| Code Lyoko | |
|---|---|
| The main characters of Code: Lyoko. In 3-D, from left to right: Odd, Yumi, Aelita, and Ulrich. In 2-D, from left to right: Jeremie, Ulrich, Yumi, and Odd. | |
| Created by | Thomas Romain |
| Starring | Matthew Géczy Sharon Mann Mirabelle Kirkland Barbara Staff David Gasman |
| Country of origin | France, United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Hong Kong |
| No. of episodes | 52 |
| Production | |
| Running time | approx. 0:26 (per episode) |
| Original release | |
| Network | France3, Cartoon Network |
| Release | April 19, 2004 – present |
Overview/Series Synopsis
Code: Lyoko is a French cartoon series featuring both anime-style and computer-generated imagery, produced by Antefilms during the first season and MoonScoop during the second, in association with the France 3 television network and Canal J. Code: Lyoko is about a group of four boarding school students enrolled at Kadic Junior High School, named Jeremie, Odd, Ulrich, and Yumi. The students try to help a benevolent digital being named Aelita leave the virtual world of Lyoko (found inside a supercomputer housed in the basement of an abandoned factory near the school), and enter the real world.
A megalomaniac digital entity named X.A.N.A., bent on world domination has damaged the supercomputer in charge of Lyoko. (There is some debate as to whether X.A.N.A. is the supercomputer itself, or the virus infecting it; see below at X.A.N.A.) If the group is able to get Aelita to the one activated tower out of the forty scattered about Lyoko, she can deactivate X.A.N.A.'s attack; then the supercomputer can revert time to just before the attack, leaving no one except the group to remember any of the events that transpired. To complicate the situation, they must do this while ensuring their classmates and teachers are not killed (because going back in time cannot bring back those killed by X.A.N.A.), and deal with the various personality clashes they have with them at the same time.
A further problem lies in that X.A.N.A. is a quantum computer; in "A Great Day," Jeremie theorized that X.A.N.A.'s capacity to gain strength may come from time reversion's effect of increasing the base of X.A.N.A.'s calculation capacity qubits. The heroes now refrain as much as possible from reverting time, so that X.A.N.A.'s power growth is kept in check. Therefore, they must be exceptionally careful to ensure the integrity of the present time stream. This has proven more difficult in recent episodes, such as "Attack of the Zombies" and "Ultimatum." Template:Endspoiler
In order to stop X.A.N.A., Odd, Ulrich and Yumi enter the virtual world to help Aelita get past X.A.N.A.'s guard monsters and deactivate the tower. Jeremie operates the supercomputer from a laboratory terminal in the factory, to keep track of the situation in Lyoko, warn them of danger, and to monitor their "life points." (Life points are a measure of their viability inside the virtual universe, similar to hit points in computer and video games or role-playing games.) If one of the virtualized players loses their life points, they merely "devirtualize." However, as Aelita lives inside the virtual world, if she were to lose all of her life points, she would be lost forever.
In Season 2, the group discovers a mysterious fifth sector of Lyoko, known as "Carthage." It is accessed by traveling to the boundaries of any of the main Lyoko regions, and Jeremie then entering the access code SCIPIO.
Many people in the U.S. find Code:Lyoko somewhat similar in certain ways to The Matrix.
Template:Spoiler Eventually the group manages to materialize Aelita; but they find that X.A.N.A. has infected her with a virus that prevents her from being able to survive if the Lyoko computer is turned off. Aelita continues to live on Earth, but must still deactivate the towers. She can only be devirtualized by Jeremie through a tower, unlike the others, who return to the real world if they lose all their life points. Template:Endspoiler
Main Characters
Jeremie
Jeremie is the brains of the group. He is the only one (except for Aelita) that can operate the supercomputer. He is attracted to Aelita despite her virtual nature, finding her innocence charming. When she is brought to Earth, he even starts romancing her.
Note: Jeremie's name is occasionally spelled 'Jeremy', both of which are accepted as correct due to localization.
