Asskicking Pose



The "en garde" combat stance which is adopted by hand-to-hand fighters in combat, just before opening cans of whoop-ass upon their oh-so-very-dead opponent. Ideally, the stance used should not merely be functional; it must visually convey the message "Your butt, kicked by me."

A common variant is, rather than a combat stance, to smile threateningly as if to say "I'm about to kill you. Very much." A second variant is, faced with a display of force, to simply play The Stoic and exude an aura of "You guys are so toast." Can include cracking knuckles, or cracking the cartilage in one's neck. When kicking someone's ass, it's important to be limber!

See also Bring It—a challenging gesture daring the opponent to attack. Supertrope of Super Sentai Stance.

Contrast Victory Pose. Usually in animation, the pose is rendered in more detailed artwork.

Anime & Manga

 * Masane Amaha from Witchblade, after transforming for the first time, does the "come hither for your ass kicking" version, namely the defiant stance coupled with index finger motioning for the asshole to step forward for their aforementioned asskicking.
 * It is pretty common among Super Robots:
 * Mazinger Z asskicking pose was pretty simple: upon activation, Mazinger flexed his arms over his head. Most likely it is a Shout-Out to Gigantor, what did the same thing. Great Mazinger and UFO Robo Grendizer, on the other hand, had not one.
 * Getter Robo: Getter Robo G stood upright with its arms folded across its chest. It was so popular and badass-looking it was reused by a lot of mecha shows, Anime/Gunbuster being the best known.
 * Kotetsu Jeeg used the same pose when it was assembled.
 * Combattler V: Combattler flexed one arm backwards as it stretched its another arm forward.
 * Voltes V: Voltes crossed its arms across its thorax before spreading them outwards. Electromagnetic energy crackled from its hands and formed a "V" letter.
 * Daimos: Kazuya was an expert karate fighter and its robot mimicked his motions, so Daimos used asskicking poses the whole time.
 * GoLion adopts such poses during Stock Footage transformation sequences, particularly when creating weapons.
 * Dragonball Z. About every character, but special mention go to the Ginyu Force and "The Great Saiyaman!"
 * Transformers. Pretty much every version of Transformers ever, in fact.
 * Most of the HiME from My-HiME (except Yukino), after they draw their weapons out of thin air. Gaze upon Shizuru's spear stance, ye lowly, and despair!
 * Naruto has Rock Lee, whose combat stance involves a mid-to-low center of gravity, left hand held behind the back (potentially to grab kunai and such), and right hand held forward in the classic "come and get me" gesture. Definitely a sign of rampant badassery, whether or not it ends up working.
 * In just about every episode of Fist of the North Star, before kicking some ass Ken's shirt would explode off and he would crack his knuckles.
 * Parodied in the Azumanga Daioh Supplementary Materials. Tomo asks Chiyo what a cool pose would be. She responds with an exaggerated Asskicking Pose, prompting Kagura to ask, "What's with the cool pose?"
 * Parodied in the supplementary manga of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, which had a huge background picture of the White Magician Girl Caro doing this while Hayate mentioned how she might lose to her too since she's undergone Nanoha's Training from Hell.
 * Played completely straight in Episode 25 of StrikerS. Nanoha stomps the ground "to brace herself." In the DVD adaptation, the stomp cracks the ground underneath her feet. Immediately thereafter, the Crowning Moment of Awesome for the entire series happened.
 * Ku Fei of Mahou Sensei Negima! assumes what looks like some kind of Crane stance after she deals with crowds of common challengers. Which, in addition to the incident during the Summer Festival, she does every day before class. Kotaro and Negi do one before their fight against Wilhelm.
 * Jack Rakan, one of the strongest people introduced in the manga, in his tournament final fight against Negi, struck a totally serious combat pose. This man blew up a mountain on accident and one of his first attacks in the series was mistaken for a terrorist bombing. and he even held back on that one to keep from turning the opponents to dust. When the smile gets wiped off his face and he gets serious...It's scary.
