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Combined Energy Attack
aka: Spirit Bomb
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Dark King: Where do you get such power? Nagisa: You've made a mistake! You're not just fighting the two of us... Honoka: ...you're fighting all the life on this world! All that life is connected through us!
A special attack that uses the combined energy of everyone in a cast with the coup-de-grace, usually but not neccessarily, being delivered by the lead. It can be an actual attack technique such as in the former Trope Namer or it can be used as a powerup for something, such as an attack.
A common subtext to the trope is that the worst villains are inevitably weaker because they don't have friends to rely on (see The Power of Friendship). It's also a handy way of showing that the hero is very strong without nullifying the importance of the other cast members.
Often combined with Gondor Calls for Aid, when the main group needs more energy than they themselves can generate. May be fueled by Innocent Bystanders Fighting For Survival. May include the Power of Trust and/or Clap Your Hands If You Believe.
Not to be confused with Combination Attack or Combining Mecha or All Your Powers Combined. This is just about collective energy which even the most faceless and generic Muggle can provide.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
Comic Books
- The Star Wars Expanded Universe had the Thought Bomb, one of the most powerful and destructive applications of the dark side of The Force, created by many powerful Sith Lords. It was so powerful that it not only killed every Jedi in its radius, but the Sith who created the bomb as well.
- In the Ultimate Galactus mini-series, Jean Grey and Professor X, combining their power with an enhanced version of Cerebro, link every human on the planet to beam thoughts of living at Galactus until it got scared off. Well, vaporizing 30% of it by shooting a goddamn Big Bang at it helped too.
- Prof X pulled something similar in the original X-Men comics: He went into hiding for months (with the dying Changeling taking his place among the X-Men) and linked every mind on Earth with his to fend off an impending alien invasion.
- In an Age Of Apocalypse After the End issue of What If?? Dwayne Taylor uses technology from the Watcher's Dome to give himself incredible powers to fight off Galactus but, after seeing his brother die, uses a Combined Energy Attack instead to take down the monster.
- Another X-men example. During a mission in Russia, X-men got into a fight with a one-shot villain Soul Skinner, a telepath who got a serious Power Born of Madness upgrade after discovering his wife was an undercover kgb agent monitoring him (and that she let their daughter die to avoid blowing her cover). With the X-team on the verge of losing, Psylocke performed a rather unusual move: she found a group of children hiding in a nearby building (the only people in town who hadn't yet been turned Empty Shell by Soul Skinner's rampage) and linked their minds into her psychic knife. Then she stabbed Soul Skinner with it. Since his powers were pretty much powered by Wangst, the concentrated Children Are Innocent shut down his brain.
- Used in a bizarre manner—perhaps subverted or parodied—in an issue of the original What If? series. Korvac, a Knight Templar who wants to create a perfectly ordered universe, is opposed at every turn by the Marvel Universe 's cosmic beings (mostly because his plans involve slaughtering them). At the end of the story, Korvac absorbs the powers and life force of every being on Earth, starting with his allies, in order to face off with an alien armada and destroy the universe. It was even lampshaded by the editors in the letters column, when one fan questioned whether Korvac was really strong enough to kill all the Celestials on Earth at the time—they argued that if all those cosmic beings, plus the superheroes, plus every living being on Earth wasn't enough to kill one Celestial and absorb its powers (then go on to the next till finished), they didn't know what was.
- In the classic X-Men Phoenix Saga, all of the X-Men donated part of their life forces to give Jean Grey the strength to repair the M'Kraan crystal.
- In the Day of Vengeance DC miniseries, Sourceress uses the combined power of every magic user in the DCU to fight The Spectre.
- Scott Pilgrim's cast comes together in an equally defensive and offensive version of this at Scott's first fight with Matthew Pattel.
Film
- The anime movie Harmageddon had the heroes combining their powers to defeat an extraterrestrial power.
- Angels in the Outfield: In the deciding game, a variation of this is used: No angels will show up because they want the baseball team to win the game on their own and prove to themselves that they can do it. However, to inspire Mel, the pitcher, to strike out the final batter, coach Knox and Roger fake an angel appearance by using the "angel signal" to trick Mel into thinking he has an angel with him. What Knox and Roger didn't anticipate was that the entire stadium full of fans would mimic the signal in order to give Mel the confidence and courage needed to throw one more strike. After he gets the last out, Knox tells Mel the truth.
