| Code Lyoko | |
|---|---|
| Format | Animated, Science fiction, Action, Comedy |
| Created by | Tania Palumbo Thomas Romain |
| Written by | Sophie Decroisette |
| Directed by | Jérôme Mouscadet |
| Voices of | Sharon Mann Matthew Géczy Mirabelle Kirkland Barbara Weber-Scaff Jodi Forrest David Gasman |
| Theme music composer | Franck Keller and Ygal Amar |
| Opening theme | "A World Without Danger" by Noam Kaniel ("Un Monde Sans Danger" by Julien Lamassonne in French). |
| Ending theme |
A World Without Danger"(Instrumental) by Noam Kaniel (Season 1) |
| Composer(s) | Serge Tavitian and Herman Martin |
| Country of origin | France |
| No. of seasons | 5 |
| No. of episodes | 97 (aired) 26 (ordered)[1] 123 (total) (List of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Running time | 26 minutes approx. |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | France 3 and Canal J |
| Original run | Original Series: 3 September 2003 – 10 November 2007 Revived Series: 2012 |
| External links | |
| Website | |
Code Lyoko is a French animated television series created by Thomas Romain and Tania Palumbo. The series centers on boarding school students Jeremie, Ulrich, Yumi, and Odd who travel to the virtual world of Lyoko to fight against multi-agent computer program XANA with Aelita, a being originally trapped in Lyoko. The series features both two-dimensional animation and CGI.
The series began its initial 95-episode run on 3 September 2003 on France's France 3, and ended its run on 10 November 2007. In the United States, the show was first broadcast on 19 April 2004 on Turner and Time Warner's Cartoon Network. The show moved with new episodes on Boomerang on December 2006. On 31 May 2011, production company MoonScoop revealed on Facebook[2] that the show is returning with a fifth season Code Lyoko: Evolution, set to air in 2012. The season will be 26 episodes long and contain a mixture of 2D Animation and CGI.[3][4]
Code Lyoko has spawned an array of related merchandise, including three videos games, a tie-in book series, figurines, and a new MMORPG in development. The show achieved ratings success in multiple countries.[3]
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Code Lyoko originates from the film short Les enfants font leur cinéma (The children make their movies), directed by Thomas Romain and produced by a group of students from Parisian visual arts school Gobelins School of the Image.[5] Romain worked with Tania Palumbo, Stanislas Brunet, and Jerome Cottray to create the film, which was screened at the 2000 Annecy International Animated Film Festival.[6] French animation company Antefilms offered Romain and Palumbo a contract as a result of the film. This led to the development of the pilot, Garage Kids.[5]
Garage Kids was released in 2001. The project was created by Palumbo, Romain, and Carlo de Boutiny and developed by Anne de Galard. Its producers were Eric Garnet, Nicolas Atlan, Benoît di Sabatino, and Christophe di Sabatino. The project was produced by Antefilms.
Similar to the succeeding Code Lyoko, Garage Kids was intended to be a 26-episode series detailing the lives of four French boarding school students who have discovered the secret of Xanadu, a virtual world created by a research group headed by the Professor. The Professor plunged into madness, and the resulting disturbances within Xanadu threaten the real world. The pilot featured both 2D and 3D animation.[7]
Garage Kids evolved into Code Lyoko, which began broadcast in 2003. Romain, however, left the show to work on Japanese series Oban Star Racers. Palumbo stayed as the show's artistic director.[8]
Code Lyoko is about a group of four boarding school students enrolled at Kadic Junior High School: Jeremie Belpois, Odd Della Robbia, Ulrich Stern, and Yumi Ishiyama. The students travel to the virtual world of Lyoko — which is found in a supercomputer housed in the basement of an abandoned factory near the school — to fight against a deadly multi-agent system named XANA and prevent him from taking over the world. In the first season, they also tried to bring a virtual being trapped on Lyoko, Aelita Schaeffer to Earth.
An artificial intelligence known as XANA, is obsessed with world domination. To do this, he first must escape a supercomputer that imprisoned him. XANA is able to attack the real world by activating towers on Lyoko, which act as links to the real world. When these towers are activated, XANA is able to seize control of other computers and electrical systems as well as occasionally possessing organic life-forms or generating copies of them. In order to end an attack, Aelita must get to the activated tower(s) out of Lyoko's five sectors to deactivate them, neutralizing the attack on the real world.