 * Inuyasha often cracked his knuckles before a fight. One handed. Open in a claw hand, not clinched into a fist.
 * In the Lucky Star OVA, 3/4 of the main characters and their teacher are playing a MMORPG, and discuss finishing poses. What they wind up with is the end of the Hare Hare Yukai dance, with a random passerby filling the needed position. They quickly agree that it doesn't work.
 * Parodied in Mahoujin Guru Guru. The "Cool Pose" is an actual ability that can only be used by The Hero. Nike strikes a pose while a sphere of yellow light surrounds him. Though it's noted the ability has no actual function besides making everyone stare at him in awe.
 * Rurouni Kenshin has a couple. Kensin's Battousai glare is one, notable for scaring the bejeezus out of Kurogasa and several small-time villains. There's also his battou-jutsu stance, which looks so ridiculously cool that it has reached the level of being powered by its awesomeness.
 * One Piece has a lot of these:
 * The Straw Hats use them a lot obviously. Luffy typically cracks his knuckles or stretches before a fight. Zoro usually puts his sword in his mouth before fighting, but the real Asskicking Pose comes when he takes the bandanna off his arm and puts it on his head. Robin most often crosses her arms in front of her and closes her eyes when she's using her powers. Chopper's arms-folded-in-front-of-him Death Glare is not even slightly ruined by the tiny blue knapsack and pink hat that he always wears.
 * Franky and his "SUPER!" pose.
 * Sanji lights a cigarette before his ass kicking.
 * In the Yu-Gi-Oh!! manga, Yami no Yugi would usually point at people before giving them a punishment game and driving them fucking insane.
 * For full effect: One Pointer Finger + Red Eyes, Take Warning + Slasher Smile + Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner = You going insane.
 * The eponymous Gunbuster has an iconic stance of standing with its armed folded. It's Badass.
 * JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has these everywhere. You can't go a single chapter without seeing one.
 * Parodied by Angel Blade, whose heroines do this in the buff.
 * Code Geass had quite a few for a lot of different people. The one that strikes this troper the most is the pose that the new Guren SEITEN Eight Elements is in during the Second Battle of Tokyo. After fighting its way to Lelouch's position (and slicing through dozens of other Britannian Knightmares) Kallen floats her way down in front of Lelouch. After she stops, her energy wings swing out and a pink circle starts pulsing out from the Guren for no reason other than to look awesome. During her "fight" with Suzaku's for-once inferior Lancelot, she almost never leaves this position. Said pose can be seen here.
 * About every episode of Sailor Moon has the title character doing such a pose at the end of any In the Name of the Moon speech.
 * Katekyo Hitman Reborn: If you see Sawada Tsunayoshi raise both his hands up, one in front pointing at you, the other creating a massive fireball behind him, get down on your knees and pray for a swift death.
 * If he crosses his hands and flames start pouring from the vents on the backs of the gauntlets, there's no need to pray; your swift death is coming. And it's coming very fast.
 * Fullmetal Alchemist:
 * There's Ed's clap pose and Roy's finger-snap-ready stance.
 * Also when Ed takes his red cloak off, and/or his shirt.
 * Alex Louis Armstrong; nearly everything he does when sparkling, during a fight or not, is his Asskicking Pose.
 * The Shinobi Five, a freelance ninja squad from Gintama.
 * Subverted/parodied in Bleach with a lesser shinigami flailing his sword impressively only to get knocked out with a single punch from Chad.
 * In Soul Eater, Death the Kid has his "Sin" and "Punishment" stances. Cue beat down.
 * Like Sailor Moon, every main heroine in the Pretty Cure series does this. It leads to one hilarious moment in Pretty Cure All Stars DX 2 when the five teams (classic/Max Heart, Splash Star, Yes! 5 Go Go, Fresh and the rookie Heartcatch) strike a asskicking pose... then Cure Blossom and Cure Marine start wondering what they just did.