- At the Climax of Gamera II: Advent of Legion, our hero destroys his foe with the Mana Beam, the force of which is channeled directly from the life of Earth itself.
Literature
- The "prayers of the saints" are what literally empower God's Angels in This Present Darkness and Piercing The Darkness by Frank E. Peretti.
- Similarly to Amterasu in Okami, deities in Terry Pratchett's Discworld books do not, specifically "attack" anything, beyond the odd thunderbolt, but they require the belief of their followers in order to maintain power and status as gods. Some gods go to great lengths to prevent this from happening-Blind Io, for example, is in fact EVERY thunder god in every pantheon across the Disc, and has over seventy hammers, thus ensuring that even if one particular thunder god's worshippers die out or convert, he is still riding the gravy train in Dunmanifestin.
- The Great God Om, in "Small Gods", was very nearly reduced to the wisp of consciousness that is the fate of all fallen gods, because all but one of his followers had lost sight of the God and simply believed in the Church. Though by channeling the renewed belief of an entire natioin at the end he becomes mighty.
- The Children of the Lens, in the Lensman series, focus the Psychic Powers of trillions of Lensmen across two galaxies into a single blast which finally destroys the evil Eddorians.
- In the Foundations Edge story by Issac Asimov, the Second Foundation creates a linkage of all of their mentallics to counter a new threat. The telepathic planet blocks the link to the connection.
- This is basically the point of Tamora Pierce's original Circle of Magic series — in Sandry's Book, the title character weaves together the magics of the four leads, making them all stronger, and each of the subsequent book titles (Tris's Book, Daja's Book, Briar's Book) tells you which of the four takes the initiative this time in using their combined magics to resolve the plot.
- In The Rowan, the first book of Anne McCaffrey's Talents series, humans who are telekinetic and telepathic can "merge," making the "focus" of the merge into a much stronger telekinetic. The Rowan does this with her support staff to deal with an incoming missile, and with four other extremely strong telekinetics to deal with some invading aliens; when the invading aliens turn out to be the preliminary wave of a much bigger invading fleet, she and her husband, respectively, serve as the foci for merges of every psychic woman or man in the galaxy.
Live Action TV
- In Buffy the Vampire Slayer's season four finale, "Primeval", Buffy's friends pump up her strength with theirs using a magic spell, so that she can fight the demonic cyborg Adam.
- Most seasons of Power Rangers and Super Sentai feature an uberweapon formed by combining the melee weapons of the individual rangers.
- Of course, this usually doesn't kill the monster, instead the Big Bad transforms it into a huge monster. Then the trope comes into play again as the rangers combine their powers to make a Mega-Zord.
- Also used in the Power Rangers Mystic Force finale, when the human and mystic communities unite and their support supercharges the Rangers' magic.
- Gosei Sentai Dairanger features a more typical Combined Energy Attack as the Dairangers' first on-foot finisher: The Chi Power Bomber attack.
- In the 199 Heroes movie of Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, all of the previous Super Sentai teams lend their power to the Gokaigers and Goseigers, forming the Super Sentai Bazooka.
- In the Doctor Who episode "The Last of the Time Lords", over the past year, Martha has been travelling the world, telling people to think of the Doctor at precisely zero on the Master's countdown; the Doctor, interfaced with these people through the Master's own psychic control network, shines with power and defeats the Master. Some thought this ridiculously cheesy and What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic??, while others thought it incredibly awesome.
- Ridiculously Cheesy vs Incredibly Awesome essentially describes the entire 47 year history of the show (and spin-off media). Notably because of the sheer number of events and stories that are simultaneously described as being both. That's why this troper loves it.
- In the finale of Kamen Rider Den-O, the super-powerful Death Imagin is defeated by a Combined Energy Attack version of Den-O Sword Form's Extreme Slash, where the blade detaches and strikes the opponent...except that this time, each of Ryotaro's allies "catches" the blade in mid-flight, imbues it with some of their power, and throws it at Death, before Den-O catches the blade, dashes in, and hacks it up with a flurry of All Your Colors Combined slashes.
- In Kamen Rider Decade All Riders vs. Dai-Shocker, King Dark is defeated by Decade merging with Kamen Rider J, forming a gigantic Decade, then performing his standard leap-through-cards Rider Kick...except that all the other Riders turn into the cards themselves, each donating their power to Decade as he passes through. Crowning Moment of Awesome? Yes, why yes.