Once the danger is averted, the Lyoko Warriors can use the supercomputer to return to the past, leaving no one except themselves 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 (going back in time cannot bring back the dead), and deal with many clashes of personality at the same time. Once back in time, they can use their knowledge of the future to alter events in their favor. This usually entails taking steps to keep one of XANA's attacks from taking place, though they do use the knowledge to prevent other unfavorable events that may not be related to XANA. As a downside, returning to the past adds a qubit to the supercomputer, doubling its power and therefore XANA's with each use (in the first two seasons only, as XANA's connection to the supercomputer is lost by season three).
In the prequel, Jeremie Belpois discovers an old abandoned factory containing a complex supercomputer. He reboots it and learns that it contains a virtual world called Lyoko and a virtual humanoid named Aelita, who does not remember her name and is thus called "Maya". Strange attacks begin to occur in the real world as a result of re-activating the supercomputer. Odd Della Robbia, Ulrich Stern, and Yumi Ishiyama become involved in these attacks, and Jeremie has no choice but to share his secret with them. The three are sent into Lyoko using scanners to stop the deadly force attacking their world. Once the attacks are stopped, the group discovers that the havoc caused is XANA's doing, a powerful AI which wants to dominate the world. "Maya" learns that her actual name is Aelita when she is deactivating the tower.
In the second part, Jeremie discovers a back in time function in the supercomputer, but nobody knows who or what created Lyoko, Aelita, the supercomputer, and XANA.
The first season of the show has little plot development. The only major plot developments are made in the two-part finale. Episodes are mostly filler. Until the finale, each episode consists of the group discovering an attack, stopping the attack, and resetting time to cover it up. Other subplots are included, such as their relationships with one another and other students and teachers at the school. Usually the interaction with their classmates and teachers early in each episode contributes to XANA's attack. Throughout episodes, Jeremie works on a program to materialize Aelita in order to shut down the supercomputer safely. He eventually completes the program and runs it in the two-part finale, but XANA takes measures to keep Aelita linked to the supercomputer, preventing the group from shutting it down without killing her in the process, leaving a cliffhanger opening for the second season.
The second season, in contrast to the first, is much more plot-focused, though a decent portion of episodes are still filler. Animation has changed (due to switching production companies) and sectors have been redesigned and are much brighter and Jim and Sissi's personalities have changed significantly, though some traces of their old personalities exist in some form. In the first episode of the second season, Aelita enrolls at Kadic under the name of Aelita Stones. She poses as a cousin of Odd, using a forged birth certificate created by Jeremie, therefore allowing her to live on Earth. Jeremie's new super scan program also means that Aelita doesn't need to stay on Lyoko to check for XANA's activity; however, due to her links to the supercomputer, Aelita will die if she runs out of Life Points on Lyoko and can only be devirtualized through one of the towers. Aelita also begins having visions of a life she supposedly never lived, and a man named Franz Hopper is shown to have connections to Lyoko. Also adding to the group's troubles is a new student named William Dunbar, who has begun to take an interest in Yumi.
Each member of the group now has vehicles to quickly transport them in Lyoko: Odd receives a hover skateboard called an "Overboard," Ulrich receives a one-wheeled motorcycle called an "Overbike," and Yumi receives a hover scooter called an "Overwing." Aelita can ride any vehicle by herself if necessary, but usually rides with another person. A fifth sector, Carthage, is discovered in Lyoko and turns out to be XANA's home sector, from which all of his data can be accessed, so the group goes on several journeys into this sector to do so. At the same time, XANA begins sending the Scyphozoa after Aelita to steal her memories that he can use as "keys" and escape the supercomputer. XANA also has created four new monsters (including the Scyphozoa) that are much more powerful than previous monsters. The operations of the supercomputer are also somewhat demystified. Return trips are fewer (though still common) now, because it makes XANA stronger. Throughout the season, XANA's true purpose is revealed slowly, as are the origins of the supercomputer, Lyoko, and Aelita herself. In the end, despite the group's best efforts, Aelita's memories are stolen, apparently killing her; but Franz Hopper (revealed to be Aelita's father) revives her and restores her memory. However, XANA escapes the supercomputer, and the group, though unsure of how to do so, vows to continue fighting him.
