Team Spirit

This was a triumph...

"I can tell you from experience that when they get along, it sucks muchly."

— Carl, the Evil Cockroach Wizard, Yin Yang Yo!

On shows where the main characters are grouped together, they realize they can only achieve goals ranging from winning games to defeating monsters or other enemies through teamwork.

A useful lesson, one supposes. It might be nice, however, to occasionally see a Too Many Cooks Spoil the Soup episode.

Also see The Power of Friendship, Save Our Team, Together We Are X.

Contrast I Work Alone, where they dismiss the very idea of teamwork, and Teeth-Clenched Teamwork, where characters invoke this trope but hate every moment of it.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• A running theme in ALL sport mangas to one or another degree. Be it Eyeshield 21 or Kuroko's Basketball or Attacker You! or The Prince of Tennis or others, there will always be the message that the team is everything. It's specially anvilicious in Captain Tsubasa, where one of the biggest plot threads of the junior high arc is how Hyuuga lost his position as a titular player in the powerful Toho team because he broke said team spirit by taking a temporary leave to train in Okinawa without permission.

• Futari wa Pretty Cure and Splash*Star (but not YPC5) take this to an extreme, in that its Magical Girls can only transform and make their magical attacks together (as in holding hands), so it's a good thing they know Kung Fu.
  • Yes! Pretty Cure 5 does, however, focus on the team getting along. Strangely, it's the mature Karen that causes all the problems.
• Girls und Panzer: A central theme. Since the protagonists are the underdogs, they need to rely on team synergy to claim any victory. In addition, each tank relies on a unified crew to work, so there are multiple layers of Team Spirit.
• Harukana Receive: Ayumi immediately mentions to Haruka that in beach volleyball, there are no aces, and that teamwork is what determines victory on the volleyball court.
• KanColle: The Destroyers of the Third Torpedo Squadron form a strong bond while training Naïve Newcomer Fubuki, which they call "Torpedo Girl Spirit" and becomes their rallying cry even after they're reassigned to new squads.
• One Piece: In a series where One-Man Armies are so common, this is usually the determining factor.
  • The Straw Hats demonstrate this better than anyone. Their crew numbers at only ten, each one formidable in his or her own right. And with how tight-knit they are, whenever they're pushed to fight in unison, you'll be hard-pressed to defeat them. Thriller Bark has thus far the best example of this.
    • Zoro and Sanji bear particular mention; they've been Vitriolic Best Buds almost since day one, and they happen to be the strongest members of the crew besides Luffy. If they're ever pushed to cooperate, whoever's in their crosshairs is doomed.
• The Promised Neverland: The Escape Arc follows Emma, Norman and Ray trying to figure out a way to escape the orphanage when they realize they're just meat to be served to demons. While Emma wants to formulate a plan to save everyone, Ray is aware that the three are the only one with an actual chance of running away and the others might slow them down, which Norman is reluctant to agree with. The end of the arc plays this straight by showcasing that the successful escape plan relies on everyone, not just the three exceptionally talented kids. While Emma and Ray attracted the attention of Mama Isabella, Emma was secretly leading Gilda and Don to train and inform the other kids of their escape plan, while Phil, the only one beneath 5 years old to know, would stay behind, distract Mama and protect the other kids while the others were away and before they came back to rescue them as well. Ray is surprised when he sees all the kids working together and how each and everyone of them contributed to achieve their goal.
• Simoun: The eponymous airships can only be operated by two girls working as a team, and they're powered by the pilots kissing each other.
• Str.A.In.: Strategic Armored Infantry: The Space Squadron takes great pains to integrate Sara into their group and work together as a team. Although Sara goes solo against the Big Bad, she has the full backing and support of her team, who give her all the power they've got.

Films — Live-Action

• In Saw V, the Five-Man Band of victims take the selfish options to Jigsaw's first three tests for them, leading to three of them dying. In the final room, the last two figure out that all five of them could have made it to the test if they'd all just worked together.
• In Star Trek Beyond, Scotty meets and befriends an alien woman named Jaylah. She begins helping out him and the other members of the Enterprise crew, but he has to teach her some of the Starfleet values of working together to support everyone.
  Scotty: You're part of something bigger now, lassie. Right? Dinnae give up on that. 'Cause we'll sure as hell never give up on you. That is what being part of a crew is all about.

Literature

• In The Mysterious Benedict Society, at the very beginning of their adventures, Mr. Benedict tells the Society that the most important thing is that they must, in all things, be a team. And, indeed, it is only by being a team that they are able to eventually defeat Mr. Curtain.

Live-Action TV

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer, particularly at the end of Season Four where the Scoobies use a spell that combines their powers into Buffy's body, and then kick the Big Bad's ass. It's pretty much Team Spirit given corporeal form.
• Heroes took this to anvilicious (but still enjoyable) levels in the episode, "How to Stop an Exploding Man" when every character teamed up to kick Sylar's ass and stop the nuking of New York.
• JAG generally invokes this trope. For example, in the episode "Dungaree Justice", a misdirected team spirit leads a group of sailors to avenge the rape of a female sailor on an innocent man.

Puppet Shows

• While many of LazyTown's episodes revolve around the values of working together, there is one in particular that focuses on teamwork, complete with a song:
  "Teamwork, do it together
  Teamwork, friends forever,
  We're all for one and one for all
  We'll help each other stand tall,
  With teamwork!"

