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A special attack that uses the abilities of everyone in a cast, with the coup-de-grace being delivered by the lead. This can be literal energy or a special coordinated team attack. Often made possible By The Power Of Greyskull.
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. May be fueled by Innocent Bystanders Fighting For Survival. May include the Power Of Trust. Not to be confused with Combination Attack or Combining Mecha.
Examples
Anime & Manga
- Naturally, Goku's Spirit Bomb in Dragonball Z, which is powered by living things lending their energy to a good heart. This evolves throughout the series. The first time it's used, it's just the planet's power itself. The second time draws on the power of other planets and moons nearby. The third time, everybody on Earth sent power, only to be outdone by the final time, where everybody in the universe helped. Every time, doing this took forever. It should be noted that despite all the trouble involved in using it, until the very end of DBZ the Spirit Bomb never actually works.
- That's ok, everything takes forever in Dragonball
- It should be noted, that there's very good excuses for the first two attempts not working: Vegeta was hit with a diminished Spirit Bomb (delivered second hand by Krillin; Goku seemed to know it would only buy them time). The second time, he had to draw from the planets because Frieza had killed all the life on Namek. (That, and Frieza couldn't be defeated until the legendary Super Saiyan appeared)
- Plus it tends to work pretty well on The Movies
- The "Sailor Planet Attack" and "Sailor Teleport" occasionally used in Sailor Moon. Not to forget the entire Sailor Team combining their powers to give Sailor Moon a mandatory power-up at the beginning of the fifth season, and her using support from Earth's entire population to defeat the Big Bad in the fourth.
- Ichigo powers up temporarily at times in Tokyo Mew Mew by taking on some of her friends' powers. In the manga, this also takes their weapons and combines them into the gigantic Strawberbell Version Up.
- Episode 13 of Keroro Gunsou has the Keroro Platoon beating rival alien invader Viper by going into a series of Toku/Sentai inspired poses, leaps, and sound effects, ending in a team-up super-attack based around basketball metaphors (though Keroro messes up and uses golf).
- Yes! Precure 5, halfway through, gives the girls weapons. Combining the five weapons together turns them into a giant mecha-butterfly, allowing the girls to perform Pretty Cure Five Explode. In Yes! Pretty Cure 5GoGo!, they all get swords, allowing Pretty Cure Rainbow Rose Explode, which involves combining giant man-eating flowers. Yes.
- Digimon Adventure: Taking out a Big Bad required Angemon to use the digivolving power of all other characters and funnel it into his attack.
- Angewomon's debut required everyone's attacks (including Angemon's) to take out a badder Big Bad.
- The second Digimon movie had Izzy redirecting billions of emails from around into the Big Bad, causing him to slow down to a crawl from the lag.
- And the fourth movie had half of Tokyo redirecting its collective goodwill for the heroes through their cellphones, which inexplicably took the form of a BFS for their 30-foot-tall cyborg dragon-man.
- Digimon Frontier's highest Evolutionary Levels required that all the other characters' powers be given to the two who can evolve that far, essentially resulting in all but those two being Brought Down To Normal (as once villains started getting tough enough to require these forms frequently, most of the characters' roles became to simply give their powers to The Hero and The Lancer and get out of the way.)
- Of course, then they realized that this strategy didn't work, as the only time they even managed to frighten the current villains was when they all used their normal transformations along with some of the dead bad guys. Subverted Trope? Maybe.
- Then there's the battle with Icedevimon, in which the two most powerful Digivices are "frozen," forcing the others to pick up the slack. Yes, it was a little hokey that a Champion-level could isolate Digivices, but if it means I get to see some more buttkicking action from the sidekicks, I'm not complaining!
- In the final episode of Shaman King, Yoh defeats Hao by channeling the spiritual energy of everyone on Earth.
- Sky Girls Delta Lock (OVA and TV) and Quadra Lock (TV only) attacks which are used to dispatch each Monster of the Week.
- The third season of Slayers ends this way, with Lina doing the honors.
- A good deal of battles, particularly arc-ending battles in Saint Seiya end with Athena's Saints (usually just the Bronze Saints, but sometimes the Golds if they're available) willingly relinquishing their Cosmo to either Seiya or Athena herself to deal the final blow. Even more notable in that the Saints' patron constellations (like Cygnus, Draco, Phoenix, Andromeda, or Pegasus) manifest visually as helpers to the character delivering the attack.
