The Power Of Friendship / Web Animation

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• In DEATH BATTLE!, this was explored in the season two finale between Red and Charizard and Tai and Agumon. While both young heroes have major bonds between their fire-breathing lizard companions, Wiz and Boomstick ultimately decide that what Red and Charizard has is probably more akin to Master and Slave at worst, and Master and Pet at best, where Tai and Agumon's bond is that of true friendship. This is easily shown when Tai runs up and delivers a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on Red, upset that Mega Charizard X is essentially being a bully to WarGreymon, demanding he call off Charizard.
  • That being said, host Boomstick absolutely detests this trope, his voice dripping in sarcasm and/or disdain when the trope comes up. Being a walking stereotype of the gun-loving, beer-guzzling, violence-loving Southern Redneck, it makes sense.
• Dreamscape: The friendships between the characters is given a big foucs in this.
• DSBT InsaniT: This is one of the "messages" of this web series. Its not given a huge focus, but its definitely there.
• Emirichu: Discussed in "6 MORE Annoying Anime Tropes", where Emirichu mentions not liking the power of friendship. As her animatic demonstrates, she thinks it often destroys any meaning the fight has since they could have just gotten their friends' help the entire time.
• Red vs. Blue:
  • Once the series starts moving away from pure shenanigans and starts providing a framework to understand their universe, the odds stacked against the Blood Gulch Crew are absurd — the only way they can even survive is by increasingly relying on each other, working past their faults and shortcomings, even as they relentlessly needle each other for those faults. Of note are three instances in the later seasons:
  • The crew's combined efforts allow them to take down the Meta, who had spent all of Seasons 6-8 being a ruthless, terrifying juggernaut. The only way they accomplished this, according to Word of God, is by the power of friendship.
  • When Agent Carolina and Epsilon are on their last legs, the Blood Gulch crew arrives in style to help her fend off a seemingly endless wave of books.
  • During the last two episodes of Season 13, the Blood Gulch Crew are up against Felix, a professional Hired Gun who is also a veteran of the Great War and strong enough to fight Freelancers. After being mocked by him for the last season-and-a-half, and having no backup from their Freelancer friends, the Crew stick together and completely humiliate him in a one-sided fight before sending him over the edge of a tower to his death. Then when they infiltrate the headship of Chairman Hargrove, they are trapped in his trophy room with his forces about to breach the door, so they gather up all the weapons they have around them in the room, including the Meta's improved armor, and stand together, saying their goodbyes to each other while waiting for the enemy. Epsilon gets special mention in this moment for sacrificing himself by deconstructing himself so he can run Meta's armor and give his friends a chance of making it out alive, even if he'll never know if it worked. As Season 15 reveals, it did.
• In RWBY, this plays a major role in Team RWBY's victory against the Ace-Ops minus Clover. Team RWBY are True Companions and Fire-Forged Friends that assist each other during the fight, intercepting attacks and chipping in against each other's main opponents. Of the Ace-Ops, only two of them have any synergy together, and both are hindered by their differing approach on how to deal with Team RWBY; the third has a hypercompetitive streak that Ruby exploits to break her away from her allies; and the fourth has an incredibly potent Semblance that could end the fight in an instant, but being the New Meat who's undervalued by his allies leaves him unassisted against an opponent who's perfectly suited to take advantage of his Logical Weakness.
• A major theme in TOME: Terrain of Magical Expertise. Because the entire show takes place in a Video Game, the idea that relationships can blossom and come to life over cyberspace is an extremely important concept. Through their adventures and their experiences together, the five man band become close friends despite not being able to see each other in person until the Grand Finale.
• In X-Ray & Vav, Hilda uses this to free her robotic friend ORF from The Mad King. The Mad King responds to this with "What is this Disney bullshit?!"

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