In the third season, XANA has been strangely quiet in both the real world and Lyoko, having done nothing during the group's summer vacation. It still needs a computer to exist, but is no longer limited to a specific one, instead being free to roam the Internet at will. Jeremie has developed a new scanning program capable of tracking XANA, which reveals that XANA appears to be residing in the United States, but the team lacks the means to strike against XANA. Jeremie's current goal at the moment is to find a way to transfer the group directly into the Internet.
Because Aelita had her memories returned by Franz Hopper, she can be devirtualized normally. She even has a new power to defend herself within Lyoko — energy fields. Also, Yumi has decided against having a relationship with Ulrich, preferring to remain just friends.
In Carthage, the group finds Lyoko's core, which XANA wants destroyed. Being free of the supercomputer, XANA's attacks are far more powerful. Tower activation is still required to initiate them, but XANA can perform attacks on levels far beyond what he could when imprisoned. XANA can possess mass numbers of people at once, making it that much more difficult for the group to make their way from the school to the factory. In the hopes of isolating the group from Carthage, since destroying Lyoko directly would prove difficult, XANA has turned his sights to Lyoko's sectors, hoping to remove their ability to access Carthage by deleting the sectors, one-by-one, they use to get there. By using the Scyphozoa to possess Aelita, XANA can use her to enter the code "XANA" in a way tower. This gives XANA full access to the sector, after which he can delete it. Despite their best efforts, XANA eventually succeeds in deleting all four sectors. Luckily, Jeremie finds a way to access Carthage directly.
Seeing that their numbers aren't enough against XANA's increasing power, the group decides to add William Dunbar to the team to balance things out. However, a chain of events lead to only Aelita and William being able to make it to his first trip to Lyoko. Once they arrive, the two are separated, and XANA uses the Scyphozoa to possess William. Using William, XANA is easily able to overpower the other Lyoko warriors and destroy Lyoko's core. The act renders the supercomputer useless. Within the empty supercomputer, William is transformed into a dark version of himself, now possessed by XANA to an even greater degree. Afterwards, Jeremie gets a coded message from the internet from none other than Franz Hopper, who has somehow survived the destruction of Lyoko.
In the fourth season, the virtual world Lyoko is recreated, allowing the group to continue tracking XANA. Traveling into the digital sea in Jeremie's latest creation, a submersible ship called the Skidbladnir, the group finds a number of "Replikas", single-sector recreations of the virtual world. Each of these 'Replikas' are controlled by another supercomputer, controlled by the AI XANA. To stop XANA, Jeremie devises a way to send the main characters to the real world locations of the controlling supercomputers, with their virtual world abilities. As a result of this effort, the group attempts to destroy supercomputers controlling these worlds one by one.
In the final few episodes of the season, the creation of a monster known as the Kolossus causes the realization that another solution will need to be devised to stop the artificial intelligence. To this end, Jeremie works to complete a multi-agent program to stop the artificial intelligence further, as well as to free the captured human William. In the final episode, the combined efforts of Jeremie and Franz Hopper successfully stop XANA, with the price of Hopper's life. In the epilogue, Aelita and the rest of the group reluctantly shut down the supercomputer, ending any chances of finding her father.
In addition to plot changes, this is the first season in which the character's outfits are significantly altered, in both the physical and virtual worlds.[9][10]
This season, officially identified as "Code Lyoko: Evolution", is set to be aired sometime in 2012[11].
The series mainly focuses on Aelita Schaeffer (Stones), Jermey Belpois, Odd Della Robbia, Ulrich Stern, Yumi Ishiyama, and the primary antagonist XANA, an artificial intelligence. Although originally un-explained, the characters' origins, including how they met, were explained in a two part episode that served as a prequel to season three, "XANA Awakens". During this episode, it's revealed that Jeremy discovered Aelita trapped in a virtual world, for which her rescue serves as the main story arc for the first two seasons.
There are many recurring characters in Code Lyoko. There are also characters that are specifically developed for a single episode.
There are many types of monsters in Lyoko. XANA creates them in order to keep the towers it activates safe and battle the group. Some are a mere nuisance while others are a major threat. The ones that can be considered a nuisance make up for this fact by traveling in packs. All of them, however, try to impede the group. The monsters remain until they are destroyed or a return trip is activated. XANA has eleven types of monsters. These monsters are the Krabbe, Blok, Kankrelat, Megatank, Hornet, Creeper, Kolossus, Kongre, Sharks, (Flying)Manta, and Scipazoa. Each Lyoko warrior has special weapons in Lyoko in order to destroy the monsters. Aelita mostly relies on the protection of the others when it comes to dealing with the monsters in the first two seasons, but gains a weapon in the third.
