The Power Of Friendship - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Power Of Friendship

"Friendship is the most powerful force in the whole universe! It's even stronger than Chuck Norris!"

— Tea, Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series

"I don't need a weapon. My friends are my power!"

— Sora, Kingdom Hearts

A major theme in all media. The villain or Ineffectual Loner mocks the idea of relying on others, insisting that friends make you weak and only fear brings servitude. Then he discovers to his shock and dismay that the hero's friends really to stand up for him, and this really does enable the hero to kick the crap out of the bad guy. The Aesop: Having friends makes you strong, being alone makes you weak.

A Spirit Bomb attack is another perk of believing in said power. Heroes, especially the Magnetic Hero, usually spend the first few episodes building this group of loyal followers. Sometimes though, it can go too far. Heroes might fall prey to becoming a Martyr Without A Cause, and allies could be Poisonous Friends.

See also Team Spirit, Nakama, The Power Of Love, Defeat Means Friendship. Often results in a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming.

Examples

Anime

Amazingly, Lelouch of the otherwise rather dark Code Geass salvages a potentially disastrous situation by successfully pulling off a speech about friendship and The Power Of Love.
Yoh Asakura in Shaman King manages to best the Tao family several times because they don't acknowledge The Power Of Friendship. Towards the end of the series, The Power of Friendship brings Tao Ren back to life and allows him to defeat half of the QuirkyMinibossSquad
Almost every episode of Yu-Gi-Oh!. Fans eventually grew so tired of how much they hammered on it that they took to calling the inevitable recitation of friendship's virtues "the Friendship Speech" and instinctively hit the mute button whenever Tea started talking.
- Parodied in Yu-Gi-OhTheAbridgedSeries, where Tea uses a several-hour-long friendship speech to turn Johny Steps into a zombie.
- Yu-Gi-Oh GX seems to be trying to carry on the tradition, while acknowledging that moving apart from your friends and doing your own thing is part of growing up.
A spoiler-laden plot twist in Read Or Die hinges on this.
Likewise for the plot of the first Keroro Gunsou movie
The climax and resolution of Fruits Basket revolves around this.
Each character in Digimon Adventure has a "crest" that ties them to a particular virtue; Most of the characters had some kind of crisis related to their crests, where they started to doubt their own virtues only to pick up an Aesop just in time for a Big Damn Heroes moment. For example, Tai tried to force a digivolution and traded courage for recklessness and hubris, then ended up with the rampaging Skull Greymon, he learned to be somewhat less reckless before Agumon reached the true ultimate stage.
- Yamato's is "Friendship". Given they actually attack Tai and War Greymon at one point, he could perhaps use a few pointers. However, Yamato's crest didn't fail, in spite of almost making a Face Heel Turn, running purely the loyalty and friendshp of Gabumon had towards Yamato.
  - Possibly lampshaded in the 02 episode "Storm Of Friendship" (Davis: "Maybe it's for the person who has no friends, like me.")
- Later in 02 this trope was played relatively straight, DNA digivolutions required the human partners of the digimon involved to be mentally and emotionally in sync, if they weren't getting along the meld didn't come together.
In Naruto, one can derive a considerable amount of strength from the mere fact that you're using it to protect someone important to you (chiefly Naruto himself, but there are others). One strength-obsessed character actually gives up being a sociopath when he realizes that having friends is a more direct route to power.
The Pretty Cure franchise has this as its premise. The power of every Precure is formed by their bonds with the others; the first two sets can't even transform separately. Of course, the yuri fanboys for that series have popularized the notion of "the power of Romantic Two Girl Friendship", which is sort of the same thing.
- Yes! Precure 5 also subverted this somewhat. When Rin and Karen were forced to work together to save the others, they were particularly effective — because they really rubbed each other the wrong way, and neither one of them wanted to get shown up by the other.
- And speaking of the power of Romantic Two Girl Friendship, that's how you "turn on" a Simoun. I Am Not Making This Up.
Most of the major battles in Sailor Moon are won via the power of forgiveness, and the friendship of the protagonists is a major source of power. (Marketing for the English dub of the anime emphasized this aspect of the series as much as it possibly could.)
Duel Masters, as mentioned above, used this a lot, with Shobu's friends constantly helping him build and rebuild his deck, and regain his dueling spirit, among other things. Shobu's not the only one to take advantage of this... Hakuoh, the aloof Dragon of the first season, was subjected to Defeat Means Friendship, breaking through his shell, and he manages to defeat Shobu in their next game.