Tabletop Games

• Masks: A New Generation represents this with the Team Pool, a reserve of points that players can use to assist each other and boost their chances of success. A cooperative team generates a large Team Pool, whereas instances of Teeth-Clenched Teamwork reduce the size of the Team Pool.

Video Games

• This is the point of the pact system in The World Ends with You. Without a partner, a Player will get erased in a few minutes. And just to show how vital having a partner is, in the first day of the third week, you are drawn into a battle with Noise without a partner; you can still fight on the bottom screen, right? Wrong. All of your pins are disabled, leaving you with no choice but to run from battle.
• Team Fortress 2's player classes all have different strengths, weaknesses, and unique abilities, forcing players to help each other out so their team can win...in theory, at least. There's also a hat-painting item known as Team Spirit, which makes your hat match your current team's color.
• This is a bit of a theme in Final Fantasy IX. Zidane says that he and Dagger are more than Just Friends, they're a team, and later he and Amarant have a discussion about what being part of a team means. One of the game's Active Time Events (a feature exclusive to this installment of Final Fantasy) is even called "Team."
• As every player on both ends of a versus match in Left 4 Dead will tell you; teamwork is very essential. Survivors must share supplies, stick together, and rescue their downed teammates from the Infected monstrosities that pinned them down. The Special Infected, consisting of multiple special zombies with their own kind of Body Horror mutation that grants them unique abilities, must communicate and coordinate their attacks on the survivors to pin them all down at once.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Sonic Heroes focuses on four different teams comprised of three heroes who belong to one of three different ability classes based on their primary skills (Speed, Flight, and Power) who must utilize each of their specific abilities to proceed through levels and complete objectives. Taken up to eleven in the final story, where all four teams must work together to defeat the final boss.
  • Team Sonic Racing takes Sonic Heroes’s “three classes per team” system and adapts it to a racing game, trading Flight for Technique.
• Fallout: New Vegas: At Camp Golf, the player is tasked with training the Misfits, an under-performing squad of NCR troopers. Among their issues, as Sergeant McCredie puts it, they have "absolutely no esprit de corps". One of the nicest members of the squad, Private O'Hanrahan suggests that a little more "basic human niceness" would go a long way towards getting the squad in shape. As it turns out, he's right; with enough Speech skill, the player can convince the squad to work together, which proves as effective as actual training in making them better soldiers.

Web Original

• Team Night Saturn: Everyone on the site doesn't seem to mind to work together... as a team.

Western Animation

• Amphibia: “The Big Bugball Game”: Anne joins the Farmers’ team against against Mayor Toadstool and his team of ringers in the annual Harvest Day bugball game, but since she’s used to single-player sports like tennis, she’s unused to being a team player and refuses to acknowledge her teammates. After her ball-hogging leads to getting trounced in a practice game, she finally agrees to let the rest of her teammates school her in teamwork. In the rematch, the Mayor’s team focus all their attention on Anne, still expecting her to hog the ball, but are caught unprepared by her willingness to rely on her team, making this game much more competitive. Since she’s still the best player on her team, the Mayor resorts to blinding her, but thanks to her team coaching her, she still manages to set up the winning shot, and the Mayor’s team is rightly humiliated.

• The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes has so many episodes where the Avengers save the day through teamwork, Loki caught the heroes in traps by forcing each to fight a Master of Evil alone.
• Hey Arnold!, "World Records": After several attempts by Arnold and Gerald to break a world record prove failures, Arnold comes up with the bright idea of getting all the neighborhood kids involved in making a giant pizza puff, using everyone's own special talent (Stinky's ability to wrap sleeping bags helps him fold the crust, Phoebe makes sauce, Gerald cuts vegetables). In the end they failed only because Sid misinterpreted TSP—teaspoon—as Ten Square Pounds. In the end they succeed with "Most Attempts at Trying To Get a World Record" which was without a doubt a team effort.
• King of the Hill: Averted in the series finale. Bobby joins a competitive meat-grading team, but the rest of his teammates are depicted as Jerk Asses who take it too seriously, including plotting to assault another team and mocking Bobby as a failure because he made a single mistake earlier in the competition. Bobby ends up winning the championship single-handedly, partly because the team showed up late thanks to karma catching up, and partly because when they shoved him to the sidelines and were about to give the wrong answer for the final event, he speaks up anyway and gives the correct answer, saving the day.

• My Friend Rabbit: This is pretty much the central theme. It's detailed in the show's Title Theme Tune: "We're a team with lots to share / It's not where we're going it's how we're gonna get there! / We can do it, when we do it together! / We can do it, me and my friend Rabbit!"
• PB&J Otter: A common theme, and there's even a song about it in one episode.
• The Powerpuff Girls: "Three Girls and a Monster" opens with the announcement that the City of Townsville has received an award for teamwork, and an example from the regular citizens being shown involving trash. However, Blossom and Buttercup are bickering over lots of things, picking up the hotline phone included. When the three girls finally meet the monster, one would expect the girls to defeat it by teaming up. Instead, Blossom and Buttercup continue to bicker while Bubbles gets the monster to leave town by asking nicely.

• Teacher's Pet has one episode "Team Scott".

• The Weekenders: In "Sitters", the gang are babysitting Carver's younger brother... not surprisingly, they manage to keep things under control when they're working together.
• Wonderpets: What's gonna work? Teamwork!

Real Life

• In World War II's Pacific Theater, the American air forces learned that dogfighting against the Japanese Zero fighters alone was a losing proposition against their early model fighters. However, with the help of master aerial tacticians like John Thach, the American pilots learn they can beat the Japanese in the air by fighting as a team.

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