- The Spiral of Light spell in Magic Knight Rayearth is the team-based version, wherein Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu combine their Fire, Water, and Wind magic in a singular attack that they deliver simultaneously.
- Ronin Warriors has the Armor of Inferno which is the merging of all the armors of the team.
- Zettai Karen Children has Kaoru attempting one of these in a clear parody of the Dragon Ball one, only she asks for the energy of perverts.
- Towards the end of the Thriller Bark arc of One Piece, the Straw Hats (plus Brook who hadn't officially joined yet) finished Gecko Moria's biggest baddest zombie, Odz, by combining their talents to get him into position for and receive the maximum amount of damage from Luffy's final attack.
- During the showdown with Nakago in Fushigi Yugi, Miaka and the other Celestial warriors send all of their power to Tamahome to enable him to take Nakago down.
- Pokemon Special is pretty fond of this. The two main instances are at the end of Yellow saga, where Red tells his fellows to send all their power to Yellow so she can unleash Pika's Megavolt on Lance, and at the end of Emerald saga where the ten Pokedex holders command the ultimate techniques - Frenzy Plant, Hydro Cannon, Blast Burn, and Volt Tackle - from their Pokemon to defeat the Kyogre illusion.
ComicBooks
- In the Ultimate Galactus mini-series, Jean Grey and Professor X, combining their powers 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.
Film
- The infamous "Sin Bahamut" fight in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, where the party helps Cloud catch up to the flying monster by sequentially shoving him up into the air.
- Including the deceased Aerith.
- The anime movie Harmageddon had the heroes combining their powers to defeat an extraterrestrial power.
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 worshippers had gradually stopped worshipping him and started worshipping the rites, ceremonies, and sermons.
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 feature an uberweapon formed by combining the melee weapons of the individual rangers.
- 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 Its Not Symbolic?, while others thought it incredibly awesome.
- It WAS awesome, and anyone who says "Tinkerbell Jesus" is a dirty communist.
- Is there some reason it can't be both?
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/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.
- Earth Bound'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.
- The Crew Attacks in Skies Of Arcadia.
- Though it is not a specific attack, Amaterasu in Okami 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.
- 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.
- 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 When 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 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 various Team Attacks of the Suikoden series call upon the various interpersonal relationships between the Loads And Loads Of Characters — be it love, loyalty, family, Nakama, 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.
- Even though it wasn't a theme in the story, Chrono Trigger is known for, among many other things, it's group-based attacks, in which every character could do a unison attack with another. There was also a three-person attack for every group combination possible.
- Not entirely true. The Triple Techs mostly required Crono to be one of the three people for the attack. Also, Magus has NO double or triple techs with ANYONE. The only exceptions to these statements are the 5 special techs that all use 3 specific character combinations (of which Magus was a part of two) that don't include Crono. However, they require special accessories to even use, which makes them pretty unappealing considering none of them are that good and there are much better accessories to wear.
- In my opinion, the statement "None of them are that good" leaves out Grand Dream. It's hard to find the accessory needed to unlock the tech (the Gold Rock), but man, is it powerful!! Unlike most triple techs, it's Desperation-type, which means that the less HP your party has, the more damage you do. In the final battle against Lavos, where you will almost certainly end up with your HP very low, this tech simplifies defeating him a lot.
- 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 final battle of Persona 3 has the Main Character powering up his The World arcana through the willpower of the rest of the cast.
- And even before the battle, he had acquired the power of The World 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.
- The last boss of Klonoa: Door To Phantomile is defeated by using the 5 Moon Cannons, ancient weapons each owned by one of the 5 tribes of the world, which only work when fired all together. Klonoa's job is to toss monsters into them as ammunition, but to finish it off, he has to launch his best friend Huepow at it as a projectile. Huepow survives, but barely.
- An outright shameless 'Spirit Bomb' appears in Wild AR Ms IV, 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.
Western Animation
- "By your powers combined, I am Captain Planet!": Captain Planet And The Planeteers had the Planeteers engaging in Stock Footage to summon the title character, usually so he could mop up the bad guys and their evil plans.
- The Care Bear Stare (which is not really a stare per se), seen in the early TV specials and movies.
- 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.
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