Zerg Rush / Anime & Manga

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• Attack on Titan:
  • A large horde of Titans rush to the Female Titan and eat their target before they can be stopped, allowing its pilot a chance to escape from an ambush.
  • Also how the Attack Titan falls after its rampage in Trost (but not before murdering all the titans in said rush) and how Erwin tries to deal with the Armored and Colossal Titan kidnapping Eren.
  • Pretty much the only tactic that normal Titans have, which is also what makes Abnormals and the Shifters so dangerous.
  • Thanks to his new found power as the coordinate Eren is able to use normal titans in this way, siccing huge horde on Reiner and Bertolt
• Used in Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts, Class F sets up traps so that they can overwhelm Class A students one at a time. Pretty effective until the rest of Class A breaks down the desk barrier Akihisa set up. In another summoner battle, Akihisa tricks the FFF cult to sacrifice themselves by declaring their enemy has a girlfriend. It works well enough to let him slip by.
• The Safeguard in Blame!, since they have many a Mook Maker on hand and act as little more than a kind of elaborate anti-virus system (if the virus was humans).
• Cells at Work! CODE BLACK: Trichopython, or Athlete's Foot fungi, are usually nearly harmless. In Chapter 6, it is discovered that the body's poor health and unhygienic conditions let them multiply out of control, and the immune system is overwhelmed by an army of them.
• In D.Gray-Man the Millennium Earl launched a siege on the Exorcist's base to retrieve a bit of Applied Phlebotinum from them. It consisted of vast numbers of Akuma, which most Exorcists are capable of dispatching with relative ease. It nearly worked, too.
• In Dungeon Seeker, humans used Zerg Rush tactics to overwhelm the elves. Because humans reproduce and grow up much faster, their forces were able to recover from losses much quicker than the elves could ever hope to.
• A non-violent version appears at the climax of Durarara!!'s first season, when Mikado Ryuugamine publicly confronts Namie Yagiri in a crowded hotspot of Tokyo nightlife: admitting he has neither "the power nor the wisdom" to reason through her delusion, he will instead rely on numbers, and presses the "Send" button on his cell phone. Every phone for at least a city block goes off at once with an incoming text, simultaneously revealing every single person present to be a member of the Dollars, and Mikado himself to be their mysterious, urban-legendary founder, intimidating Namie and her mere handful of armed goons into retreating. Well, okay, Celty driving down the side of a building and going berserk may have helped that along a bit, but still.
• In Goblin Slayer, this is known as "Goblin Tactics". Goblins alone are no bigger, stronger or more imposing than a human child. But goblins attack in huge groups of fifty at a time, and it's brutally effective against both novice and veteran combatants; novices tend to panic at the sheer number coming at them and make mistakes that get them killed, experienced fighters can run out of stamina, and experienced spellcasters can run out of spells. Given every goblin is by default a Child by Rape on a human or elven woman, the fact that they can sustain such heavy losses is a doubly terrifying thought.
• The aliens in both Gunparade March anime series follow this trope only by virtue of their superior numbers and mindlessness. Individual units are stronger than even the Humongous Mecha of Earth (let alone more conventional vehicles, which are present in greater numbers) and the latter are forced to survive via better tactics and superweapons. Orchestra does show humans finally catching up with genetically engineered Mons.
• In Hellsing Alucard's level 0 releases the sum of all the millions of souls he's collected over the centuries, literally drowning entire armies in them. The irony is that a variation of this trope is The Major's tactic against Alucard. First he lets the vampire battalion murder most of London resulting in above 3 million deaths. Then the Vatican's army arrive and fight the vampire battalion. Alucard shows up and uses his level 0 state to kill them all. The goal is not to hope that his large army will kill off Alucard but to trick him into believing that this was their plan causing Alucard to believe he had been victorious. This would cause him to start to absorb all of the blood (and with it the souls) of all the millions that have died. Then Schrödinger would kill himself and be absorbed so that Alucard would gain his reality warping powers which would cause Alucard to cease to exist.
• In Inuyasha, Naraku's minor yokai do this almost every time, with nearly identical results.
• Lupin III:
  • Lupin The 3rd: The Board Game starts the game with at least 8 cops to support Zenigata, so that player can try to Zerg Rush Lupin and the others. It probably won't work any better than it usually does, though.
  • Lupin III anime episodes and movies sometimes have hundreds of police officers with Inspector Zenigata on the "Lupin Taskforce" to capture Lupin by sheer numbers. Green vs. Red reversed it by having a rush of hundreds of Lupins at one point. It Makes Sense in Context.