Comics
"Brave mook: Come on... we've got guns and we've got him outnumbered four to one. We can take him. Other mooks: *stare in disbelief* DD: *smiles* All mooks: *run down the street*"
 * While Batman's combat stances tend to be more practical than showy, he does like to use his cape—along with his imposing physical stature—to devastating psychological effect.
 * Superman has his Ass-Kicking Pose, which is unique, as it is largely him floating silently with his hands across his chest. This being Superman, this works. When he really wants to scare someone, or if he's really pissed off, expect the Glowing Eyes of Doom. If the Mook in front of him is holding a gun and tries Shooting Superman, Supes likes to melt it down with his heat vision as a warning shot.
 * Spider-Man has his characteristic contortionist/three-point-crouch thing going on.
 * *SNIKT!*
 * Daredevil turns this trope into a fine art form.

Films -- Animation

 * In The Incredibles, when the family must fight as a team for the first time, they all adopt a simultaneous Ass Kicking Pose.
 * Also from that film: one scene features Mr. Incredible flashing an Ass-Kicking Smile.
 * It's also mocked earlier in the film when Elastigirl catches Mr. Incredible sneaking in to the house. She startles him, and he adopts an Ass-Kicking Pose, which is largely undone because his mouth is full of chocolate cake which is dribbling down his chin.
 * More than a few incredibly awesome examples of these appeared in Kung Fu Panda, especially on the part of Tai Lung and the Furious Five. Notable ones occurred during the snow leopard's prison escape sequence and the fight on the suspension bridge. Noticeably averted during the showdown between Tai Lung and Shifu, however; despite being a major Badass, the snow leopard was also a Determinator and so didn't waste time doing fancy poses when he had a master to defeat and a scroll to claim. Also hilariously averted with Po, who attempted such poses only to be an Epic Failure nine times out of ten.
 * A possible example, however, occurs when Tai Lung faces Shifu with flaming fists, pausing to snarl and brandish his burning paws before continuing the fight. The fact his paws didn't even seem singed afterward may be an attempt to avoid Family-Unfriendly Violence, an example of the movie's general Amusing Injuries mindset, or simply showing how awesome he really is.
 * Hilariously parodied by Deadpool in the Wolverine section of the Hulk vs animated movie. After Wolverine escapes, the Weapon X team is ready to hunt him down and kill him, and Deadpool shouts ''strike a pose!" Immediately after the shot changes to them standing in said pose.

Films -- Live-Action

 * Trope name comes from Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, where the term was used in a decidedly derisive tone. Both Charlie's Angels movies were rife with these poses, commonly struck in choreographic unison.
 * Star Wars
 * Darth Maul's famous lightsaber stance in The Phantom Menace would qualify.
 * And the little smile that accompanies Obi-Wan's "Oh, I don't think so" definitely qualifies as a Ass-Kicking Smile.
 * Also the classic fencing "sabre twirl" salute Count Dooku gives to Yoda in Attack of the Clones.
 * Darth Vader had a sort of anti-pose. It wasn't flashing, it was him just standing there holding his lightsaber with two hands. But it was that cool calmness combined with his massive frame, imposing costume and steady breathing that just made kids watching go "Oh crap!"
 * Better yet, we have his pose from the climax of The Empire Strikes Back, where he doesn't even break his pose to ignite his lightsaber, one-handed.
 * Pick a martial arts movie. Any martial arts movie.
 * The Karate Kid introduced into the pantheon of Ass Kicking Poses the "Crane Stance". Note that according to That Other Wiki, "Crane Stance" refers to just about any stance where only one foot touches the ground, regardless of the arms' position (and the other foot usually rests on the ground leg's knee).
 * Though, in real life, the Crane Stance would tell you exactly what move Daniel-san is about to use, and should tell you how to beat him. Fortunately for Daniel, Rule of Cool doesn't care about real life.
 * Just watch the extras instead of the leads. At least in the first one, the no-names tend to actually have some idea what they're doing...
 * Bruce Lee was the master of the Asskicking Pose. Just watch Enter the Dragon and stand in awe.
 * Oh, and he LOVED the Crane Stance. Specifically, when his opponent used it. One push, falling crane.
 * In Romeo Must Die, one of the black guys uses the Crane Stance to mock Jet Li, complete with screeching "waaaa" sound. Cue immediate kick in the fork.
 * The last shot in the first Mortal Kombat movie.
 * Totally averted by Fighter in The Wind. Choi's favoured stance is a simple boxing guard. The few opponents stupid enough to try elaborate stances get unpleasant things done to them. Then subverted; at the end
 * The Ass-Kicking Smile also appears in Superman Returns in the scene where a thug shoots Superman in the eye.
 * The film version of Undercover Brother parodies this trope by using awkward-looking stances.
 * Of course, The Matrix. Of particular note is Neo's continual use of the "Bring It" hand gesture throughout the series.
 * The Gun Kata style of Equilibrium relies extensively on these to position the body just so while gunning down enemies.
 * Serenity. After River the doors open to show her in a very simple stance, legs spread apart and and axe and a sword in her hands that pretty perfectly conveys the fact that many, many people just got pasted by a ninety pound girl. When the Alliance troops bust in moments later, she doesn't even shift her stance, instead just very slowly turning her head to face them - the implication being that, even with their heavy body armor and a dozen guns pointed at her, she is going to massacre them too, just as easily.
 * Fight Club. Brad Pitt's character Tyler Durden does several of these during and another one when the narrator is on the phone with Marla for absolutely no reason except Brad Pitt being bored and wanting to try it out.
 * Indiana Jones has this as a recurrent joke: in Raiders of the Lost Ark, a swordman offers a good pose and demonstration of skills, and Indy answers by shooting him dead; the pose was useless. In the following movie, several thugs do the Ass-Kicking Pose, Indy reaches for his gun again and... he had lost the gun somewhere. Oops.
 * The Lord of the Rings movies have a fair share of these as well; a notable example would be Gandalf's "You! Shall Not! Pass!" stance while facing the Balrog.
 * A subversion in the 1989 Batman film, when one of the mooks threatens Our Hero with a series of flailing martial arts poses. The technique is about as useless as it appears, since Batman manages to flatten the guy with one punch. On two separate occasions.
 * Again subverted in The Cannonball Run. During the Big Brawl scene, Roger Moore (essentially playing himself) squares off against one thug, adopts an Ass-Kicking Pose... and promptly gets his lights punched out.

