Ulrich Stern

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Ulrich Stern
Ulrich on Earth.
First appearance	"Garage Kids" (test pilot) "Teddygozilla"
Information
Age	13
Occupation	Junior high school student, Lyoko Warrior
Portrayed by	Barbara Weber-Scaff (English)

Ulrich Stern is a character from the French animated television series Code Lyoko. Barbara Weber-Scaff voices Ulrich in the English version.

Contents 1 Character outline 2 Personality 3 Skills 4 External links

[edit] Character outline

Ulrich is the silently-strong introvert of the group. He is 13 years old, in grade 9, 5.12' and weighs 99.2 pounds. Ulrich would seem to be the bravest member of the group, willing to fight off the various creatures and humans Xana possesses and sends after them, despite the rather obvious handicap.

On Earth, Ulrich wears a jersey with a vest over it and he wears cargo pants over his legs, all varying shades of green. In the first season episode "Killer Music," the jersey is shown as a non-sleeved shirt. His shoes are white. At night, he wears a white jersey and green shorts. When he practices Pencak Silat, he wears an outfit that looks like a black tank top with black pants. He's also barefoot when wearing this outfit.

Ulrich's Lyoko attire is somewhat modeled after a samurai. The outfit comes complete with a karate headband and a katana, as well as a drawing of an Oni on the back of the vest. He wears tabi over his feet. The back of Ulrich's Lyoko ID card shows three round symbols believed to be stylized chrysanthemums, a type of Japanese flower. He gets a new outfit in the fourth season, which trades his more loose-fitting clothes for a tighter body suit.[1] He has two swords strapped to his back, instead of just one to his side. The original sketch has some sort of tracking device over his left eye, but this is dropped in the final product in favor of the original headband.[2]

[edit] Personality

Ulrich doesn't say much about his personal life and is evasive when someone asks him about himself or his family. He seems to have trouble opening up to people and hides his feelings in order to use them all the more explosively in action. Whenever someone is in danger, his feelings appear very quickly. The first example of this is in the first season episode "Killer Music," when Odd is about to be sent to the hospital. A similar situation occurs in the second season episode "Cold War," where he tells Yumi that he needs her and screams when she seems to have died.

Though on the outside Ulrich appears to be fairly emotionally strong, he deals with hidden issues few could understand. One cause of this are his parents, who are very hard to please and have high expectations of their son. In "Zero Gravity Zone," Jeremie berates Ulrich for going to the soccer game instead of helping to fight Xana, which upset Ulrich. Odd explained Ulrich's reasoning after he had left the room. He went because he didn't want to disappoint his parents. This is later proven in "Final Round," when Ulrich's father appears and berates him for his failing performance in school. A clear example of his bad grades is when he got an F+ on a test in "Double Trouble".

In the second season episode "Vertigo," it is discovered that Ulrich has vertigo, which is a chemical disorder that causes dizziness. He shows signs of it when attempting to climb a rock wall, which reveals the condition to his friends. It hasn't seemed to affect him before this point. Having vertigo does not seem to be a hindrance on Lyoko, since it doesn't stop him from fighting Xana's monsters on cliffs or scaling walls in an attempt to destroy them. This is weird because Odd's motions sickness effects Odd, but Ulrich's vertigo doesn't.

Ulrich has a close relationship with Yumi, based on observation from a distance and repressed admiration, though both he and Yumi constantly waver between just friends and more than that. This admiration can sometimes cause him to do things that one might consider to be stupid. For example, in the episode "Saint Valentine's Day," he writes a poem for Yumi, but when he sees Yumi with William Dunbar, he reads the poem to Sissi instead in an attempt to make Yumi jealous. He later admits that he wrote the poem for her. In the episode "The Chips Are Down," when it looked as if Yumi might move back to Japan, Ulrich actually tried to write a letter to the president in an attempt keep her near the school. He abandoned this plan once he heard the lotto numbers being announced on the radio. Instead, he copied the numbers and activated a return trip in order to win the lottery. This action temporarily cost him his position in the group, and he was banished until they could think of an appropriate response. Unfortunately, as of the third season, Ulrich's relationship with Yumi has been reduced to a purely platonic level.

Yumi is not the only person interested in Ulrich; Emily, Milly, Sissi, and Tamiya have also expressed interest in him. Sissi is the most notable of the four since she's the most persistent in trying to get him to like her back (usually through mean-spirited jokes or pranks towards him and his friends), and fails to accept any kind of defeat in the matter, at least during the first season. Quite often, Ulrich has been forced to take one for the team in regards to her, meaning he had to distract Sissi to protect their secret or fake being nice to her while the others took care of the problem, much to his displeasure. It is unclear, though, whether or not he has any feelings whatsoever for Sissi.

Ulrich was, and likely still is, one of the strikers for the Kadic soccer team. He's quite good at the sport, being basically the game-winning element on the team. Jim even says so in the episode "Zero Gravity Zone." The soccer team is not mentioned or seen after this episode.