The Evil General Durahan in Anime Monster Rancher specifically references this trope in an episode where the bad guys betrayed each other no less than four times in under an hour. Friendship has its benefits it seems.
In Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, the Power Trio sticks together through sadness via pep talks and cake sharing, making it through everything thrown at them. In the series finale, Lucia and Seira reveal that, no matter what kind of pain Michal and Michel, respectively, have put them through, they still empathize with them and want to become their friends. The Power of Friendship is strong enough to actually make them waver, and Fuku panics and goes to try and take over their combined mind and body. He succeeds... but not for long, as the mermaids' friendship and forgiveness reach even him.
Vandread pits giant killer robots from space against The Power Of Friendship. You do the math. Of course, it did help that the Nakama included a Sufficiently Advanced Alien.
Wonderfully parodied along with many other Shounen tropes in the first episode of The Tower Of Druaga, where a Final Form Jil has been beaten by the Dark God Druaga... when the voice of a Goddess speaks in his ear, and every character shown so far, including the villains show up in spirit form to give support, including the Red Shirt who died early on of Retirony. Sadly, our hero cannot remember his name, despite remembering the correct names of all the enemies and bit persons he has encountered on his travels.
Jil: Fatina! Neeba! Kalli! And... I can't remember his name, but he's definitely one of my friends!
Utu: It's Utu!
Fist Of The North Star plays it straight in the final battle, where Kenshiro draws power from everyone he cares about, but it's used before that when Rei, preparing to attack Raoh, yells "Everyone, lend me your strength!" before hurling himself at Raoh and using his Dangerous Forbidden Technique... and Raoh not only point-blank counters it, but hits him with an attack that kills him over three agonizing days.
Early in the Inu Yasha manga, it's suggested that Tetsusaiga's full power can only be unlocked if it's being used to protect a mortal. This is less emphasized in the anime.
The penultimate arc of Kinnikuman dealt with the "theft" of the heroes' Friendship Power with a number of curseddolls. This resulted in everyone abandoning our hero when he needed a partner for the tag-team Tournament Arc. Thankfully, he manages to get some help from his unaffected Obi Wan. In this troper's opinion, it was not overplayed too terribly, and made for good storytelling by showing two of the villains also had a tight-nit friendship.
- The final arc returns to the issue. Kinnikuman, stripped of the Kajiba Kuso no Djikara, his Heroic Resolve in a can, early on, is constantly shown unable to perform his old tried-and-true techniques simply because he's fighting at barely more than 1% power. His first major fight after losing the KKD is one he only starts winning when he taps into a similar, though inferior, force known as "Shin Yujo no Power", literally "Genuine Friendship Power."
In the answer arcs of Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni, the protagonists believe The Power Of Friendship to be the key to Screw Destiny. In that light, the question arcs can be seen as examples of what happens when the Nakama are broken up by suspicion and distrust.
- Also used for darker purposes. See the page picture? That's Higurashi.
Magic Knight Rayearth is built entirely on this trope, but Hikaru in particular has it really bad. The OAV is even more explicit.
Although the series is more focused on individual empowerment, Saint Seiya often indulges in The Power Of Friendship. More often than not, combining everyone's Cosmo through their friendship is the only way to overcome the current arc's Big Bad.
This is a major theme of the Headmasters and Powermasters in Transformers. In the American continuity, the Transformers and his/her organic pilot must cooperate extremely closely in order to be an effective fighting unit. Transformers Headmasters has a technique called Head Formation, which allows the Autobot Headmasters to share energy between themselves and power up. The first time it is used, the narrator helpfully notes that we're seeing the power of friendship in action.
Parodied in Soul Eater:
Black*Star: Now you'll get a taste of our Power of Friendship!
Soul Eater: That's right! An unfathomable, endless power!
Fushigi Yugi. Specifically, Nakago scornfully mentioning it and declaiming that it won't defeat him. And then, of course, it does.
We got this far without mentioning One Piece? Not only does the entire series practically run on friendship, Luffy sets the stage early on with an epic speech to Arlong (while beating the living daylights out of him), in which he includes all of the things his nakama can do that he can't:
Luffy: "Of course I don't know how to use a sword! I don't know anything about navigation, either! I can't cook! I've never even told a lie! I know that I can't survive without people around me to help!"

