teamwork.png, 657x368, 1 times posted
>>129012144You must be new... to bad storytelling.
The cliché is it's a deus ex machina.
>and then somehow all the heroes holding hands let them beat MacMurderer the Mighty because I have a deadline to meetThere's a lot more to it that is hard to try and put it briefly:
>doesn't hurt solo protag power fantasies because it's not real help>makes animating cheaper when you can drop most of the cast and even reuse assetsThere's a TVTropes page for it with a featured comic strip that is basically every animu ever. It's like if Luke Skywalker confronted the Emperor and his faith in his friends stopped him from being zapped at all, let alone half to death.
In stories where the actual power of friendship exists, you don't call it that because it isn't stupid.