Live-Action TV

 * Power Rangers, both humans and mecha. The concentrated awesomeness of these poses will often cause explosions and bursts of colored smoke.
 * There's a lot of ceremony behind it: each Ranger has his or her own personal pose, with a little routine of a few moves before snapping into the final pose (with optional smoke clouds.) Some teams have an entire routine where each gives his or her Ranger designation while posing, and then all pose together after the team's In the Name of the Moon phrase—this is known to fans (well, some fans) as the "roll call". When Rangers return for a Reunion Show years or even a decade after their most recent appearance, the poses are always done just as they were before. Z of Power Rangers SPD had a habit of quickly taking on her final pose without suiting up just before running in to take on Mooks, though the full routine was saved for roll call scenes.
 * Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide played with this and then hung a lampshade on their playing with it, when Ned and Cookie fought.
 * Parodied in the TV show Vanishing Son: the hero (seeking the Villain of the Week) kicks down his office door, to reveal a gigantic man behind a desk. Said man jumps up, puts his hands in front of him, shouts "I'm a temp!" and runs past the hero.
 * Kamen Rider, one word: "Henshin!" Parodied in Kamen Rider G. After the title Rider finishes his pose, the building behind him has half of its windows blown out to form his logo. Hope he has Hero Insurance.
 * In Cutey Honey The Live, bubbly Honey keeps trying to do this with stoic Miki. Miki refuses.

Pro Wrestling

 * WWE wrestler Rob Van Dam has a tendency to get knocked down, then pop right back up into an Ass Kicking Pose.
 * Pretty common in Professional Wrestling anyway - usually after a series of very quick reversals and chain wrestling, with both guys doing a "kip up", as it's termed, into the pose before relaxing so the crowd can show their appreciation.

Video Games

 * When the boss Elvis tries an elaborate one of these in God Hand, Gene mocks it: "You can 'wax on wax off' all you like, I'm still kicking your ass." Gene himself has a much simpler set of poses used before major battles.
 * Almost every robot master/Maverick from Mega Man and Mega Man X does one of these, right after making their grand entrance.
 * Starting with X4, X and Zero do this as they enter a stage. Also, X's armor warps into place.
 * Many Super Smash Bros. taunts are of the Asskicking Pose variety. Lucario and his Aura poses, Captain Falcon's "Show me ya moves" and Wario laughing at his opponents for example.
 * The Subspace Emissary adventure mode's cutscenes are positively saturated with them. One of the more spectacular examples involves DK and Diddy posing while a Bullet Bill explodes behind them.
 * The Five Warriors. Pose as a team CAUSE SHIT JUST GOT REAL.
 * Viewtiful Joe has poses that are so awesome it destroys enemies!
 * The recent Power Rangers game Super Legends does this as well, giving the rampant posing in the TV show a significantly better use.
 * Name a fighting game, almost Any fighting game made after 1995, especially if there's a strong Martial Arts theme.
 * Soul Series: Kilik oddly enough does NOT use a crane stance (see Film example above) as one of his pre-battle poses, despite that his "Crane stance + Staff held at a 45 degree angle" pose is extremely iconic for the series.
 * All of your party members have one in Mass Effect, from Ashley and Wrex pulling rifles to Liara glowing blue in a threatening posture to Tali pulling out her omni-tool and waving "hi" to the opposition.
 * And Shepard pulling out his/her Cutscene Pistol of Doom.
 * In what can only be an affectionate parody or lampshade hanging to Charlie's Angels, the three heroines of Final Fantasy X-2 kick the game off by appearing in an ass-kicking pose stolen directly from the movie (plus the exotic FF weaponry)
 * In most main-series Final Fantasy games as a whole, players can expect to see poses when the character enters battle, when they just stand around waiting for their turn, and of course the Victory pose when they win.
 * In The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess, after you kill a boss, Link twirls his sword and then sheathes it, looking particularly bad ass.
 * It can also happen when you bead a stronger monster and time putting the sword away just as it poofs away.
 * Combine this with the Mortal Draw for some nice showy iaijitsu.
 * Technically, Link originally did the sword twirl in the Zelda cartoon. However, it was no where near as impressive as in Twilight Princess or any other example here, possibly due to the size of the blade and where the holster was.
 * Sonic the Hedgehog, whether after clearing a mission, beating the big bad, or just to piss off Dr. Robotnik/Eggman, will likely do a bunch of fancy stuff, but will always end his pose with a thumbs up.
 * In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, this is proven, as his entrance is to roll/bounce onscreen and flash a smile and thumbs up.
 * The Fallout 3 DLC Operation Anchorage has a trio of soldiers posing for a Washington Post journalist. After snapping a photo, the journalist remarks that "maybe someone will make this into a statue someday". He had no idea how right he was: the statue of the Anchorage War Memorial has the exact same soldiers with different weapons. What's more, the statue was in the base game as well.