Comic Books

W.I.T.C.H. also relies on this: its tagline is "The Magic of Friendship". The heroines occasionally split up to tackle a problem, and don't always suffer for it, but are explicitly weakened when one of them actually quits.

Commercials

A set of Commercials ("Belong") for Carling lager show a group of mates in fantastic situations sticking together despite the fact they're losing out on something if they didn't. For example learning the meaning of life.

Film

Star Wars:
Luke Skywalker: Your overconfidence is your weakness.
Emperor Palpatine: Your faith in your friends is yours.
- These lines are echoed by Shobu and Hakuoh, repsectively, in the dub of Duel Masters, as a Homage.
Advent Children : Cloud is chastised by Tifa for being an angsty loner. When he finally lightens up, his friends show up en mass to save the day with a spectacular and very symbolic action set piece.
In The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the group is ready to give up after one of the members betrays the group and they're almost killed. Tom Sawyer makes a dandy little speech about team unity and how they can win this fight because they have each other. Suddenly, and from that point on, everyone is pretty much BFFs and ready to fight.
- Thankfully, most of that scene was cut, indicating that the production team decided that giving any more screen time to an already insufferable token American character was a bad idea.

Literature

The Lord Of The Rings emphasizes this trope, particularly with the friendship between Sam and Frodo. Frodo would not have been able to make it through Mordor without Sam's help.
Also can be a major theme in many of the works of both Stephen King and Dean Koontz.
A significant theme throughout the entire Harry Potter series; Word Of God has even stated that Harry, Ron, and Hermione's bond is the chief reason for Harry's success and continued survival, and that they are a case of the whole being more than the sum of its parts.
"Battle Royale" where Shuya and Noriko feel that the power of friendship will get them through the program. Shogo disagrees and is proved right when the rest of their classmates betray each other and play to win. In fact in the end Shogo pretends to betray them (I'm sure more than one person thought he really did) in oreder to get the three of them out.

Live Action TV

It is specifically stated in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, both within the show and in interviews with writers, that the reason Buffy has lasted so long as a Slayer compared to her predecessors is that she has friends — the so-called "Scooby Gang" — who look out for her. This is why Faith fails; she's unable to trust people and form lasting friendships.
- Oh ye of little faith... Sorry.
The "Power of Three" in Charmed relied on The Power Of Friendship to work, to the point where an argument would strip the Halliwell sisters of their powers.
Pretty much the theme in season 5 of Hercules The Legendary Journeys. In the episode "Descent", Hercules defeats D'muzi simply by screaming out Iolaus' name.
The basic premise of Black Hole High seems to be that, at least within the Applied Phlebotinum field of the school, character flaws trump physics. In the second episode, it makes perfect logical sense that realizing that your friends care for you can cure invisibility.
Parodied in the comedy show Stella, in which the three main characters literally use the power of friendship to create an invisible forcefield to trap a rival group of evil paperboys that have been bullying them throughout the episode. They then threaten to use the power of friendship to crush the bullies to death if they don't cut it out.
Star Trek features a lot of this; especially in the original series and in The Next Generation. Many episodes revolve around one of the crew being kidnapped, threatened, or otherwise in danger, and having the rest of the crew band together to save them. Has resulted in plenty of Crowning Momentof Heartwarming and Big Damn Heroes.
Heroes also features a lot of this, but taken to almost anvilicious (but still enjoyable) levels concerning Hiro and Ando.
The A-Team. Nuff said.

Mythology

The tyrant of Syracuse was so impressed by the friendship between Damon, who volunteered to be a hostage for Pythias's return and be executed if he did not, and Pythias, who not only returned to his execution to spare Damon but did so in spite of being captured by bandits and having to Breaking The Bonds to escape, that he pardoned Pythias for conspiring against him. Thus this is Older Than Dirt.