- An interesting inversion in Volume 5 of Heroes. It's been revealed that Big Bad Samuel Sullivan's Earth Bending ability is powered by the presence of evolved humans. It's strongly hinted that if he gathers enough followers at the Carnival, he'd gain the power to split the Earth in half.
- Used in a recent arc of The Sarah Jane Adventures, where Luke, Clyde and Rani realize that together, they're strong enough to defeat the Nightmare Man.
- The finale of Ultraman Tiga has every child on Earth channeling their light into Ultraman Tiga, transforming him into Glitter Tiga and joinning him in firing his attacks.
Tabletop RPG
- In White Wolf's Exalted, the Dragonblooded Exalted represent the very epitome of this trope and All Your Colors Combined; when they throw Elemental Bolt or Elemental Burst together, their powers aren't just cumulative - the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. When they channel their power through the toughest of them (the maximum raw power is determined by the toughness of the caster), each may add as much to the attack as s/he can. The focus is also the one who determines base accuracy, which increases (along with range) for each participant. Lastly, the elemental effects combine; with all five elements in one attack, you are subject to a localized earthquake, hurricane-force winds, drowning by pulmonary edema, set on fire and infected by a relatively harmless plant venom - all at once.
- Eg; with 5 Essence 2 (rookie, in other words) Dragonbloods throwing an Elemental Burst together, count on at least 10-15 levels of damage to everyone within a radius of 10m, practically guaranteed to hit, and the whole thing has a minimum range of at least 200m. Basically enough to wipe out a squad of un-Exalted humans or hurt a small group of Exalts. Pull together a company of veterans, and they'll throw around blasts that can level city blocks and blast the shit out of anything short of Primordials. Also note that during the First Age, the Dragonblooded were the common soldiers, and numbered in the millions.
- Magic: The Gathering does this in so many ways.
- Affinity: The card's cheaper for every X you control, where the card has affinity for X. A variant exists with three cards in Urza's Saga where they count a particular card type.
- Slivers: They share abilities.
- Domain: There are five basic land types. Control 1, you get an effect of 1. Control 2, you get the effect of 2. Et cetera.
- Last Stand and friends: These cards count the number of a given basic land type. (Last Stand counts all five.)
- Collective Unconscious, Keldon Warlord, and friends: These count type rather than subtype but are otherwise the same as Last Stand.
- Exalted: Like the aforementioned cards, only it only applies when exactly one creature attacks, and it gets stronger for every other creature.
- Allies: Allies have abilities that activate when an ally comes into play, count your allies, or both.
- Defender: Continuing Zendikar's list of "things that are usually bad or neutral are now good" (auras, excess land, Awesome, but Impractical big creatures), we get defender, which means this creature can't attack, but in Zendikar, a lot of creatures with defender give bonuses to the player if there are more creatures with defender.
- Counting cards in hand or graveyard. This can also hurt a player, as is the case of Black Vise.
- Lords invert this, granting more power to each creature of the same tribe, or something similar.
Video Games
- The final stage of Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan involves the cheerleader protagonists leading the people of Earth as they combine their ki into a massive blast of energy in order to save the world from impact with a huge meteor. In Ouendan 2, the two rival cheerleading teams join up to cheer the people of Earth on as they combine their power to keep the sun from going out. In the American version and Spiritual Successor Elite Beat Agents, our heroes do much the same thing to destroy the mothership of the music-hating aliens invading the Earth.
- In the final stage of Space Channel 5, the Big Bad disables the sound system on Ulala's spaceship, rendering her unable to follow his patterns... until the scores of people she helped in the game previously show up and provide music in the form of an a capella version of "Mexican Flyer", the game's theme song. At the climax, the people focus their energy on a radio antenna in order to power up an energy blast big enough to blow away the bad guy.
- The Drive system of Kingdom Hearts 2 falls into this trope (not to be confused with the wide variaty of combination attacks possible). Sora can temporarily use the power of one or both of his allies to access more powerful abilities.
- In the final battle of Alundra, all of the townspeople pray for the main character's victory, and the prayers' energy fully restores your health and magic at the beginning of the battle.
- EarthBound's final boss fight ends on such a note as well through the Prayer ability, invoking the prayers of everyone the heroes have encountered, ever — eventually breaking the Fourth Wall and asking the player for his prayers.
