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Eat my fist, it's good for you!
"AAAAAAHHHHHTATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATA!!"
Basically, Good Old Fisticuffs with More Dakka.
A phenomenon common to anime, video games, and comic books, Rapid Fire Fisticuffs is the act of a punching an opponent dozens (if not hundreds, if not thousands) of times a second. Multiple hits are guaranteed, and even if each strike doesn't cause much damage by itself, the cumulative effect can be absolutely brutal. If you use one of these attacks in a fighting game, you can almost expect that this move's command will involve tapping your 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 Teleport Spam.
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.
This is actually Truth In Television, as there is actually a Jeet Kune Do technique called the "Straightblast" which is exactly this. It's really difficult to keep at it for very long, though. (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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- In Fist of the North Star, Kenshiro's Hokuto Hyakuretsu Ken (North Star Hundred Cracks Fist) 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.
- 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.
- A staple ability of many Stands in Jojos Bizarre Adventure is to launch a furious assault of fists. The most famous two users of this ability are Dio and Jotaro, who both have their own oft-parodied battle cries.
- The characters in Dragonball Z do this all the time.
- Cure Black in Pretty Cure does this, in what is probably a Shout Out to the two above series.
- Grimmjow does this to Ichigo's face at one point in the Bleach anime. For a whole minute.
- Aaand Gantenbainne Mosqueda hits Chad in the gut this way, too.
- Seiya, the Saint of Pegasus in Saint Seiya has a spam attack as his signature secret move, launching thousands of ultra-fast hits per second.
- 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!
- Ranma One Half has the Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken, taught to Ranma Saotome courtesy of the Old Master Cologne. In the manga, it's merely a speed-boosting method of Training From Hell, but it led directly to Ranma using a "rush at the enemy with hundreds of punches per second" assault as his opening move in most subsequent combats. Consequently, the anime and videogames 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.
- Elsewhere in the series, Ukyo demonstrates that she has possibly an instinctive grasp of the basics when, in a moment of embarassment, she subjects Ranma to a blurred barrage of slaps.
- Prince Herb of the Musk Dynasty can also punch hundreds of times in an instant, overwhelming even Ranma.
- Tomoyo Sakagami from Clannad has rapid kicks that can hit for about 1000 times. It is a kick variation.
- God Hand 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!)
- Luffy on One Piece has the Gomu Gomu no Gatling move, as well as its glorious upgrades.
- At least once, during his fight with Arlong, Luffy does this while going "ATATATATA..." a la Kenshiro.
- To a lesser extent, Sanji and Bon Clay sometimes do the same with their feet, and members of C9 did it with their fingers.
- Whenever Luffy was hit with the Noro-Noro Beam, Foxy would hit him repeatedly; making it seem like fisticuffs on speed to Luffy.
- I'm pretty sure that Foxy's punches are just that damn fast. Near the end of their fight, Luffy sent a Gomu Gomu no Gatling at him without being hit by the beam, and Foxy matched it blow-for-blow with his "Megaton Kyuubi Rush".
- G Gundam's Chibodee Crocket's ultimate move, Machine Gun Punch is like this, spamming punches that lets out lots of energy fists it's almost projectiles. Some Super Robot Wars game that feature him also tend to turn his lesser move Burning Punch into this.
- Some ninja in Naruto favor showering their opponents in fists. Neji's Eight Trigrams: Sixty-Four Palms is only the beginning; the video game adaptations provide truly ludicrous barrages as super attacks (there Neji has a "One Hundred Twenty-Eight Palms" version, which hits every chakra point on the body, killing the opponent instantly.
- Sakon and Ukon use the ability to fuse their bodies together to deliver 'tarenken' (It was once translated as 'gatling punch')
- Also, Might Guy's Asa Kujaku / Morning Peacock — which was also a [1] for him.
- Ippo's Dempsey Roll in Hajime No Ippo qualifies, though a skilled enemy can counter to stop it.
- Actually a subversion, as when Ippo tried accelerating it to true rapid-fire speeds, it ended up making the individual hits weaker. Similar speed/power tradeoffs are shown with Hayami's Shotgun and Itagaki's Porcupine.
- In Mahou Sensei Negima Takamichi's teacher was capable of this (note that his punches have over cannon-level strength). Several other mages also display this ability.
- 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.
- During Yusuke's fight with Sensui in Yu Yu 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.
- All of Kenichi's masters in Kenichi The Mightiest Disciple, but especially Appachai.
- 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.
Comic Books
- The Flash makes constant use of this trope.
- In the Marvel Comics universe, Quicksilver, Northstar, and the Whizzer also use it.
- It's safe to say that every comic book speedster has used it a time or two.
- Superman occasionally uses Rapid Fire Fisticuffs, but only against his more durable opponents.
- 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.
Film
- The fight between Neo and Agent Smith in The Matrix features Smith slamming Neo against the wall and spam attacking him with blurred-arm, rib-cracking body blows. This even causes Trinity to comment, "Jesus, he's killing him..."
- Later, Neo returns the favor by using this technique to block Smith's attacks.