Yumi
Originally from Japan, Yumi is the only one of in the group that doesn't board at the school - as well as being the oldest, tallest, and the only girl in the group besides Aelita. Yumi dresses in an all-black, somewhat Goth style. She is very mature for her age, but has more insecurities than she lets on. She reciprocates Ulrich's feelings, and can become very jealous of anyone else in whom he seems interested. However, she also has not admitted her love to Ulrich, though she has informed her parents at one time that she was in love with a boy (to explain her frequent disappearances in Season 2).
Besides Ulrich, William, the new kid introduced in Season 2, also has a crush on Yumi. Yumi gets into thick trouble when it comes to telling what her heart really feels about them.
Ulrich
Though only an average student, Ulrich is very athletic and is very skilled at soccer and martial arts. He is quite popular at his school; his popularity rivals even Sissi's. Despite his sternness, he has strong feelings toward Yumi, smiles on some occasions, and is quick to judge anyone to whom she seems attracted to. An apparent innate shyness has prevented him from admitting his love to Yumi to date, though they have almost kissed in Lyoko before going back in time.
Odd
Odd is...odd. He has a single shock of purple locks sticking out of his spiky cone of blonde hair, and his wardrobe is based on the color purple as well. He is often hyperactive, and rarely takes things seriously. He wants to be a musician of some sort when he is older. He dislikes Herb and Nicholas and teases them constantly. He has a dog named Kiwi, who usually stays hidden in his dorm room during classes. Odd may be the only one in the group to get sincere enjoyment from putting his life on the line in Lyoko.
Aelita
Aelita is the 'Princess' and sole known inhabitant of Lyoko. She has short pink hair, is medium height, wears green and pink clothes (in Lyoko), and she has fairy/elf-like ears, on one of which is an earring. On taking up "residency" in the real world in Season 2, the group gives her the surname of "Stones". She has no known parents. She had proven slightly gullible in the real world early on, like when Sissy told her about the showers with no girls in them; but she has adjusted quite well.
Note: The character has no known relation to the character of Aelita from the Soviet constructivist film Aelita: Oueen of Mars, other than a sharing of the name.
Secondary Characters
Elisabeth "Sissi" Delmas
The daughter of the school's principal, she considers herself to be the most attractive girl in school. She is attracted to Ulrich (who does not feel the same way) and is jealous of Yumi. Undoubtedly snobbish, during Season 1 she only rarely showed a more emphatic side. However, she admits in one episode that all she wants is to be accepted by Jeremie and the others. Later, she shows a nicer side, but it still seems to be self serving. However, it does give her some depth as a character rather than just being an annoying antagonist, sometimes she even helps the Lyoko warriors achieve victory.
X.A.N.A.
There is some debate as to the precise nature of X.A.N.A. One group suggests that the name is given to the supercomputer itself, within which resides the code that gives Lyoko its existence and reality. The computer, it is believed, has achieved artificial intelligence, to a near- or beyond-human level of sentience. This identification may be suggested by the scenes where we see the actual hardware of the supercomputer. On the front panel, near the large knife-pull power switch, is the symbol commonly called the Eye of X.A.N.A. (see below). This suggests that X.A.N.A. should be the identification of the machine. Whichever is the proper identity, X.A.N.A. wishes to take over the real world, using one fundamental strategy: destruction. It has yet to be shown as itself in a known physical form.
William Dunbar
William is a new student as of Season 2. He was kicked out of his old school, apparently, for plastering love letters all over the school. He is also an admirer of Yumi; in "Marabounta" he indicates to Ulrich that, if Ulrich does not express his feelings to Yumi, he (William) will pursue her romantically himself.
Approximately Yumi's age, he has exhibited common sense and ability to take charge in danger situations ("Attack of the Zombies," though his well-meaning restraint of Jeremie and Aelita slowed the team's response to a X.A.N.A. crisis). It is also revealed in the episode Vertigo that William has a fear of spiders. And in another episode, that he can't dance. Quite a few episodes have proved that William was usually a very kind hearted person, but he could be quite mean when he needs (or wants) to be.