Video Games

In the final battle of Jade Empire, your allies weaken the enemies that the Big Bad sends at you before you face him. The game's Karma Meter system results in a mild and possibly unintentional subversion: the only difference between being a messiah who believes in the power of friendship (Open Palm), and a tyrant who just killed all the followers who disagreed with him (Closed Fist), is you have to fight a few more enemies... It seems the power of friendship and the power of a ruthless, brutally evil martial artist are about the same.
Mega Man Star Force harps on the importance of relationships almost constantly. In fairness, the "Brother Band" system that underpins this emphasis on relationships also confers very practical benefits. Brother Banding with NP Cs (or actual humans over Wi Fi) gives the player (or both players) bonus HP and the option to share their "favorite cards" for use in battle. This, of course, doesn't stop the game from also using it somewhat Anviliciously in other contexts, including when the main character is Lost in Space and his friends direct him back to earth using the awesome power of friendship. And not all of them are even really Brothers with him.
- Also, a possible subversion: in the second game, the Dragon Burai is revealed to get his own powers from being alone, and you can duplicate his powers by having no brothers and doing a special sidequest. The mode has its own set of advantages and disadvantages compared to the normal friendship bonuses.
- In another Mega Man series, Battle Network, Mega Man gains power by fusing with the "souls" of his friends, and some powerful items are only available by playing link games with other players (ostensibly, friends).
In the later Fire Emblem games, units that spend significant time battling near each other can have what are called "Support Conversations" wherein they develop their relationships, causing them to have a boost to their offensive or defensive ability when within a short distance of each other. You heard that right: Shipping provides a strategic advantage.
- Ike from Fire Emblem's famous line in Super Smash Bros. Brawl: "I fight for my friends."
In Mario Baseball, come characters have good chemistry with other players. Moves involving two players (eg one throws the ball to the other), they are improved if those players have good chemistry with each other. This kind of friendship is represented visually by music notes.
In Breath Of Fire II you're told that the only way to get the final dragon form to beat the Big Bad is for one of your friends to give their life. They're varying degrees of willing. It turns out that the real way to unlock it is to ignore the requirement and refuse to choose a friend, choosing to sacrifice yourself rather than others.
Subverted in the "bad" ending of Breath Of Fire IV, in which the main character was absorbed by the villain who then proceeded to summon an enormous dragon to fight the remainder of the party. Said party spouted something about friendship, but it was quickly snuffed out by the fact that the dragon had infinite HP, which regenerated every turn, counterattacks that did thousands of damage, an attack that reduced everybody to 1 HP, and was controlled by the player. The game then proceeded to end with all of humanity being destroyed.
In Sonic Adventure, the power of friendship unlocks the Chaos Emeralds' real power: the power to turn Sonic into a Super Saiyan as long as he maintains a supply of rings. If he runs out, though, it fails and he demonstrates instant Super Drowning Skills.
- Also Sonic Heroes. Just... Sonic Heroes.
- Also Sonic Rush, where the power of friendship allows Blaze to access the power of the Sol Emeralds and...well, see the Sonic Adventure entry.
Part of the point behind The World Ends With You is getting Ineffectual Loner Neku to open up and cooperate with his teammates in order to survive "The Game" being played around Shibuya. Keeping close ties (or, in game terms, a high "Sync" ratio) with them increases their fighting effectiveness, since the Noise also fight in tandem.
In Persona 3, the strength of your fused Personae is dictated by how strong your relationships with other people are. These relationships are usually platonic, but five of them are romantic, and several are of the surrogate family variety.
- In Persona's defense, however, it does not appear to be linked to "friendship". Interacting with people of a given personality type (represented by an arcana) allows the protagonist to create stronger personas of that arcana. That remains true even when he has a fight and is no longer in good terms with the person in question! This troper's take is that the heightened ability represents the protagonist's greater understanding of what makes that arcana/personality archetype tick. Might fall apart when Broken links no longer provide any benefit whatsoever, though. On the other hand, the game's actual ending is undeniably a case of this trope.
Crucial to the Kingdom Hearts series. Sora's Keyblade, and indeed all keyblades, seem drawn to individuals with strong hearts and emotions, including — and especially — friendship. But magic and normal combat also seems to operate under this trope; Donald and Goofy and all of Sora's various friends triumph repeatedly through their bonds with each other.
In Final Fantasy IV (II in the west), the player's party is about to be wiped out right before the final battle, when the camera switches back to Earth, to show people sending "their prayers" to the characters. After that, several of the protagonist's friends (some dead ones too!) materialize briefly by his side with words of encouragement. Each such speech heals the members a bit, until they're at full strength again.
In Final Fantasy IX, after a particularly distressing revelation, Zidane turns into a zombie-like Jerkass and tries to go it alone. His friends gather around him and convince him that they need each other, helping him turn back into a nice guy.
In InuYasha: Secret of the Cursed Mask, depending on which character you spend your rest days with, you gain more powerful combination attacks with said character as your in-game friendship grows (and character-specific endings, but they just follow simmilar formats).
An argument could be made for this trope's inclusion in The Legendof Zelda: Twilight Princess. Link and the imp Midna increasingly learn to trust and rely upon one another; there's even a screencap after one battle they fight together where they look like they're posing for some kind of friendship poster. Additionally, the first item Link receives in the game is a fishing pole handcrafted by his young friend Colin; if Link pulls the fishing pole out during his final fight with the Big Bad, his enemy actually stops moving and stares at it, giving Link the opportunity to get in some hits without retaliation.
Done at the end of Earthbound in possibly the most heartwrenching, most powerful, most incredibly meta way ever.
Rival Schools thrives on this. The students (and teachers) in this game usually gain their strength from their bonds with their friends, and are able to triumph over loner villains in each game. It's so powerful that in each game, a mole sent by the villain (Kyosuke in United By Fate and Yurika in Project Justice) ends up switching over to the good guys because of the friendships they've developed.
Final Fantasy XII pulled this one twice: once when the main cast is getting ready to fly off to destroy the source of the games Applied Phlebotinum, and again when they're just getting ready to fight the Big Bad.
Not only do characters in Super Robot Wars get bonuses when they're next to a friend (Or rival or romantic interest), but two of the abilities a pilot can have, Trust and Faith, replenish an ally's HP - That's right, you're repairing physical damage to a Humongous Mecha through The Power Of Friendship.
- A similar system applies to Jump Ultimate Stars. If you place friends next to your playable characters in your deck, the friend will give the playable character a boost to their maximum HP.
Done in Left 4 Dead as game mechanic. Going Rambo and your chance to die is 100% from Smoker and Hunter. Only your friends can help you out of that.