- Liberally used in Ip Man by the titular hero.
- Truth In Television - kinda. Linking multiple straight punches in quick succession - also known as chain punching - is one of the cornerstones of Wing Chun, the southern Chinese martial art of which the Real Life Ip Man was a master. However, in practice students are advised to keep it to short bursts: it's impossible to maintain the initial striking power beyond a certain point (not to mention the risk of interruption), and to prolong it further is dangerous and impractical.
- The lead actor in Ip Man, Donnie Yen, uses this as a sort of trademark in his movies, especially the ones he gets to choreograph himself. Punch flurries showed up a lot in Flash Point, and his character used palm flurries exclusively in Dragon Tiger Gate.
Live Action TV
Literature
- In the Wild Card 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.
- Otto Chriek during the climax of The Truth. Described in the text as having fists that blurred into invisibility as he pummeled a man like a punching bag.
Tabletop Games
- 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.
- In Dungeons And Dragons, The Monk class has the ability Flurry of Blows, which has more hits as you level up.
- 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.
Video Games
- Street Fighter has three:
- Chun Li and her infamous Lightning Legs (Hyakuretsu Kyaku).
- Edmond Honda's Hundred Hands Slap (Hyakuretsu Harite).
- Dee Jay's Machine Gun Uppercut.
- Gen's Hundred Snatches (Hyakurenkon) in the Alpha series.
- The manga Ryu Final: Street Fighter III posits that the physical component of the Shun Goku Satsu consists of instantaneously delivering thousands upon thousands of punches, each of which releases a Hadouken upon contact. OUCH.
- Yoshimitsu in Tekken and Soul Series games has a spinning standing slap combo, a crouched version and finally a leg sweep one.
- Slightly averted in that, after the sixth of any such attack, Yoshimitsu becomes dizzy and falls over.
- Joe Higashi from Fatal Fury has the TNT Punch, which adheres this trope, until it got modified into something different in The King Of Fighters.
- Ryo's Thresher Punch (Zanretsuken) and the Robert's Spirit Kick (Geneikyaku) from Art Of Fighting and the King of Fighters series. These do not require button spamming to execute, though, though they will still produce fist/feet spamming.
- Ralf Jones (from that same game series, but also Ikari Warriors and Metal Slug 6 and 7) has a signature move called the Vulcan Punch, in where he throws a barrage of explosive jabs at his enemy.
- One of Sabin's Blitz techniques from Final Fantasy VI: Pummel (Bakuretsuken), which is performed with the same command as Ryo's Thresher Punch from Art of Fighting/King of Fighters (See above). His ultimate technique, Bum Rush (Mugen Toubu), involved circling his target to pummel them mightily from every direction.
- In Final Fantasy XI, the monk job has the 2h (two hour, an ability which can only be used every two hours) 'hundred fists', which eliminates combat delay, and results in punches being thrown non-stop. This is occasionally combined with the Awesome But Impractical ability Souleater, which consumes your own health to deal high damage to the enemy (this combination practically always kills the user), and the Lethal Joke Item Kraken club, which can attack multiple times per round by itself..
- In a slightly less spectacular but more practical example, the final Hand-to-Hand weapon skill, Asuran Fists, delivers eight punches in lightning-quick succession.
- Star Ocean: Till the End of Time has Cliff Fittir and his Fist Of Fury. His partner, Mirage Koas, has a similar move called Infinity Kick. It might not use her hands, but it's still unarmed combat, so it deserves a mention.
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Two Several examples in Super Robot Wars:
- Ialdabaoth's Kouha Kishin Ken.
- Zamzeed's Chou Shin Dou Ken, to the point that it's a blatant Shout Out of Hokuto Hyakuretsu Ken.
- Soulgain has two attacks that are partially Spam Attack: Byakko Kou and Code Kirin (spam strikes don't make up the majority of either one, though)
- One of Coustwell Brachium's possible strongest attacks has this in spades.
- In OG Gaiden, Alion's Agares can clone itself and Hokuto Hyakuretsu Ken (yes, it's another FOTNS Shout Out) an enemy from both sides at once.
- Millia Rage's Lust Shaker from Guilty Gear.
- Robo-Ky also has an Overdrive parodying Dio Brando from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure as mentioned above: Dio attacks while repeatedly shouting "Muda!" ("futile" or "useless") while Robo-Ky's attack is accompanied with dozens of word bubbles containing the similar-in-meaning "Dame!"
- Also, Jam's hidden overdrive is a 100 hit combo, and most likely a homage to Fist Of The North Star.
- The fistfighter skill in Tales Series, Rengadan and sometimes spells like Lightning and Grave also qualify.
- Hitmonchan, the boxing monster from Pokemon; according to the Pokedex in the original games, when it looks like he's just standing around, it's because he's actually throwing mind-bogglingly lightning-fast volleys of punches (likely represented by Comet Punch).
- Taken further in the anime and Pokemon Special with all three Hitmons. Hitmonlee's legbands are even implied to actually be springlike...