Webcomics

 * In one fight scene from El Goonish Shive, Elliot berates Nanase for striking what he calls a "Look at me, I just kicked Elliot" pose.
 * Parodied in Eight Bit Theater when preparing to fight a major villain, Red Mage, ever the role-player, calls for everyone to adopt "battles poses" and to make it look good.
 * Bun-Bun from Sluggy Freelance gets these a lot. "Ka-click!"
 * Problem Sleuth from MS Paint Adventures has a panel entitled "Pose as a team CAUSE SHIT JUST GOT REAL!". And then later, "POSE AS A TEAM AGAIN CAUSE SHIT JUST GOT MORE REAL!" In all, there's about four panels, where shit continues to get increasingly real.
 * Despite the fact that it's actually getting LESS real.
 * And in the end

Web Original

 * Ronnie Cordova.
 * Chaka of the Whateley Universe. More than once, but the first time was in her first Whateley Academy fight, against a team of superpowered ninjas. She's also fond of the Bring It move.

Western Animation

 * Ron in Kim Possible has a tendency to invoke random, ridiculous poses in futile attempts to mimic Kim's stances. Kim, Shego and assorted ninjas could pull it off, though.
 * Mocked lightly in an episode of Justice League Unlimited, where MetaBrawl has degenerated into a pathetic, bingo-hall level company, complete with fighters who spend all their time doing Neo's "just bring it" pose and comparatively little time fighting each other.
 * In Teen Titans, Cyborg prepares for a fight by cracking the cartilage in his neck. Additionally, Robin often struck these in preparation for a fight.
 * Avatar: The Last Airbender makes frequent use of this, and it can be argued that for most of the characters, Ass-Kicking Poses are essentially their fighting style, since most of the actual combat is done with whatever element they happen to be bending at the time instead of actual hand-to-hand. Toph also has a pretty awesome Ass-Kicking Smile in a few episodes.
 * Done quite a bit with the Legion of Super-Heroes, especially Triplicate Girl in her three selves—justified in that she's one of the only ones who fights hand-to-hand. Bouncing Boy always pulls his goggles down before he smashes into someone or does a particularly daring maneuver on the ship—more of an Ass-Kicking Ritual than pose, but still.

Real Life

 * This guy.
 * Well this was already mentioned in the film section, but as a former practitioner of Martial Arts, there quite literally is such thing as an "Ass Kicking Pose". It's actually effective and for your own safety. If your stance isn't proper before a fight, most likely your opponent will take advantage of your apparent lack of balance (i.e. don't look clumsy if you're getting ready to defend yourself).
 * Not to mention that a well-executed pose-sequence can be really intimidating if your opponent isn't a martial artist, himself.
 * The practical purpose of an Ass Kicking Pose is to make yourself as small a target as possible while maintaining the ability to effectively strike at your opponent.
 * These oftentimes backfire if the one doing the pose doesn't know what he's doing. Trying out a pose that only works in the movies is typically bad for your mobility, balance, ability to defend and counterattack, and in a real fight, your health as well.
 * And others would recommend that you have no 'combat pose'. To paraphrase Miyamoto Musashi, your fighting stance should be your everyday stance; your walk should be your everyday walk. If proper fighting form (or terrain, such as marshland) requires you adopt a difference in walk or stance, then that should also be incorporated into your usual stance and pace.