Storm of Blades

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
It's raining swords. Hallelujah! It's raining swords - Amords!

You know how Throwing Your Sword Always Works? Well, let's crank that Up to Eleven with some Beam Spam thrown in; and you've got this Death in All Directions trope.

Exactly What It Says on the Tin; the Storm of Blades is a multitude of sharp objects descending upon the enemy. Just as potent as the stabby death is the Symbolism of the Sword, squared. Aggression, offense, smite. Brother-trope to Flechette Storm, Rain of Arrows and Blade Spam. It will typically involve Flying Weapons although versions when the swords are thrown exist.

Not to be confused with the Stormblade, a close cousin to the most famous Tank Goodness vehicle known to all of Table-Top.

Examples of Storm of Blades include:


Advertising

  • Used in a television commercial for a wood preservative paint. Shows virtually everything coming down like rain on a wooden deck, including lots of sharp blades, and nothing happens. Turns out it was only the rain falling, and it was All Just a Dream by the guy watching the rain landing on, and being repelled by, the deck he had painted with the wood preservative.
  • An Australian car ad showed a man fleeing through a deserted city at night as knives rain down out of the sky. He escapes by leaping into a car, which somehow causes the knives to stop falling. The message was supposed to be something about how safe the car was but it really wasn't obvious.
  • This The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword commercial involves this trope. With Master Swords.

Anime and Manga

  • Haseo uses this attack in the .hack//GU TRILOGY movie. Of course, calling up a bunch of swords isn't awesome enough. He's gotta do it while Dual-Wielding BFS chainswords. Ovan manages to block the attack so we're left with a Field of Blades for the rest of the scene.
  • Yumiko and Guibarthez from Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou.
  • When he decides to get serious, Mifune of Soul Eater takes his box of swords and throws them up into the air en masse, which rain down and cover the area in swords to use in attacks. He calls it mugen itto-ryu, or "infinite one-sword style."
    • He's also got a special attack that uses a 13-blade combination, and when he wants to show he's serious, brings two sword boxes.
  • The "Million Swords of Hate" in Revolutionary Girl Utena is an active, symbolic-yet-real representation of the fury the world has against realistic failings of any who attempt to be "The Prince". (This being Utena, what exactly the symbolism represents could be argued.)
  • In GetBackers, Psycho for Hire Akabane can do this with the many scalpels he has stored within his body.
  • In Inuyasha, Kagura's Dance of Blades sends several energy blades at the opponent.
    • Inuyasha's "Blades of Blood" technique from the same show also applies. He uses blood on his hands (usually his own) and swipes his claws across thin air in such a way that tons of blades made of blood are let loose upon his enemies. How this works is beyond me, though.
      • And then there's Inu Yasha's Koungousouha ("Adamant Barrage" in the dub), gained from Hosenki and later copied by Naraku, wherein he launches a hail of spears made out of diamond which somehow passes through barriers like they're not even there. Which then gives way to his most powerful attack, the Cutting Meidou Zangetsuha, wherein he throws a rain portals that can tear through pretty much anything, up to and including the barriers between life and death, the past and future, and overlapping dimensions.
  • Erza of Fairy Tail can do this by summoning lots of swords with her Ex-quip magic. If she has enough time to set it up, she can even launch 200 swords at once, each set to hit a target across an entire town.
  • Bleach. One of Kaname Tousen's shikai attacks is Benihiko, which creates hundreds of blades that rain down on his opponent.
    • Senbonzakura, Byakuya's zanpakutou, has one mode that works like this as well.
  • In Mahou Sensei Negima, Crazy Awesome Made of Iron Idiot Hero Jack Rakan pulls this with his artifact The Hero With A Thousand Faces. Every time he uses it, expect massive amounts of win and a Crowning Moment of Awesome for anyone who manages to survive.
  • After he uses The World, Dio Brando tosses rows upon rows of throwing knives at Jotaro which stop in midair. This carries over to the fighting game, where you can get creative with the knives and be flashy before your super meter runs out.
  • In The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, this is used by Ryoko Asakura in a reality-warping attempt to kill Kyon. Stopped when Yuki Nagato pulls a Big Damn Heroes moment as a human shield. And then proceeds to kick Ryoko's ass ten ways to Tuesday.

Card Games

Literature

  • In the novel Stormbringer, the first weapon that Elric gains for usage against the invading Lords of Chaos is a spell that summons a one-time storm of Stormbringers from another dimension to attack them. This wipes out many gods and their minions, but barely makes a dent in the invasion.