• In Mazinger Z, Baron Ashura often sends large numbers of Iron Masks to attempt to murder Kouji Kabuto (and his friends) when he's out of Mazinger-Z or to try to overwhelm or get Mazinger-Z and Aphrodite-A confused. (It works with Aphrodite once. They are so many, so fast and so annoying that they distract her and slow her down.) Curiously, it's inverted in one of the first chapters of the original manga: three Iron Masks crawl in Kouji and Shiro's home and almost succeed in killing Kouji.
  • In the original manga Dr. Hell also used that tactic in the Final Battle, mobilizing two of his armies, a Cool Ship, a Cool Airship and forty Mechanical Beasts against Japan and the Mazinger army. In Mazinkaiser Dr. Hell also used twice that tactic (and it worked in one of them!) and The Mykene Empire sent huge numbers of Warbeasts all over the world to conquer the surface. Similarly, the Vegans from UFO Robo Grendizer attacked Earth cities with vast fleets of mini-ufos, often backed by at least one mothership and several Saucer Beasts.
• Mobile Suit Gundam: in the backstory to the anime, it's revealed that the Earth Federation (taken by surprise by the effectiveness of the Principality of Zeon's Mobile Suits) was forced to resort to this tactic at several battles, sending swarms of technologically obsolete Saberfish fighters against the Zeon forces with horrific losses on both sides.
  • After the GM is put into mass-production, the Federals then pull off this tactic again. Since they have such a massive advantage in terms of raw materials, production capability and personnel, the Federation simply grinds the Zeon forces into submission. Even though many of the Zeon machines outperformed the GM (and even the titular Gundam itself), the sheer weight of numbers (along with the fact many of their best pilots have been killed over the course of the war) won out.
• Mobile Suit Gundam 00 has problems with different versions of this throughout its life.
  • In the first season, the three superpowers believe the only way they stand a chance against the technological superiority of the Gundams is to dog-pile them with as many mobile suits as possible (with varying degrees of success). Once the playing field is leveled by a mysterious benefactor handing the militaries their own GN Drive-powered mecha, the Gundams had to start fighting smart just to survive.
  • In the final battle of the second season, Big Bad Ribbons Almark's master plan involves cheap mass-produced mobile suits, piloted by clones, which use Trans-Am to become almost unstoppable kamikaze missiles.
  • In the movie, the ELS mostly rely on this because in their first few encounters with humanity, they don't have ranged weapons. Of course, they also assimilate both organic and inorganic matter on contact, so they probably would have resorted to ramming speed anyway. One character in the final battle bemoans that the human forces are outnumbered over 10,000 to one... and it's not clear whether this is intended to be hyperbole. Given that nebula-like clouds of ELS can be see in the background of many external shots in the final battle, it probably isn't.
• Naruto:
  • The title character can summon a large number of copies of himself. However, the individual clones are so fragile it rarely manages to hurt anyone. Ultimately he finds out that they're better as a training tool, since having 10 clones allows him to train 10 times as fast.
  • The samurai of the Land of Iron charge Sasuke when he threatens the meeting of the Five Kage. Of course, Sasuke has finally become so enraged with everything that's happened, that he hacks his way through a good half dozen of these men.
  • Madara's one hundred thousand Zetsu army made with the First Hokage's chakra is a version of this. While somewhat effective in combat, their true purpose was to cause enough chaos allowing Madara to fully revive.
• One Piece:
  • This was part of the defense of Enies Lobby. A 10,000 man force of Mook Marines and other forces was set to defend against any attempt to attack against it. While Luffy single handedly defeated a good tenth of that force and more fell to the allies the Straw Hats brought with them, the power of the Zerg Rush kicked in after the Straw Hats got to where their battles with CP9 would take place and their allies were subdued and captured.
  • Don Krieg and his pirate armada presumably utilized this tactic as well. While they call themselves the strongest pirates in the East Blue, Luffy informs them that they're just the one with the most people.
    • Fifty ships. 5000 men. East Blue calls it an invasion force. The Grand Line (Mihawk in particular) calls it target practice.
  • This tactic is pretty much useless now against the protagonist and in the majority of the New World. The ability "Conqueror's Haki" allows the user to impose their will on someone, and, if the target's will is weak enough, knock them out. Luffy used this ability to knock out 50,000 Mooks in one blast - and the only reason he didn't knock out the other 50,000 is because his crew needed someone to fight.
• “Overlord (2012)” The Re-Estize Kingdom attempts this with an army of well close to 100000 troops, with 70000 in the left flank alone, as they are attacking the Baharuth Empire. Problem is, Ainz is both a One-Man Army and a one man Zerg Rush. He straight up kill the ENTIRETY of the left flank and uses it to summon 5 Dark Young, children of Shub-Niggurath, who finish the job, much to the delight and horror of the Baharuth Imperial Troops.
