Vegeta, Goku, and Piccolo

For those who don’t know the Dragon Ball franchise, I will explain.  Goku is the guy in the middle who has been the main hero since the beginning.  Piccolo (green guy on right) was the final villain of the original Dragon Ball series.  When Dragon Ball Z began, Piccolo slowly began turning into a good guy and eventually befriended Goku.  Vegeta (angry guy on left) was one of the early main villains of DBZ.  He eventually became an ally of Goku even though he really hated him.  Not sure I can go with friends, but I haven’t seen the newest series.  Anyway, these two were enemies of Goku and then they became allies.

The ‘enemy turned ally’ trope is fairly common though.  I remember it in comics like whenever Magento joined the X-Men.  There have been video games where you get to play a long-standing villain such as when Bowser teamed up with Mario in ‘Super Mario RPG’.  Plenty of novels have this trope too.  One could even call it cliche, but it’s one that I never seem to see get any pushback.  Not on a grand scale, at least.  The turn is usually accepted at some point as long as things are done well.  I guess an author who wouldn’t do it well might not keep an audience long enough to do the turn too.  Then again, I might just be lucky and not found many terrible ones.

I’ve always found this character twist to be fun.  You have this villain, who is typically defeated and replaced by a stronger one.  Since they aren’t dead, they can still be active in the story.  The choices tend to be join the new baddie as a henchman or decide to join the hero.  This ties into redemption arcs, which I think appeal to people because it gives us hope for forgiveness in our own lives.  It can also create some interesting friction and comedic sparring since you can’t have the former enemies be friendly right away.  Well, you can, but it might seem forced.  The angles you can go at this subplot are fairly numerous because you can take it in a variety of ways.

Now, you might wonder why an author would do this too.  I know I have.  I think it can usually come down to two things:

1. The author really liked the former villain and wanted to keep them going.  They also saw that there was a chance to make them a hero or anti-hero.  There is a love and desire to not retire them just yet.  Of course, this can backfire if the audience doesn’t share the author’s attachment.
2. That’s why you have the second scenario where the audience loves the villain.  It’s not because the character does bad things, but they garner sympathy and are seen as a multi-faceted figure.  An author might see this and decide to change their plan to maintain their audience.  It isn’t just for fame though because one has to see what others see in order to make it work.

I’m sure people can think of why this shouldn’t be done.  A villain who has crossed certain lines really can’t become close friends with a true hero.  They might work together if forced, but there isn’t a solid relationship there.  I’m not talking about villains who are routinely trying to betray their new side here, but ones that genuinely try to change their ways.  There’s a limit to what people will forgive for though, which is understandable.  It isn’t the same for every person too, so you need to prepare for some backlash.  This should be why you don’t see this trope very often, but you do see it a lot.  Maybe most modern villains aren’t as evil as the ones in the past?

Anyway, what do you think of heroes and former villains becoming friends?  Any favorite examples?