Tabletop Games

  • Exalted has the Cascade of Cutting Terror which allows an Exalt to replicate any thrown item and rain it down over a large area. Anything the exalt can lift can be thrown as an improvised ranged attack.
    • One must keep in mind that many Exalts can lift elephants.
  • Similarly, the Warhammer Fantasy Battle spell Blade Wind.
  • The lowest layer of the plane of Acheron in Dungeons & Dragons is a gigantic storm of black ice blades.

Video Games

  • BlazBlue's Nu -13-/Lambda -11-. Her entire character is pretty much based on the concept of the sword. Her basic combo throws 5 blades (9 as a boss). Her Limit Break throws 20 (30 as a boss).
  • The "Thousand Blades" spell introduced as the Knife Item Crash in the Castlevania Series. The "Butterknife" isn't so harmless when you can throw 50 at once, now is it?
  • In Fate/stay night, this trope shows up as Gilgamesh's Gate of Babylon and Shirou & Archer's Unlimited Blade works. Except that instead of normal swords they rain down legendary weapons (for Gate of Babylon) or functional copies of them (for Unlimited Blade Works).
  • The Sword Rune in Suikoden II has this as an attack.
  • In Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice, Mid-Boss does this with his Super Adonis attack by Magichanging dozens of copies of himself into swords and throwing them rapidly.
  • This trope appears often in the Final Fantasy Series,
  • One of the most powerful enemy magic attacks in Super Mario RPG is called "Sword Rain". It is only used by the final boss and his lackeys.
  • This pops up every now and again in Kingdom Hearts:
    • Riku demonstrates this by shooting copies of his sword Soul Eater at the enemy with his Dark Impulse sleight in the remake of Chain of Memories
    • Ventus from Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep has a command style that combines this with Multi Wielding called Wing Blade The style also pops up in his final shotlock Multi Vortex.
    • Not to mention the keyblade tornado that Master Xehanort conjures up. He kicks it up a notch as the Bonus Boss, No Heart who is constantly raining keyblades on you.
    • Sora and Riku have the XIII Blades skill when they use Eternal Session
    • Xaldin wields a bunch of spears in this manner as well.
    • Both Master Eraqus and Sora's Heartless summon torrents of magical light keyblades to shoot.
  • Dante's Lucifer. And the blades explode.
  • One of the most powerful spells in the Age of Wonders series features a volley of sharp projectiles raining on the entire field. The Spell appears in the second game, but this time, it rains actual swords, that only hit enemies. It is also the most powerful spell that can be used by heroes, which means you can actually use this spell several times in a single fight.
  • This is basically the whole point of the Night Elf Warden's 'Fan of Knives' ability.
  • In the Scott Pilgrim videogame, guess what Knives does?
  • Fable II has the Blades spell, which summons several swords that fly into the target(s).
    • Fable III has a more powerful version by merging a spell with the blades spell
  • Used for quite a few Bullet Hell attacks in the Touhou series. Most notably, Sakuya Izayoi uses knives, and Yumeko uses swords.
  • The 'Cerulean Rain' Weapon Art in The Last Remnant.
  • In Skies of Arcadia, Vyse's area-effect special move is called "Rain of Swords".
  • Several Sword wielding bosses in Okami has an attack that summons a number of swords above their heads and sends them flying at you, one of the later enemies also has an attack that summons in lots of swords to converge at your position.
  • Weiss's Critical Heart summons up a storm of swords in Arcana Heart 3.
  • The "Swords of Eternal Light" paladin ability from Dragon Fable allows you to call down a rain of swords of light upon your enemy.
  • In Kirby's Return to Dream Land, the Bonus Boss, Galacta Knight, rains down swords of Hard Light as a very hard-to-avoid attack.
  • One of Chakravartin's main attacks from Asura's Wrath is this, and can be seen as a blatant Shout-Out to Gilgamesh above.

Webcomics

  • Redcloak from Order of the Stick demonstrates the Blade Barrier spell here.
  • An insane secondary kitchen in Castle Heterodyne uses this against Agatha twice in Girl Genius, here and on the following 3 pages. The storm includes not only knives, but forks, corkscrews and skewers.
  • Rusty and Co has a halfling glad to demonstrate how it's done. They don't call her "Stabs" for nothing.

Western Animation

  • In Adventure Time, knives fall from the sky, and is actually as common as rain.

Real Life

  • The Mughals used this as a weapon, attaching sword blades to rockets where stabilizers would normally be found. This meant that they were capable of launching volleys of rockets, tumbling out of control with a sword blade attached to each one. As if a regular rocket wasn't scary enough, streaking smoke and flame with a very real risk of exploding, this version could also carve you up.
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