[edit] Skills

On Earth, Ulrich is a capable martial artist trained in the art of Pencak Silat. At least part of this training is from Jim, as shown in "Xana Awakens." He's also capable with a sword, which is his main weapon in Lyoko. He demonstrates this talent outside of Lyoko in the episode "A Bad Turn" when protecting Yumi from a materialized Krabe. As evidenced by a quote by Ulrich in "Rock Bottom," he also practices other martial arts, and in "Revelation," he copies the famous nosewiping and hopping stance of martial arts movie star Bruce Lee; this occurs during the battle between himself and a polymorphic clone that had transformed into a dark version of Ulrich.

Ulrich uses the Overbike, a one-wheeled motorcycle (monocycle) developed by Jeremie to enable faster travel in Lyoko. It's capable of flight, but does not do so normally. In fact, is the only vehicle of the three that does anything other than hover. There is a sheath for his sword on the bike.

On Lyoko, Ulrich is able to move many times faster than an ordinary human at will, and can do so indefinitely. This enables him to further defy the already lessened laws of physics in Lyoko, allowing him to scale walls and propel himself great distances. In the second season, he gains an ability called "super sprint." This allows him to run even faster for short periods of time.

Ulrich uses a katana as his weapon in Lyoko. His sword is capable of absorbing normal laser fire. It can also deflect the laser fire if positioned correctly. Combined with his enhanced speed, Ulrich can easily block most laser attacks so long as he is focused on doing so. He cannot, however, block specialized attacks, such as a Megatank's elliptical laser or a Blok's ice beam. The latter may simply be a matter of timing, as the Bloks tend to catch Ulrich off-guard when using that attack. The Megatank's elliptical laser, on the other hand, has proven to be too much for Ulrich to handle, due to the sheer amount of force behind the attack. Ulrich can only block the attack for a short period of time and is always devirtualized shortly afterward. The attack actually shattered his sword in one instance. If disarmed, Ulrich's sword can also be destroyed through a barrage of regular laser-fire (seen in "The Pretender"). As a secondary attack, Ulrich can throw his sword as a makeshift projectile. When tossed, it spins in a circle and cuts through everything in his path. The drawback is that it leaves him unarmed, since it doesn't always come back. In the episode "Franz Hopper," a ghost in the guise of Franz Hopper improved Ulrich's saber. The saber could be charged and emit a wave of energy that could cut through anything in its path. The sword would glow white as this happened and the energy wave itself was of a similar color. Once the fake was revealed, he lost the improved weapon. Ulrich gains a similar ability in "Nobody in Particular" when his body is possessed by Xana. In this case, he gained a powerful green laser that he could fire from his sword. Unlike the attacks of any Lyoko warrior or monsters (except the Magatanks) the green laser is not a short burst but a continuous attack.

Ulrich also possesses the ability to clone himself. He can create two at a time, and can only do so once per trip to Lyoko. The clones appear to be controlled by Ulrich through telepathy. The clones have every ability he does, with the exception of cloning themselves. They also have only one life point, which Ulrich pays each time he creates them, so they can only take one hit before being destroyed. In their normal form, called "triplicate," Ulrich simply creates the clones as assistants. At first, Ulrich's control of these clones seemed rudimentary at best, since they would often be easily hit. As the series has progressed, his control of them has refined. In the episode "Tip-Top Shape," he was able to use his clones to fight three groups of monsters (a Krabe, a Blok, and three Kankrelats) without losing a single clone to his opponents. He even toyed with the final Kankrelat, having one of his clones kick it into the air (like a soccer ball) so he could strike it in mid-flight. The clones can also be used in a second manner, called "triangulate." In this instance, Ulrich and the clones form a triangle around their target. A silhouette of Ulrich then runs around the perimeter of that triangle, forming a golden barrier. This is meant to confuse the target so Ulrich can destroy it. After the technique is finished, any remaining clones revert to their assistant state. The clones can also be drawn back into Ulrich in a process called "fusion."

Ulrich has, on several occasions, shown to be the most skilled in Lyoko when fighting. Many times he has defeated multiple monsters with skillful takedowns (particularly in the third season), and has outlasted the others, being the last to be devirtualized, such as in the episode "Code: Earth."

[edit] External links

• A page about Ulrich.

Code Lyoko
Characters	Aelita | Franz Hopper | Jeremie Belpois | Jim Moralés | Odd Della Robbia | Elisabeth Delmas | Ulrich Stern | William Dunbar | Xana | Yumi Ishiyama | Secondary characters
Monsters	Bloks | Creepers | Krabes | Guardians | Hornets | Kankrelats | Mantas | Marabounta | Megatanks | Polymorphic clone | Scyphozoa | Tarantulas | Transport Orb
Lyoko	Ice Barrier | Desert | Forest | Mountain | Carthage | Digital Void | Virtual Limbo
Places	The Factory | Kadic Junior High School
Technology	Scanners | Towers
Other	Media | Episodes | Garage Kids