They have her surrounded, the poor bastards.
A Sub-Trope of Multi-Mook Melee. What separates it is its radialness. A character will be in the center of a ring of Mooks and then proceeds to kick ass inside that ring. During such fights, Back-to-Back Badasses is very useful, or a Spin Attack.
Conservation of Ninjutsu generally allows the guy/guys surrounded to kick significantly more ass than the mooks surrounding them.
You'd better hope your enemies adhere to Mook Chivalry.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Occurs once in a while in Bleach when a larger number of hollow (or in one Filler Arc, Ninja) turn up.
- In Negima! Magister Negi Magi, Asuna and Setsuna's battle against the demons in Kyoto played out like this. Once they began to realize that either girl could cut them down with a single stroke, they kept their distance and attacked more strategically in this fashion.
- Mazinger Z: Although the anime used a Monster of the Week approach most of time, in the original manga Dr. Hell was smart enough to send a lot of Mechanical Beasts at once, and Kouji constantly found himself in the center of a ring of enemies. It also happened a lot in the movies (Mazinger-Z vs Devilman and Mazinger-Z vs Great General of Darkness).
- In the first Mazinkaiser Ova Mazinger-Z and Great Mazinger were surrounded by an army of Mechanical Beasts, and Kouji and Tetsuya fought them Back-to-Back Badasses style.
- In early Ranma ½ Akane had to do this to get to school every day because of a stupid challenge proposed by Tatewaki Kuno: whoever defeated her in a fight would become her suitor. Of course, it all stopped since word got around of her and Ranma... well... Being together, that's it.
- Science Ninja Team Gatchaman: It nearly happened in a daily basis, with the Spectra commanders sending a legion of Mooks to try to overwhelming the team with sheer numbers. Needless to say, it was not a very effective strategy.
- Seen in My Bride is a Mermaid by Nagasumi after he gets to be affected by Sun's singing during an episode.
- Most of Naruto's opponents usually pull off this trick due to his preference of using Shadow Clones.
- In Brave10, the Braves often find themselves beset this way, and sometimes beset new members in this fashion.
Comic Books
- Richard Dragon, Kung-Fu Fighter: The cover of issue one shows Richard Dragon and Bronze Tiger back to back fighting off the goons surrounding them.
Films — Animation
- During the big fight scene at the climax of Robots, Cappy and Piper become encircled by mooks. They do a literal version of this trope: Cappy swings Piper around in a circle, smashing every mook that has the misfortune to come in contact with her feet.
- Happens in Shrek with Fiona and the Merry Men as well as the wrestling scene in Farquaad's arena.
Films — Live-Action
- The Dark Knight Trilogy is full of this as well. Batman seems to find himself surrounded on all sides rather frequently; however, they don't just wait for the next guy to get knocked down but rather attack all at once. Fortunately, Conservation of Ninjutsu is in full effect each time.
- The Bruce Lee film Fist of Fury has an early example.
- This happens in Kill Bill (Volume 1) in the Crazy 88 fight scene.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: the Balrog chases them off before the fight actually happens but in the Mines of Moria, the Fellowship finds itself completely surrounded by a really absurd number of goblins.
- The tactical... originality of this maneuver in Real Life is lampshaded in DM of the Rings and serves as the image for Hollywood Tactics.
- The Multi-Mook fights in The Matrix, particularly the fight against the Smith clones in The Matrix Reloaded. They notably do a reasonable job of averting or justifying Mook Chivalry, and in the most extreme instances, we see hundreds of Smiths crowding around and dancing circles around Neo as he violently brandishes his tetherball pole, thrashing anyone who gets too close. Then he loses the pole and everything goes downhill from there.
- River in Serenity fights off Reavers coming at her from all sides.
Live-Action TV
- Power Rangers do this in EVERY EPISODE.
Music
Video Games
- In the Battle of 1000 Heartless in Kingdom Hearts II, Sora, Donald, and Goofy are shown surrounded by tons Heartless, before splitting off to fight. You control Sora fighting the aforementioned 1000, with Donald and Goofy presumably fighting the rest off screen.
- Super Smash Bros. Brawl: Meta Knight and Marth combine this with Back-to-Back Badasses in the Subspace Emissary.
- KickBeat is literally nothing BUT a series arenas set up for this. Set to various Indie-rock and Metal tracks. And it is AWESOME.
- The Matrix: Path of Neo
- Batman: Arkham Series: The bigger Multi-Mook Melee fights often turn into these, especially on the endless fight challenge maps.
- Warcraft III: Some Herd Hitting Attacks (Thunder Clap, Immolation, War Stomp...) deal damage in a small radius around the caster, making them much more effective in these situations. Some deal less damage but debuff the affected enemies by slowing or even stunning them.
Western Animation
- In BIONICLE 3: Web of Shadows, the Toa Hordika are surrounded by a horde of Visorak this way in the Coliseum arena. The fight goes on and on with the Conservation of Ninjutsu in place, until they're finally overwhelmed by the spiders and surrender.
- Megas XLR engages in this frequently, with Coop in the middle and a lot of Aliens, Robots or Alien Robots surrounding him in nearly every battle that isn't a Duel Boss. Coop typically then would casually rip the arms or legs off the nearest Mook, (Or just pick up said Mook,) before laying down some serious Grievous Harm with a Body. When this happens in the pilot (1000 Glorft robots), Kiva's robot is standing next to Megas. Kiva says the odds aren't good, Coop agrees and trashes her robot to even the odds.
