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nevannaAt the moment, these are my favorite cartoon episodes that deal with mind control in some way, listed in chronological order. (I’ll focus on live action media in a separate post!)
1. “Spellbound” (Batman Beyond): This is the only show on this list that I watched when I was anywhere close to the target age. The Mad Hatter episodes of Batman: The Animated Series are great, but “Spellbound” is about teenagers who are mentally manipulated by an adult whom they should be able to trust, which was undeniably formative for me.
2. “Lake Laogai” (Avatar: The Last Airbender): I didn’t watch this show until years after it aired, so I knew that “There is no war in Ba Sing Se” was a meme, but I didn’t know why. (Those words are actually from an earlier episode that sets up one of the storylines in “Lake Laogai,” in which we find out what happens to the people who are forced to listen to them.)
3. “Bereft” (Young Justice): This episode is just one of many, many exceptional uses of telepathy and mind control in YJ (my subject line is actually a quote from the show). On an early mission, the team wakes up with no memories of the past six months, which hints at what their lives were like before they knew each other and provides some fantastic tension as they try to find a way out of their predicament. The villain who’s responsible is scary and fun, there’s a great mindscape sequence that significantly develops two of the main characters and their relationship, and it’s one of those episodes that rewards multiple rewatches once the viewer knows the whole story.
4. “The Society of the Blind Eye” (Gravity Falls): If you’ve talked to me about speculative fiction set in a world that resembles our own, you probably know how much I hate the “Masquerade” trope, so I was grateful for a story that suggested that trying to meddle with an entire community’s memories of Weird Stuff did more harm than good. This episode also gave a comic relief character some depth and pathos, contributed to Mabel’s character growth, and helped build the overarching mystery of the show.
5. TIED: “The Black Paladins” (Voltron: Legendary Defender) and “Change Your Mind” (Steven Universe): Two beautiful examples of the “hero forced to fight a mind-controlled comrade” trope. “Change Your Mind” has a strong thematic message and splendidly creepy imagery and voice acting (“Thank you, White Diamond – I feel so much better now!”) but “The Black Paladins” just makes my Shiro/Keith shipper heart happy, so I couldn’t resist including it.
Honorable mention: “Save The Cat” (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power), which also does a terrific job with the aforementioned trope, but I’ve only watched it once so far and haven’t developed quite the same attachment to it that I have to the others.
1. “Spellbound” (Batman Beyond): This is the only show on this list that I watched when I was anywhere close to the target age. The Mad Hatter episodes of Batman: The Animated Series are great, but “Spellbound” is about teenagers who are mentally manipulated by an adult whom they should be able to trust, which was undeniably formative for me.
2. “Lake Laogai” (Avatar: The Last Airbender): I didn’t watch this show until years after it aired, so I knew that “There is no war in Ba Sing Se” was a meme, but I didn’t know why. (Those words are actually from an earlier episode that sets up one of the storylines in “Lake Laogai,” in which we find out what happens to the people who are forced to listen to them.)
3. “Bereft” (Young Justice): This episode is just one of many, many exceptional uses of telepathy and mind control in YJ (my subject line is actually a quote from the show). On an early mission, the team wakes up with no memories of the past six months, which hints at what their lives were like before they knew each other and provides some fantastic tension as they try to find a way out of their predicament. The villain who’s responsible is scary and fun, there’s a great mindscape sequence that significantly develops two of the main characters and their relationship, and it’s one of those episodes that rewards multiple rewatches once the viewer knows the whole story.
4. “The Society of the Blind Eye” (Gravity Falls): If you’ve talked to me about speculative fiction set in a world that resembles our own, you probably know how much I hate the “Masquerade” trope, so I was grateful for a story that suggested that trying to meddle with an entire community’s memories of Weird Stuff did more harm than good. This episode also gave a comic relief character some depth and pathos, contributed to Mabel’s character growth, and helped build the overarching mystery of the show.
5. TIED: “The Black Paladins” (Voltron: Legendary Defender) and “Change Your Mind” (Steven Universe): Two beautiful examples of the “hero forced to fight a mind-controlled comrade” trope. “Change Your Mind” has a strong thematic message and splendidly creepy imagery and voice acting (“Thank you, White Diamond – I feel so much better now!”) but “The Black Paladins” just makes my Shiro/Keith shipper heart happy, so I couldn’t resist including it.
Honorable mention: “Save The Cat” (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power), which also does a terrific job with the aforementioned trope, but I’ve only watched it once so far and haven’t developed quite the same attachment to it that I have to the others.
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Date: 2024-08-14 12:53 pm (UTC)Also looking for your live action list!
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Date: 2024-08-16 12:24 am (UTC)