- There's not one, but two Combined Energy Attacks in Skies Of Arcadia. The first, Prophecy, has the entire party call down a giant moon on their opponents for a huge amount of damage. The second, Blue Rogues, has the crew of the party's ship either dealing damage to the enemies or healing the party. Either Combined Energy Attack also makes the enemies skip their turn. Both of these require your Spirit Points be at full, though, so most players don't use them often.
- Though it is not a specific attack, Amaterasu in Ōkami was only able to gather the energy needed to defeat the Big Bad when the world finally realizes that she's more or less God and offer her their prayers.
- In the final battle of Final Fantasy IV, after the entire party is wiped out by Zeromus' Cutscene Power to the Max attack, they are brought back to life and restored to full health by the prayers of all the other Player Characters and important NPCs they've met over the course of their journey.
- This includes a character who died partway through the game.
- Pretty much exactly the same thing happens at the end of Final Fantasy III, including the Dead ex Machina.
- Inverted in Final Fantasy VI: Sabin's Mantra splits an amount of HP equal to his to every other party member, divided by the number of other party members. This is actually useful, as in the World of Ruin, he's the second party member you get.
- In the Blitzball minigame of Final Fantasy X, Wakka's special shot Auroch's Spirit has the effect of combining his SH (shoot) stat with the SH stat of all the original Aurochs (Himself, Datto, Letty, Jassu, Botta, Keepa) that are on the field.
- Final Fantasy Tactics A 2 gives us Al Cid, who is more powerful for each woman on your side.
- The prayers of everyone on Earth help empower Mega Man in Mega Man Battle Network 4 when he's challenging an alien who has put Humanity on Trial.
- And at the end of the first Mega Man Star Force Luna, her two cronies, Sonia, Pat Sprigs (Gemini Spark) give their power to Mega Man Geo-Omega so he can blow up Andromeda and save the world.
- At the end of Paper Mario, the wishes of everyone in the world empower the living stars to grant Mario the Eleventh Hour Superpower he needs to counter Bowser's new superpowers.
- Also spoofed in the same scene where everyone is wishing for Mario's success. A young toad is shown wishing for Shroom Cake.
- Likewise, during the final battle in Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door, the wishes of everyone Mario has helped give him the strength to confront the Shadow Queen.
- In Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time and Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story most of the special attacks involve multiple characters combining their attacks into one powerful move.
- In The Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker, the Master Sword can only harm Ganondorf if the descendants of the Sages are praying for Link's success within their temples.
- In Breath of Fire 3, there's a dragon form that is different depending on which characters you have in your party.
- In the original Breath of Fire there's one character who powers up by merging with the other characters, and the final dragon form combines everyone.
- The Team Attacks of the Suikoden series, that are not Combination Attack call upon the various interpersonal relationships between the Loads and Loads of Characters — be it love, loyalty, family, True Companions, friendship, camaraderie, or even rivalry. For the most part, this results in attacks that are significantly stronger than the sum of their parts... though not always.
- Also spoofed sometimes—a few of the combinations are not inuitive and are tied together by stuff like mutual status as Bishounen.
- In Eternal Fighter Zero, Ikumi Amasawa's Final Memory attack, "Sword of Friendship", calls out her four friends from the game MOON to attack her foe, with Ikumi herself delivering the final blow. If the attack doesn't finish off the opponent, Ikumi and her friends will strike a pose together as her opponent plummets back down to the ground.
- The way it's executed is a huge Shout Out to Captain Commando's Captain Storm, not that it's any different from any of the other countless shout outs in the game...
- The Persona series:
- The final battle of Persona 3 has the Main Character powering up his Universe arcana through the willpower of the rest of the cast.
- And even before the battle, he had acquired the power of The Universe through the bonds he had forged with various other characters.
- This happens again in Persona 4, in both forms. After technically beating the Cosmic Horror and learning that they can't proverbially punch out Cthulhu, the Protagonist collects the powers of the bonds he's formed and summons his ultimate Persona to deliver a proper knockout blow on behalf of humanity.
- An outright shameless 'Combined Energy Attack' appears in Wild ARMs 4, in the form of the Arc Impulse group attack. Initially just an energy blast the four character pull off by reciting, rather cheesily, about positive philosophical concepts, the final boss being reduced to 1HP grants them an 'upgraded version' with which to strike the killing blow. This version results in the four pulling together a giant, combined ARM, and reciting a new set of cheesy philosophical lines, proceed to blast it into oblivion. Needless to say, this troper found it was freaking brilliant given how unashamedly the sequence was handled.