• The climax of Pokémon: Destiny Deoxys has the security system of LaRousse City going haywire after Rayquaza's rampage on the city. The security robots go and attack Rayquaza (as well as the two Deoxys when they attempt to protect Rayquaza) en masse until Ash shuts down the system.
• In Pokémon Adventures, a whole bunch of Unown that the Sinnoh trio saved in a previous occasion bombard the Galactic grunts blocking the entrance to the Veilstone Galactic Building so that Pearl can sneak in unnoticed.
• The main tactic of the Invid in Robotech is to overwhelm the enemy with enormous numbers of technologically inferior mechas:
  • During their assault on Tirol in the Sentinels movie, the defences of Tirol's capital city exact a heavy toll on the attacking Invid scouts and a squadron of bioroid apparently manages to stalemate them... And then three Invid carriers show up and unleash six hundreds shock troopers. That's just the vanguard, the first wave is still arriving. Note that here the Invid are at their weakest and less numerous.
  • The Battle of Reflex Point at the end of the series and Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles. In which the Robotech Expeditionary Force shows up with a large fleet, opens fire on the Invid carriers to inflict as much losses before they can launch... And the Invid still come in such numbers they grind down the REF fighter complement and manage to ram their motherships. This is with a ground assault on their main installation tying up much of their forces.
• In both Sei Juushi Bismarck and the more well-known modified dub Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs the primary attack pattern of the Deathcula (or Outrider in Saber Rider) forces is to swarm defenders with massive numbers of small, one-man attack craft blasting away with laser fire and missile volleys from all directions. It's actually a very effective tactic that is never quite effectively countered even by the end of the series. Even the titular Bismarck has almost been overwhelmed at times.
  • And in a twist, the good guys return the favour at the climax of the series after the Deathcula massacre the entire population of Mars. The thing is, instead of using small one-man attack craft, the Federation is using the same tactic using battleships. The Deathcula forces crumble under the onslaught, and even their Humongous Mecha are simply blown to pieces by the sheer number of firepower thrown their way.
• Seen in Sword Art Online when the Aincrad Liberation Front (also known as just the Army) rushes a floor boss with precisely zero preparation. They didn't even scout first. The ones who rescued them are more than a little pissed at their stupidity, and explicitly call them a "zerg-rush guild." It later turns out that there is a political fissure in the guild, and the leader of one faction managed to trick members of the other into using this tactic.
• The Gunmen of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann appear in massive numbers when engaging in large scale combat, at the command of their respective leaders. To a much more frightful degree, the attacking forces of the Anti-Spiral race work in deadly efficiency. Fresh troops come in increasingly greater numbers as fast as they fall, pulling out the wrath of lethal bait-and-switch tactics designed to kill an enemy the moment the underestimate their foe.
• Hakumen, the Big Bad of Ushio and Tora has the Hiyo, small yokai minions spawned from Hakumen that looks like a flying eyeball with ears. They can combine together to form a stronger entity or attack en masse in huge numbers. They are also capable of eating specific memories in humans and monsters alike.
• In Valvrave the Liberator the Dorssian forces often launch these kinds of attacks-its less because numbers are all they have, and more because the heroes have a very small force. The Valvraves can stop most of these, but often they need superior tactics, provided by L Elf to win, and sometimes they just have to run away.
• On both Lion Voltron and the original GoLion, the Red Berets were a small but terrifying force, whether in the very bloody original or the bowdlerized adaptation. In both instances, either through murder or just creating terror and chaos, they had the population shuddering inside the Castle, demanding angrily that their heroes protect them and on the edge of despair if not revolt. But when the Berets show up even there, they swarm Black Lion and explode, their dust covering the lead Lion with gunk that renders it immobile and therefore unable to join the others when the giant enemy monster shows up. This all may have been a sign of the growing desperation of the evil lead trio, in that they didn't think this through. The Berets were causing a lot more damage and terror than many of the enemy attacks, but were traded for disabling one of the Lions, which by that late point in the series, the heroes had gotten very good at undoing.
• World Trigger: Used on both sides.
  • As they can't afford to send their entire forces on what amounts to one of many expeditions, the enemy Neighbors usually send masses of Trion Soldiers instead. If they send out (a few) human Neighbors, it's about to be an Oh, Crap! moment for Border.
  • Then, there's the heroic version on Border's end. When it comes to human/sentient parties, they lose out in individual strength, but they always have superiority in numbers—which is a large part of why they can ultimately stand their ground. No matter how many of them have to bail out, there's always someone to pick up the slack.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: At one point during the Duelist Kingdom arc, Yugi uses Multiply, which causes Kuriboh to multiply each turn, in conjunction with Kuriboh's special ability allows it to nullify the damage done by one enemy monster. Due to there being no limit on how many monsters can be summoned with one magic card in the manga and anime's version of the game, this allows him to create a virtually impenetrable barrier of the little guys.

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