Other monsters exist that don't fall into the same category as XANA's monsters. One is a monster Jeremie produced, called the Marabounta, which only appeared in one episode. There is also an entity known as the Transport Orb. It's a giant white sphere with an Eye of XANA printed on it, like all of XANA's monsters. Unlike the other monsters, however, its only purpose is to ferry passengers from the edge of any region to the center of the fifth sector, Carthage, and back again. Both Jeremie and XANA can access it at will. This entity's classification as a monster is arguable, but it is included for the sake of completion.
Also, there are monsters located in the digital sea. These monsters must be destroyed using torpedoes shot from the Skidbladnir or Nav Skids. Also there are different types of monsters, some big and powerful or some small but not so powerful.
Lyoko (English pronunciation: /liːˈoʊkoʊ/ lee-oh-koh) is the virtual world contained within the supercomputer. It is composed of five sectors, the first four, Forest, Desert, Ice, and Mountain, superficially resemble various real-world ecosystems. The fifth sector, Carthage, serves as the central hub of Lyoko; it contains all of Lyoko's data, and X.A.N.A's as well. It also contains the core of Lyoko, the code which maintains the virtual world. The first four sectors are arranged by four points leading to the center, around the fifth sector, a ball like figure.
The show is set in France (most likely a suburb of Paris), which can be seen in various scenes through the series. The episode "Satellite", for instance, shows a military satellite zooming in on France to target the junior high school. Despite this, the English dub of the series occasionally confuses this fact. For example, in the episode "Attack of the Zombies", Milly Solovieff asks Sissi what her feelings are about her father starting a language-exchange program with France (despite them already being in France). The English version also tends to use American terms in place of the French equivalents (Washington St. and Franklin Ave., for example), further confusing this fact. In episode 84, the coordinates of Jeremie are those of a nuclear power plant in France.
The factory and boarding school are based on real locations in France. The factory was based on a Renault production plant in Boulogne-Billancourt, but has since been demolished.[12] The school, Kadic Academy, is based on Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux.[13]
Many scenes in the program are reused, particularly transitional scenes. The intro sequence changes in the transition from the first season to the second, but not in the third. In the third season, the logo in the final scene is merely recolored green. The fourth season intro is done in the same style as the last two seasons, but using new clips. CGI scenes are also reused occasionally, though with different backgrounds in some cases.
Code Lyoko was voted as the best show by Canal J viewers in France,[14] but it has achieved international fame as well: The show has been rated as one of the best shows on Cartoon Network and Kabillion in the US, with Cartoon Network having it rated as the #3 best performing show in 2006 and Kabillion having it as #4 in monthly average views in 2010. The show has reached success in Spain as one of Clan TVE's highest rated shows, on Italy's Rai2 network, and also received success in Finland and the United Kingdom.[3] The show also won France's Prix de l'Export 2006 Award for Animation in December 2006.[15]
Several Code Lyoko products have been or are being planned for release, including DVDs, a series of cine-manga by Tokyopop, a series of four novels by Italian publisher Atlantyca, apparel and other accessories. In 2006, Marvel Toys released a line of Code Lyoko toys and action figures. In July 2007, Carl's Jr. had a kids' meal toy promotion for Code Lyoko, followed by a similar promotion from its sibling restaurant chain, Hardee's.
Game Factory has released three video games based on the show: Code Lyoko and Code Lyoko: Fall of X.A.N.A. for the Nintendo DS, and Code Lyoko: Quest for Infinity for the Wii, PSP, and PlayStation 2. An MMORPG by Korean company CJ Entertainment is also in development.[16][17] In November 2011, MoonScoop announced on Facebook the development of a new social game. The game is set to be released in Spring 2012 on Facebook and other online platforms. [18][19]
As of January 2011, the first season, the second season, the third season, and the fourth season of Code Lyoko have been released on iTunes in the US and in France by MoonScoop Holdings. As of October 2011, all four seasons have been released on Amazon Instant Streaming and via DVD in the same countries.[20][21]
A series of Clan TVE festivals in Spain included live stage shows based on Code Lyoko among other things, the most recent one being in April 2011.[22][23] The same stage show was also shown across Madrid in May.[3]
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