Radial Ass-Kicking

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The other type of sharing circle.

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 because Everything's Better with Spinning.

Examples of Radial Ass-Kicking include:

Anime and Manga[]

Occurs once in a while in Bleach when a larger number of hollow (or in one Filler Arc, Ninja) turn up.
Fantastic example in Casshern Sins. Particularly at 2:20.
In Mahou Sensei Negima, 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.
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.
Seen in Seto no Hanayome by Nagasumi after he gets to be affected by Sun's singing during an episode.

The Dark Knight Saga 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 Ninjitsu 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.
Lord of the Rings: 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 manouver in Real Life is lampshaded in DM of the Rings.
The Multi Mook fights in The Matrix pretty much define this trope.
- The fight against all the Smiths in the second film. I believe this form of Mook Chivalry was once discussed as "your opponents will attack you one at a time while the others dance threateningly in a circle around you".
River in Serenity fights off Reavers coming at her from all sides.

In the Battle of 1000 Heartless in Kingdom Hearts II, this is how Sora, Donald, and Goofy begin the fight.
Meta Knight and Marth combine this with Back-to-Back Badasses in the Subspace Emissary

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 Ninjitsu 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 happened in the pilot (1000 Glorft robots), Kiva's robot was standing next to Megas. Kiva said the odds weren't good, Coop agreed and trashed her robot to even the odds.
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.