Web Comics

In RPG World, the main character Hero's power is derived from his bond with his friends. Or at least, the two main female characters.

Web Original

Survival Of The Fittest brutally subverts this every time it gets the chance. In a story where the goal is to the the last one left standing and the main moral appears to be "don't trust anybody", friendship has no place and SOTF has no qualms with showing the reader exactly why. Version 0 ends with Sydney Morvran and his friends hiding in the school building. An accidentally dropped flashbang causes them all to go insane with paranoia and butcher each other, Syd using one of them as a human shield. Groups and friendships both tend to collapse in a dramatic fashion, especially once suspicion of killers starts to go around, and people often end up being slaughtered by others who were their closest colleagues before the game.
- Of course, Battle Royale, which SOTF is based on, used this trope.

Western Animation

Rocket Power: Part of Reggie Rocket's pep talk in the later part of "Race Across New Zealand": "We're not just another team out here. We're friends. And that's what makes us better."
"What's gonna work? Teamwork! What's gonna work? Teamwork!!!"
Disney seems to like this trope a lot:
- It's never explicitly mentioned, but the theme of friendship and teamwork as key to the heroes' success underlies many of the plots in Kim Possible. Actually, in the first movie "A Sitch in Time" Shego mentions not understanding this phenomenon between Kim and Ron, but acknowledges it, and specifically made efforts to separate the two of them in order to counter it
- Mildly subverted in Recess; When playing kickball against a team of weirdly similar kids from a neighboring school, T.J. tells his friends they can beat their doppelgangers because they have The Power Of Friendship... and the camera cuts to his counterpart telling her team the same thing.
- Disney also plays this trope straight as an arrow in many of it's live stage productions, often in combination with The Power of Imagination. This troper happened to catch the end of a live show in front of Cinderella Castle last time she was in Disney World and half expected Mickey to recite the Tea quote showcased above. (And that would have just about been the most adorable thing ever.)
Three words: Care Bear Stare.
Used several times in Avatar The Last Airbender. Such as shutting off an Aang's Berserk Button before he destroys the world. Also Azula's isolation and Villainous Breakdown is largely due to her inability to inspire loyalty through trust and friendship instead of fear. It was also implied that friendship can withstand generations—as in, they last lifetimes through reincarnation.

Truth In Television

The relationship between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill helped save Britain and the world from Nazi Germany. Indeed, one could easily imagine a dialog between Churchill and Hitler much like the one between Luke Skywalker and Emperor Palpatine.

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