One Hundred Fantasy Clichés That Really Need To Rest In Peace

#38: The Power of Friendship

  To me, a story focused on the bond between two friends is more powerful than one focused on romance.  While romances can be temporary and almost always end eventually in heartache, friendships are lifelong and can be even stronger than family at times.  That is why to this day The Kite Runner remains one of my favorite novels of all time and controversially The Great Gatsby is at best average to me. 

  Despite this personal opinion though, there is one friendship related cliché that I feel is overused; the battle winning power of friendship.  Before anyone judges me for this opinion, let me explain this problem more in depth.  While friendship itself is a powerful storytelling element, using it to just quickly wrap up a plot or defeat an enemy seems at worst a bit lazy. 

  Take for instance half of the plots from the Sailor Moon manga.  While the main character herself barely lays a finger on the villain of the week, her many girlfriends end up fighting each and every one with their lives always on the line.  Would it not be better if Sailor Moon jumped into a battle once in a while to end up saving her own friends to mix up the plot formula?  More people would relate to her through these last ditch fights, seeing how brave of a magical girl she can be when given the chance.  Besides that, more tension would be created as the audience would not know whether or not the battle could be won if all the other magical girls had an inability to fight certain enemies.  Just handing the victory over to the heroes just because they happened to always have back-up does not create a suspenseful plot.

  The manga Puella Magi Madoka Magica plays the game the opposite way.  While the hero Madoka does have friends to help her out in their many fights, they do not always end up winning in the end.  Heck, some of them even end up dying in the middle of combat!  Without using the power of friendship trump card, this series has a more suspenseful plot.  Madoka has to fight alongside her friends in order to win, with the series climax having her fight the almighty final boss alone due to the lessons she learned along the way fight after fight.  If Sailor Moon did something similar without using the friendship trump card, the series would be more suspenseful and create a more relatable situation for the readers to get invested into.

  Friendship is a great tool to use when writing any type of novel.  However, the friendship always needs to be on equal grounds in order for the plot to flow better.  Once in a while, the power of friendship can be a great tool to fight even the toughest of wars.  Using it all of the time though just is going to ruin an otherwise strong story.  Choose wisely when each character should fight and account in friendship when it is the best appropriate for the plot.