===Jim ("Jimbo") Moralés=== Jim is Kadic's school physical education teacher and handyman/campus-supervisor. Rough around the edges and quite strict, he does actually like his charges, except for Aelita, whom he thinks is too weird to be in the school. He got involved with the Lyoko cause in "False Start," but has no memory of the experience due to the time regression following the attack. Apparently, in "St. Valentine's Day," Jim may have some feelings towards Suzanne Hertz. He also showed some affection towards Nurse Dorothy in "Xana's Kiss". He has a running gag in Season 2, in which he mentions a past job of his and then refuses to discuss it further ("I'd rather not talk about it"). So far, he has mentioned being a sewer worker, an army man, a 'Space Exploration Program Volunteer Test Subject' (though he has talked about this one), a salvage diver, and a worker at a psychaitric hospital, in addition to 20 years at Kadic, in that order. However, the certanity of these jobs (with the obvious exception of Kadic) is disputed. He was once possesed by XANA and atempted to virtualize Aelita to get the "Scyphozoa" - a new monster that can suck data from the virtualized heroes - to remove her memory. Recent screen caps of Season 2 also show Jim in the supercomputer terminal along with Jeremie, Yumi, Aelita, Odd, and Ulrich; that said, it is also possible that he, too, will become a member of the team and become virtualized as well. This may become confirmed, because he is most often the victim on X.A.N.A's attacks.
Other Characters
- Nicolas Poliakoff and Hervé Pichon (English: Nicholas & Herb)
These two are Sissi's "cronies"; they act as her minions and follow her orders. Both of them dislike Ulrich, who refutes Sissi's affections. They also dislike Yumi and Odd for other reasons. Herb also has a personal vendetta against Jeremie because they are academic rivals.
- Tamiya Diop and Milly Solovieff
The school's two unofficial newscasters are Tamiya and Milly. Milly has a big crush on Ulrich, and as seen in "Teddygodzilla", she is very sensitive about it. They are in the seventh grade.
- Émilie LeDuc (English: Emily)
Appeared to be a possible alternate love interest for Ulrich in Season 1. Tall, dark haired and generally quiet--but with a mean enough temper when riled--she seems to show interest in Ulrich, but does not chase him the way Sissi does. When an incident occured in "Swarming Attack" that caused Odd and Jeremie to think that Ulrich had a secret admirer, Odd deduced that the non-existent secret admirer was Emily. Later, in "Routine", Ulrich wondered if Emily might be interested in him and began talking to her. This association seems to have ended.
- Kiwi
Kiwi is Odd's lovable dog. While Kiwi might not be a student, he still boards secretly at Kadic with Odd. In fact, pets are not allowed at Kadic, so Kiwi gets Odd into trouble sometimes. Their rule may change, however. Kiwi looks like a Whippet, but his breed is still on official debate.
- Dorothy Dorothy is the school nurse. She is often bewildered by the "afflictions" (caused by X.A.N.A.) that manage to befall those at Kadic. In Season 2, she is addressed by her French name, Yolande.
- Mrs. Suzanne Hertz: Mrs. Hertz is the science teacher. It also seems that X.A.N.A. attacks during her class more often than any other class.
- Jean-Pierre Delmas: Jean-Pierre is the Headmaster of school. He is also Sissi's father, which gives reason for Ulrich and the gang to suck-up a little.
- Mrs. Meyer: Mrs. Meyer is the math teacher. Jeremie usually finishes her tests early and does well. On at least one occasion, however, Jeremy has given her a factually correct verbal statement as an answer to an unrelated question and received a zero as a result.
- Franz Hopper
Template:Spoiler Franz Hopper, as we discover in Season 2, is the creator of the Super Calculator--and thus the creator of XANA, Lyoko, and Aelita. He was also a science teacher at the school. Apparently, Lyoko was created by Hopper as a military project to use as a possible weapon or training simulator, but the project was abandoned. He has a wife named Taelia. Part of the credits show a picture of him with Taelia, and she appears to be pregnant This has not be confirmed yet. Franz Hopper left behind a large set of CDs comtaining his diaries and notes. Jeremie was able to copy the disks and was able to decrypt some parts of them. Template:Endspoiler
Monsters
In Code: Lyoko, There are several types of monsters in the cartoon. However, after Aelita Stones deactive the towers in Lyoko, all monsters may reverted because the time reverting. Yumi Ishiyama, Ulrich Stern and Odd Della Robbia have their weapon in Lyoko so they can kill the monsters.
