Blade Spam

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

A character attacks with a rapid series of slashes or stabs, either with a bladed weapon or with natural claws. Taking the speed part Up to Eleven and into outright Super Speed territory results in the following two subtypes:

Split-Second Blade Spam and Simultaneous Blade Spam are oftentimes the mark of Master Swordsman-type characters (or the equivalent for other kinds of weapon-users) in many works, and usually take the form of striking a given target from several different angles/directions - typically the eight cardinal and ordinal ones - within the span of a second.

Sub-Trope of Spam Attack. More Dakka is the Gun Counterpart, while Beam Spam is the laser/magic counterpart.. Compare Storm of Blades, for when several blades are rapidly thrown at the target.

Examples of Blade Spam include:


Standard Blade Spam

Split-Second Blade Spam

Simultaneous Blade Spam

  • Two examples from the Fate/stay night franchise:
    • Tsubame Gaeshi, signature technique of the 5th Grail War's Assassin; three slashes whose combined angles of attack explicitly block off any attempt at evasion. And Assassin gained it because he so relentlessly perserved in his countless attempts to devise a technique to kill a swallow while in flight, that reality basically gave in and granted him partial access to the "Second Magic", which is described as "multi-dimension refraction phenomenon".
    • Nine Lives (Japanese gloss: "Shooting Hundred Heads"), a Noble Phantasm of the 5th Grail War's Berserker (a.k.a. Herakles); the actual NP itself, derived from Herakles' feat of defeating the many-headed, nigh-immortal Hydra with his bow and arrows, was never used by Berserker himself, but when Shirou in the Heaven's Feel route used Projection to adapt the NP for his own use, the resulting "Nine Lives Blade Works" was composed of eight simultaneous slashes from different directions in one instant, followed by a stab to the center, all done with Super Speed. And each strike was considered a lethal A-ranked blow to Black Berserker.
  • In more recent iterations of The Compilation of Final Fantasy VII as well as Kingdom Hearts and Dissidia Final Fantasy, Sephiroth seems to be able to strike his opponent several times with only a few tactically-placed slashes of his Masamune. In Kingdom Hearts II, he possesses a move called Flash, where he dashes past Sora; if you don't use the Reaction Command, Sora eats about 7-9 slashes. In Dissidia, his slashes inflict upwards of four blows at a time (his Octoslash, in particular, hits eight times in spite of Sephy only swinging five times).
  • The Toujin (Battle Blade) attack in Yaiba can do this, but with etheral blades which distract the opponent.


Mixed

  • In Soul Eater, Mifune can do this with his "infinite sword style" moves. Not only can he trap his opponent by pinning them down with some of his many swords but he can make each sword strike multiple times by making them vibrate.
  • Erza from Fairy Tail can do this with her exquip primarily with her heaven wheel armor.