- Arc Impulse's first appearance in the series was very similar: in the final battle of Wild Arms 2, the main character uses it, gaining more and more power from the wishes and friendship of just about everyone in the world, dealing more and more damage to the final boss, until the protagonist's Love Interest makes her speech...which, of course, gives him enough strength to deal a whopping 99,999 damage, destroying the boss for good. Forget "freaking brilliant," this is quite possibly the series' ultimate Crowning Moment of Awesome.
- Phantasy Star IV allows the PCs to combine their attacks. The immensely powerful Destruction combination attack requires simultaneous action all four mandatory party members: three combine their most explosive attacks, and the fourth puts up a shield so the party doesn't get nuked.
- This happens in the final boss battle of The World Ends with You. Although you start the battle alone and almost hopeless since your partners have been absorbed/captured by Megumi, dealing damage allows Shiki, Joshua, and Beat to send their light pucks to Neku, multiplying your damage ratio higher and higher until Neku finishes the fight by funneling it all into his hand and firing it as a beam of light, actually ripping Draco Cantus' flesh off of its bones. And you though Nekozilla was a powerful fusion.
- How could ever forget about the ending to Warcraft 3: Reign Of Chaos. Thousands of wisps simultaneously detonating packs enough life energy to cause the demon Archimonde (who managed to trash you and your allies bases in the last mission of all the campaigns) to explode in a massive firestorm.
- The "Collected Power" card from Yu-Gi-Oh! is most likely a reference to this.
- Suikoden Tierkreis plays this a little too straight in one ending. It's possible to defeat the Final Boss with the combined energy of all the 108 characters you've recruited. More specifically, their Life Energy. The only survivor is the protagonist, who's corrupted into replacing the villain—as the villain was corrupted into replacing the villain before him, when he, too, sacrificed a hundred and seven lives!
- In .hack GU during the final battle against Cubia the Epitaph Users give all their power to Haseo and then when he can't even defeat it because he's missing one epitaph user, Ovan comes to the rescue. Afterwards its one attack and then Cubia is gone.
- Inazuma Eleven has "The Earth" shooting technique, performed by Endou, Goenji, and Fubuki by channeling will power of every active players in the team to create a huge energy ball before kicking it toward the goal. After learned, however, the player can have Endou abuse it in ever match without any need of gathering the power thing, in contrast to the anime adaption, where the skill is used only once throughout the series.
Western Animation
- X-Men example: The animated adaptation of the Dark Phoenix Saga ended with every X-Man on the team giving a portion of their life forces to bring the de-Phoenixed Jean Grey back to life.
- One of the countless magical artifacts in Xiaolin Showdown, the Sun Chi Lantern, allowed one person to gain the strengths and abilities of his allies as long as they were within the lantern's light radius. Naturally, it was only used once.
- The heroes pull one off in the animated special, Freaknik the Musical. This one unique in that it saves Freaknik and is used to defeat the big bad.
Webcomics
- This Collar 6 strip seems to be hinting at a rare VILLAIN example of this trope.
Real Life
- Japanese Giant Hornets are pure, unrelenting Accidental Nightmare Fuel to those familiar with them. Thirty of these hornets the size of a person's thumb can annihilate a hive of thirty thousand bees as seen here. However, the bees native to Japan have evolved a defense that involves a bee and about a couple hundred of her sisters that can only be described as a real life Combined Energy Attack. See it here.
- A real life Combined Energy Attack is being casted recently by Akira Toriyama himself, in order to gather support to victims of the 8.9 earthquake and the tsunami that hit Japan, all through This Video. By viewing it, all proceeds will be donated to the victims of the Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. The donations collected will be reported on http://www.shueisha.co.jp/ as well as magazines published by Shueisha Inc. It also Doubles as a Crowning Moment of Awesome. See Japanese version Here.
- Another Real Life example would be BOINC, for computers. Combining the processing power of volunteered personal computers all over the world via the internet, the network can achieve performance outputs equivalent to large supercomputers. It's used for executing computationally intensive tasks in all manner of scientific research, including physics, biology, astronomy, meteorology, and more.
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