- Kirby, Link, Fox, Mr. Game & Watch, and Cpt. Falcon have attacks like these in Super Smash Bros. In Brawl, Pit, Falco, and Meta Knight have attacks like these, but Link doesn't have his anymore.
- Kirby was always able to do this in his games whenever he uses his copy ability on the "Knuckle Joe" enemies.
- Some partner moves in Paper Mario work like this, scoring multiple attacks that do one damage each. Due to the way defense works in the game, these attacks are normally completely useless against enemies that have a defense stat greater than 0.
- Some fighting games have code in place to break up attempts at spam attacks, such as automatically making it miss if used more than twice in a row.
- Hinata's Rengeki-ken from Rival Schools.
- Viewtiful Joe has Red Hot Hundred, the most useful move in the series. Essentially distorting time to allow you to punch so fast the enemy can't do anything about it.
- Also a subversion in that from our perspective, he's punching at a perfectly normal rate of speed.
- The only problem with the Red Hot One Hundred is that, unless you take it out fast enough, the game takes pity on the poor enemy you're beating up and grants them a brief temporary invulnerability (just like you get every time you get hit), forcing you to wait until an opening comes around to start again.
- God Hand is all about punching people, be it really hard or really quickly (or really hard and really quickly). As such, spamming attacks comes in a variety of flavors. Build yourself a twenty-hit combo with the right moves, mash buttons when prompted with the "Pummel" command to deliver a volley of blows to your enemy's midsection, or use "100 Fists" to throw a barrage of punches that culminates in you launching the poor fool into the Milky Way. Your fights with Azel, Gene's rival and self-styled "Devil Hand," are especially awesome because you can get into a pummel duel with him.
- Symphony of the Night's Crissaegrim only deals mediocre damage, especially when compared to the later weapons, but hits up to four times per attack (depending on proximity to the target). There's also the Kaiser Knuckle as a more literal example.
- Can't forget the Fist of Tulkas, which shares the blurry-punch-spam special attack. And if you're counting the Crissaegrim, heck, the Rapier's a stabbing-version of the punch spams.
- In Chrono Trigger, Robo's Machine Gun Punch Tech consists of him running up close and smashing the enemy with repeated punches.
- And one of his later Techs, Uzi Punch is what happens when one combines this trope with the Rocket Punch.
- Magical Battle Arena: the title character of Card Captor Sakura, thanks to THE FIGHT. Watching sweet, kind, gentle, Sakura Kinomoto bust out a 16-hit rapid punch and kick combo on a hapless opponent is both jarring and awesome.
- Spider-Man: Web of Shadows had more than a few moves like this. In the red and blue suit, Spidey can unleash a flurry of punches and in the black suit, he has more than one type of tentacle flurries.
- One of the Flash's Heroic Brutalities in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe is this.
- Too many attacks in Jump Ultimate Stars to count.
- In Elite Beat Agents, this is how Sam the dog fights off an army of other dogs.
- This is Sonic the Werehog's preferred method of disposing of Nightmares in the PS360 version of Sonic Unleashed.
- City Of Heroes has several attacks like this. Flurry is part of the Super Speed power pool, while Shadow Maul (and the Sands of Mu temporary power/Veteran's reward power that copies it) is based on negative energy, and One Thousand Cuts is the ultimate Dual Blades attack.
- Even better is that these attacks are cone-based, meaning they can hit up to five targets in front of you simultaneously.
- Unfortunately, it's one attack roll, so if you miss you'll just be standing there punching air with a hilarious "miss" sound effect. Due to negative energy's accuracy issues, this led to the Fan Nickname "Shadow Whiff."
- In Fallout 3, when you have enough action points in VATS and stack up enough melee attacks, you can get five or six punches on an opponent (seen in slow motion) before they can begin to react, at least giving the illusion of this effect.
- Vulcan Blaze, Adell's final special attack from Disgaea 2, is of this nature.
- The Nekomata class in the first game also has a very self-explanitory attack called Fists of Fury. (changed to Cat Fight in the second and third games)
- The Kick13 and Hyper Fist moves from Devil May Cry qualify, as do some of Nero's Buster moves.
- Until recently, this was possible in Left 4 Dead by way of bug exploiting.
- Ichirin's partner Unzan invokes this trope with his BRO-fist danmaku.
- The primary melee attack in Shadow Warrior.
- Every boss fight in Donkey Kong Jungle Beat features Donkey Kong delivering savage beatings onto his opponent, although certain smaller-scale baddies can also suffer this treatment in specific situations. This is a rare instance where the player character is actually a far more brutal and violent figher than any bad guy; I wouldn't be surprised if DK could go as high as eight or nine rapid-fire punches a second.
- "The One" combo in The Path Of Neo does this quite thoroughly.
Web Comics
Western Animation
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 the most famous practitioner in the twentieth century of its parent art.
- And extremely controversial outside Jeet Kune Do and Wing Chun, as there's little or no hard evidence that it's more efficient than fewer, more concentrated attacks (and fairly obviously, a lot less efficient for an inexperienced fighter).
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