Sectors of Lyoko
Lyoko is a virtual world. Supposedly created by Franz Hopper and his wife, Taelia. Aelita is the only inhabitant of this place.
Lyoko has 5 sectors, they are:
- Ice
- Forest
- Desert
- Mountain
- Carthage (Sector 5)
Episodes
Season 1
- Teddygodzilla
- Seeing Is Believing
- Holiday in the Fog
- Log Book
- Big Bug
- Cruel Dilemma
- Image Problem
- End of Take
- Satellite
- Girl of the Dreams
- Plagued
- Swarming Attack
- Just in Time
- The Trap
- Laughing Fit
- Claustrophobia
- Amnesia
- Killer Music
- Frontier
- The Robots
- Zero Gravity Zone
- Routine
- Rock Bottom?
- Ghost Channel
- Code: Earth
- False Start
Season 2
- New Order
- Unchartered Territory
- Exploration
- A Great Day
- Mister Pück (pronounced Pock)
- Saint Valentine's Day
- Final Mix
- Missing Link
- The Chips are Down
- Marabounta
- Common Interest
- Attack of the Zombies
- Ultimatum
- A Fine Mess
- X.A.N.A.'s Kiss
- Vertigo
- Cold War
- A Bad Turn
- Déja Vu
- Tip-Top Shape
- Franz Hopper
- Is Anybody Out There?
- Temptation
- Contact
- Revelation
- The Key
Season 3
A third season has been ordered. It is expected to air in september 2006, and consist of 45 episodes. The US licencing agent will be FUNimation Entertainment, who also did the Dragonball/Z/GT series.
The season 3 will be publicized with merchandise, such as toys, a special about the discovery of Lyoko, and a video game on the Nintendo DS handheld platform.
Show Changes From Season to Season
Season 1 to 2
- New monsters will be frequently added, as happened in Season 1.
- According to the commercials, the Lyoko gang will expand a bit to include new members. (At this writing, it appears that Aelita is the only new member; this may change.)
- Where Season 1 was a standard "episodic" format (the heroes solve the problem, revert time, and wait for the next attack), Season 2 has taken more of a story arc approach, with some stories building on the one(s) previous. Also, time regressions are fewer now, due to the fact that it makes X.A.N.A. stronger.
- Attention is being paid to a deserted house across the woods from the Kadic campus, named "The Hermitage," which was once owned by a physicist named Franz Hopper. Several of Aelita's visions/nightmares have centered around this house, and clues were discovered here leading to Hopper's encrypted disk-based diary; this may contain information vital to the mission.
- It was in the Hermitage that Aelita, after a series of flash-backs, discovers a doll that she remembers calling Mister Pück in an almost deja vu like fashion, because she previously had no solid memory of ever seeing the doll before. The fact, however, that she was even able to discover the doll in the first place proves otherwise. In one of Aelita's visions, she sees a real Mister Pück running and hiding in a tree trunk from wolves. Mister Pück wears a strange outfit, perfectly fitting for the name Puck, which in pagan and Christian mythologies was the name of a naughty forest sprite, or spirit. Included in his strange outfit, he also has two pink tails.
- After finding the Mister Pück doll, a key is discovered inside of it, unintentionally thanks to Sissi, that opens a train station locker. Inside the locker was a case of CDs, which Jeremy discovers is the diary of Franz Hopper. The CDs, however, are heavily encrypted, which has proven a challenge for even someone of Jeremy's wisdom. X.A.N.A. later destroyed the CDs when it possessed Jeremy. Thankfully before-hand, Jeremy was able to copy the encrypted CDs into a restricted section of the supercomputer that he alone could access.
- The new ending of Code: Lyoko shows that Aelita may have once been human. For the man shown, presumably Franz Hopper, married someone that looks extremely like Aelita, a woman named Taelia. Because of that some speculate he could have used his daughter as a test subject for him and his team's virtualization project. In order for this to be true, Aelita must have been very young to not remember her parents, or Franz could have attempted to erase her memory due to X.A.N.A. This might be why X.A.N.A. would want her memory so badly.
