and Ranger Smith's fight.
- Justice League:
- The Unlimited episode "Divided We Fall" has the Flash raining down who knows how many punches thrown at Super-Speed on the downed Luther/Brainiac fusion. It's also worth noting that in order to build up enough of a head start, he repeatedly ran around the world at super-speed.
- Flash (actually Lex in his body) also knocks out Doctor Fate with this in "The Great Brain Robbery".
- This happens a few times in the Looney Tunes short Dangerous Dan McFoo during the title character and his rival's fight.
- In the Mickey Mouse short "Guillver Mickey", Mickey and the giant spider do this to each other a few times.
- A favorite tactic of Mighty Mouse, sometimes his enemies like Oil Can Harry will dish it back at him.
- In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "Maud Pie", Pinkie Pie's sister Maud demolishes a boulder in mid-fall into pebbles with rapid-fire hooficuffs.
- The probable Ur-Example is Popeye, who sometimes used this technique after eating his spinach.
- The Powerpuff Girls did this on occasion, Buttercup was especially fond of it.
- In an episode of Star Wars: Clone Wars, Mace Windu and a battalion of clone troopers are surprised by a large Trade Federation siege weapon which is effectively a gigantic Shockwave Stomp device. When he loses his saber in the chaos that ensues, he proceeds to physically beat several Super Battle Droids to pieces with his bare hands, including several bouts of Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs that are so effective that they sound like heavy repeating blaster fire, with similar effect.
- In Steven Universe, Garnet is prone to this, being the most hands-on physical fighter out of the Crystal Gems. The best example is in "Ocean Gem", when she's having a Mirror Match.
- Lance does this on occasion in Sym-Bionic Titan.
- Total Drama:
- In "Hide and Be Sneaky", Izzy and Chef enter combat with a rapid exchange of punches, chops, and blocks. Chef gets the upper hand when he gets a punch through, but when they again get into rapid-fire fisticuffs, it's Izzy who finds the opening to jump up and kick Chef in the face to make her escape.
- Sierra engages three moon-influenced hostile birds in a rapid-fire fist fight encased in a big ring of violence in "Moon Madness".
- Young Justice (2010):
Real Life
- This is the best explanation of what Jeet Kune Do's 'straight blast' is. Punch the unlucky stiff as many times in the gut as you can, hurt him, and break his balance. Then, with his balance broken, hurt him some more. Imported from Wing Chun, not that this should surprise anyone; JKD's progenitor was a former student of its parent art's most famous practitioner in the twentieth century.
- The fact that it was only possible with special effects notwithstanding, one of the more memetic parts of the famous Reggie Vs. Iwata sequence of the 2014 E3 Nintendo Direct had Iwata-san channel his inner Kenshiro/Star Platinum.
- Some Martial Arts schools have drills where two students partner up, fetch a pair of hand-strapped pads, and one of the students puts them on, and the other strikes the pads. It can look like this if the drill involves repeated use of, for example, Northern Shaolin's Backfist-Rake Punch combo, and the repetitions are done fast enough.
- Mantis-Style Kung Fu has some forms that, when proficient, are meant to be fast and furious.
- Downplayed in combat sports; They don't punch fast enough to gain the illusion of growing multiple arms, but they sure as heck can punch fast. A good example is Filipino Boxer Manny Pacquiao, who's famous for his intense volume punching and combinations.
- Hares can apparently do this, moving their forelegs fast enough to rapidly punch their target. Their damage capability, on the other hand...
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