Aelita (Code Lyoko)

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Aelita in the Desert sector of Lyoko.

Aelita (known as Aelita Stones at Kadic) is a character from the French animated television series Code Lyoko. Aelita is voiced by Sharon Mann in the English version of Code Lyoko. In the Spanish version, she is voiced by Xóchitl Ugarte.

[edit] Background

Aelita was originally thought to be the sole inhabitant of the virtual world of Lyoko, aside from Xana. She's approximately 12 years old, in grade 9, 4.65' tall, and weighs 77.1 pounds. Because aging is not a factor in Lyoko, her actual age is about 22, since she was on Lyoko for a period of about ten years before her first devirtualization. Her general pattern of speech also sounds more like a young woman than a young girl, which is evident when comparing her current voice to her voice in flashbacks. As a joke aimed at her being the only inhabitant of Lyoko and having the ability to do anything to it on a whim, the other members of the group (starting with Odd) have called Aelita "Princess" on multiple occasions, even treating her like a princess some of the time.

She was originally believed to be an advanced AI within Lyoko, since she had no memory of her past and lacked the ability to dematerialize normally. The second season reveals this to be false. Aelita was actually the daughter of Franz Hopper, who built the supercomputer and created Lyoko. When the government came to arrest Franz, the two escaped to Lyoko. Upon arriving, Xana attacked them, forcing Franz to shut down the supercomputer to stop him. Aelita somehow lost her memories during this event. Franz restores her at the end of the second season, making her completely human once more, at great cost to himself. She will wear a new outfit in the fourth season.[1]

[edit] History

Aelita real-world appearance in the first season. Her outfit changes in the second season.

As revealed in "Xana Awakens", Jeremie discovers Aelita asleep within the supercomputer after stumbling upon and reactivating it. Aelita, knowing nothing of her past, is nicknamed "Maya" (after the computer software used to create 3D graphics) by Jeremie as a placeholder. She later remembers her name after it's spelled out on the tower interface screen.

In the first season, Aelita spent all her time on Lyoko, since she couldn't leave. During that time, Jeremie worked on a materialization program that would bring her into the real world. The two would talk about the real world at great length whenever they had the chance. At the end of the first season, Aelita is finally materialized, but her time on Earth is short as Xana takes measures to make sure she remains linked to the supercomputer. Though this keeps her time on Earth limited at first, since she has to watch over Lyoko in case Xana tries to attack, Jeremie eventually develops a scanning program that removes the need for her to remain there.

After Jeremie finishes his materialization program and completes the super-scanner program, Aelita is able to live on Earth on a permanent basis. Her Earth outfit changes in the transition from the first season to the second. In the first season, she had a maroon skirt, yellow shirt and pink jacket (in "The Key", this is shown to be the outfit she was wearing when she was first virtualized). In the second season, Aelita wears a dark pink jumper dress over a light pink hooded long sleeved shirt and dark pink knee boots. Her night clothes consist of white socks and an oversized pink t-shirt with a red letter A on the front.

After being enrolled at Kadic, Aelita tells people she's Odd's cousin from Canada and adopts the last name of Stones, which she relates to the rock group upon first mentioning it.

While still virtual, Aelita and Jeremie would talk about the real world at length. There was a clear mutual affection between the two, and this persists when she is brought to Earth. Though Jeremie's stubbornness and overprotectiveness sometimes get on her nerves, the two have a fairly stable relationship. Aelita actually kissed Jeremie on the lips in the episode "Xana's Kiss", which he could only respond to by freezing in place. In general, they seem much more open with each other than Ulrich and Yumi are.

While working with Jeremie to remove her link to the supercomputer, Aelita spends her time in classes at Kadic with the others. In addition to the pressures of school, she must also endure her lack of familiarity with the real world, which causes her to make costly mistakes. She also has to deal with the teasing of Sissi and her two cronies, Hervé and Nicolas, though this becomes minimal by the end of the second season. She was also frequently yelled at by Jim, but this too dies down by season's end.

Before discovering that she was originally human, Aelita had recurring visions and nightmares (actually supressed memories) which gave clues as to her true origins. These centered around the Hermitage and a doll known as Mister Pück. Aelita had lived at the house as a young girl, and the doll was given to her when she was a child. Its name was suggested by Hopper. The visions often caused Aelita stress upon surfacing, particularly when Xana tried to forcibly awaken them in "Déjà Vu". These visions taper off by the end of "Mister Pück", with the exception of Xana's attempt to awaken them in "Déjà Vu".

While living at Kadic, Aelita's personality has absorbed some of the qualities of those closest to her as she learned to be more human, most notably those of Jeremie and Odd. Like Odd, Aelita has at times made wisecrack remarks towards monsters (and Sissi) and occasional jokes in the company of her friends. Aelita has also become quite adept at using Odd's Overboard as seen in the episode "A Bad Turn", due to his tutelage. Aelita also has gained Jeremie's stubbornness, as shown in the episodes "Missing Link" and "Déja Vu", especially when she and Jeremie have conflicting views. Easily ditching the initial image of an innocent and safegoing princess, Aelita has gone on to become quite the risk taker, often getting herself into dangerous spots so as to save those other than herself.

[edit] Powers

On Lyoko, Aelita has control over the environment around her, though exercising that power is quite costly for her. Her outfit consists of a pink mini skirt and a matching top that go over pants and a long shirt that are both off-white, with maroon gaiters that wrap around them, and matching shoes. She also has elf-like ears, with a small dangle earring in the left one. Her Lyoko ID card has a pink Eye of Xana on the back.