- As a side note, Aelita and Taelia are anagrams.
- In one of the photographs of Franz and Taelia Hopper that appears in the second season, Taelia looks to be pregnant.
- Apparently, Jeremy can "Jeremify" people like X.A.N.A. He used Odd to fight off the possessed nurse, while the rest went to the tower. This may prove useful in later episodes.
- The gang receives vehicles. Yumi and Aelita both get hover scooters called "Overwings," Ulrich gets a one-wheeled motorcycle called an "Overbike", and Odd gets an "Overboard." All three vehicles can fly. Aelita usually rides as a passenger with Odd and Yumi, but she has actually used all three vehicles by herself in various episodes.
- Aelita spends much more time in the Material World in Season 2. She even becomes enrolled at Kadic in the first Season 2 episode, "New Order," under the name of Aelita Stones, posing as a cousin of Odd.
- Jeremie has developed a new super-scanner that detects infected towers instantly.
- The CG quality improves noticeably in Lyoko. Even the 3-D versions of Yumi, Odd, Ulrich, and Aelita look more up-to-date.
- Taelia is same as Talia in Season 1. But looks like Talia was only seen in one episode and has same hair as Aelita.
Trivia
- The Tele2France series site indicates that the home city of "Kadic Junior High" or "Kadic Academy" is Boulogne-Billancourt, outside of Paris. Maps of the city show the ___location of the factory, on an island in the Seine River, occupied by an old Renault automobile plant. Both internal and external pictures indicate that the factory in the series was modeled on the Renault factory.
- Back in 2001, AnteFilms made a pilot, or precursor, for Code: Lyoko called "Garage Kids". Overall, character designs were similar, but several stark differences exist, such as:
Lyoko is called "Xanadu". The antagonist appeared and acted very much like X.A.N.A. in Code: Lyoko, but was given no name in "Garage Kids". Characters such as Yumi, with her telekinesis were able to exert their special powers outside of Lyoko. Aelita seems to not exist in "Garage Kids". The outfits for the virtualized characters for are drastically different, appearing to be designed from the older eras of an Eastern country. The over-all state of the computer-generated imagery in "Garage Kids" is poorly executed, in almost second-rated video-game starkness, when compared to the smooth, realistic Code: Lyoko computer-generated imagery.
- Aelita's name may be Russian in origin, and based on the title character from the 1924 Soviet movie Aelita. See also the IMDb article.
- The supercomputer is often referred to in the English broadcasts as the "super calculator." This is a direct transliteration of the French term super calculateur. (Source: Tele2France.)
- In the beginning of "A Fine Mess", Ulrich flips a coin to see who would come first out of the scanners. A fast eye will catch that the coin is a euro. Also note that the drink machine on campus uses euros.
- X.A.N.A.'s apparent proclivity for focusing on attacking Yumi has become extremely noticeable to some fans, who noticed the phenomenon in five consecutive episodes of Season 1. This event is referred to as "Pick on Yumi Week" by some fans.
- Yumi has a Totoro doll - a character that looks like a giant bunny or cat from the japanese animated movie, "My Neighbor Totoro", in her room. (Episode 15.) However, after this, it is replaced with an unnamed stuffed cat.
- In recent episodes, it seems that X.A.N.A. has decided to go after Jeremie. The reason for this is unknown. In two back-to-back episodes, X.A.N.A. tries to kill him. First, he blocks his airways, and almost succeeds in killing him. Then, he tries to choke him to death. (This is not as noticable, but he is the only character the X.A.N.A. phantom-thing directly attacks.)
External links
- Official Site (English or French)
- Site Code Lyoko (French). Extensive fan site, also known as "the Tele2France site (French)". Appears to have input from the director of writing on Code Lyoko.
- Virtual - the Code: Lyoko fanlisting
- Code: Lyoko at IMDB
- French fansite
- TV.com, an extensive site with forums and excellent information
- link to hear (not download) the opening song of Code: Lyoko
- Some media about Code Lyoko.
- MoonScoop, the French distribution company for the program.