Having been a program for some time, Aelita has a natural talent for programming, though her skill doesn't match that of Jeremie. Her time on Lyoko has also given her intelligence far above average. In the episode "Revelation", Aelita revealed that she had an overall grade point average of 95.2 for the term, closely trailing Jeremie's 99.7 average. She tries to be modest about it by saying it was due to her math scores. Aelita also discovers in the second season that she has quite the talent for mixing techno music as a disc jockey in the episode "Final Mix", and considers doing so her "favorite Earthly passion." Her childhood memories (which she lacked at the time) show that Franz Hopper had taught her to play the piano at an early age, likely resulting in her current talent.

Like Xana, Aelita can use the supercomputer to hack into any network at will, but she is not capable of creating spectres as he does. Creating spectres requires activating a tower, something Aelita is incapable of doing on her own. Her purpose is actually to prevent Xana from doing just that. To do so, she deactivates the towers used by Xana to attack the real world. She does this by entering the activated tower, floating up to the interface at the top, and entering the code "Lyoko", something she alone is capable of. Others can enter the towers and can use the passage features of particular towers in the same fashion, but tower-deactivation is unique to her. In the third season, if she is possessed by XANA, she will go into the way-tower for that sector and enter the code "XANA", which enables XANA to delete the sector. On one occasion, she deleted the Ice Barrier sector on purpose.

In the first season, Jeremie's scanning program was not capable of instantly detecting activated towers nor accurately locating them once detected, and Aelita would assist by listening for pulsations on Lyoko, a tell-tale sign of tower activation. The pulsations do not pulse out from the tower as one would expect, but rather inward from every direction, allowing anyone on Lyoko to track them to the tower. With the creation of Jeremie's super-scanner in the second season, tracking pulsations became unnecessary (pulsations appear less frequently after this, likely due to the fact that they're redundant now).

Aelita's main defensive and occasionally offensive power is the ability to modify the terrain of Lyoko at will, which is referred to as "creativity." She uses this power through a combination of kneeling down, lifting her head up, and/or singing (usually one note, but it varies between episodes). She also closes her eyes on occasion, which seems to be necessary for larger changes. She has used the power while running on several occasions, but these were simple changes. The power can be used to either create or destroy any terrain she chooses. This power is mostly used to stall enemies if she's outnumbered or waiting for backup by creating barriers. She can also use it to remove the ground beneath monsters, dropping them into the void below. In the episode "Sabotage", Aelita actually forms a block of ice over a Tarantula, crushing it. Additionally, she can create clones of anyone on Lyoko, including herself. The clones usually act as a distraction or as a way to trick Guardians. Unlike Ulrich's clones, these clones are invincible. As a downside, however, they are not as versatile as Ulrich's clones and have a very limited range of movement, if any in some cases. Regardless of how Aelita uses her creativity, it costs her half of her life points per use. She also seems to be capable of levitating to some degree outside of a tower, as seen in "Claustrophobia", but she only does it once.

Aelita also has a secondary ability to sense Lyoko without actually having to see it. This manifests itself as something of a "second sight" in the episode "Attack of the Zombies" when Xana made the activated tower, and the area surrounding it, invisible. From her point of view, it appears as if the colors in Lyoko are inverted. Aside from that episode, the ability is never seen. In the episode "Tip-Top Shape", Xana seems to take this ability into account when making the Mountain sector invisible, since Aelita can see neither the tower nor the rest of the sector.

Aelita's energy field attack.

In the first two seasons, Aelita has no real weapon aside from her creativity powers. She does use one of Yumi's tessen fans in the episode "Attack of the Zombies", but they are easily transferrable. In the third season, after a break of several weeks within the series, Jeremie reveals that Aelita has developed a weapon of her own. Unlike her friends, who all carry some sort of physical weapon, Aelita's weapon seems to be an extension of her creativity, but without the associated cost. She is able to concentrate energy into a pink orb and fire it at monsters from either hand, which she calls "energy field." The orbs are incredibly powerful, surpassing all the others' weapons in overall effectiveness. Not only can they kill monsters in a single hit, regardless of where they strike the monster, but they can even shatter the elliptical laser of a Megatank in two hits. When a monster is hit by an orb, they are surrounded by a layer of energy (hence the name "energy field") which destroys them after a few seconds. Additionally, Aelita can create a makeshift shield by forming an energy orb in each hand and mixing their energies.

For long-distance travel, Aelita usually rides with one of her friends. When they are not present, Aelita uses any available vehicle. In "A Bad Turn", when she was forced to run a mission alone, she produced exceptional feats on the Overboard, managing to single-handedly destroy a squad of Hornets by herself by causing them to crash into walls and each other. She performs similar moves on an Overbike in the episode "Cold War". Her efforts in this regard were aimed at escaping the Scyphozoa, which she failed to do, but Odd came along to save the day.

Aelita has 100 life points in Lyoko; the norm for any character. During the first two seasons, however, Aelita had an extra handicap. Because of her connection to Lyoko, she could not be devirtualized normally, meaning that she faced actual death if a monster managed to devirtualize her. The only safe way to devirtualize her was through the use of Jeremie's materialization program while inside a neutral tower, which didn't come about until the end of the first season. As a plus, she can regenerate her own life points by entering a tower. It's unclear if the others can use this ability, as they never stay inside a tower long enough to test it. In the first episode of the third season, Aelita is actually devirtualized by a Creeper; however, with her connection to Lyoko having been severed by the restoration of her memories, Aelita can be devirtualized normally, and no longer need worry about being deleted in Lyoko.