Code Lyoko

Code Lyoko
Code Lyoko logo
Genre	Action, Cyberpunk,Adventure, Dramedy, Romantic, Friendship, Science fiction, Supernatural
Created by	Tania Palumbo Thomas Romain
Written by	Sophie Decroisette
Directed by	Jérôme Mouscadet
Starring	Sharon Mann Matthew Géczy Mirabelle Kirkland Barbara Weber-Scaff David Gasman
Theme music composer	Franck Keller Ygal Amar
Opening theme	"Un Monde Sans Danger" ("A World Without Danger")/"Code Lyoko Theme" by Julien Lamassonne (sung in English by Noam)
Ending theme	"A World Without Danger" (Instrumental) Season 1 "Break Away" (Instrumental) by Subdigitals Seasons 2-4
Composer(s)	Serge Tavitian Herman Martin
Country of origin	France
No. of seasons	4
No. of episodes	95 (+ a two-part prequel) (list of episodes)
Production
Running time	26 minutes approx.
Production company(s)	Antefilms (Season 1) MoonScoop (Seasons 2-4)
Broadcast
Original channel	France 3 and Canal J (France) Cartoon Network (US)
Original run	Original series: 3 September 2003 (2003-09-03) – 10 November 2007
Chronology
Followed by	Code Lyoko: Evolution

Code Lyoko is a French animated television series created by Thomas Romain and Tania Palumbo, produced by Moonscoop, and the English-language cast is Barbara Weber-Scaff, David Gasman, Matthew Géczy, Mirabelle Kirkland, and Sharon Mann. The series centers on a group of five teenagers who travel to the virtual world of Lyoko to battle against a malignant artificial intelligence named X.A.N.A. who threatens Earth. The series is presented in 2D hand-drawn animation and CGI.

The series began its first run with ninety-five episodes on 3 September 2003, on France's France 3, and ended its run on 10 November 2007. It aired in the United States on 19 April 2004, for the first time Cartoon Network. The show later spawned a new and improved live-action/CGI series Code Lyoko Evolution, which began at the end of 2012. It kept the 3D computer animation style while it focused on Lyoko, the digital sea, and the Cortex, while live-action or the real world.

Between 2004 and 2007, Code Lyoko aired every day on Cartoon Network (Miguzi) at 4 PM Eastern Standard Time, sometimes showing two episodes consecutively, in the cases of season finales.

On 31 May 2011, MoonScoop announced on its Facebook page that the show will be returning for a fifth season; this was partially due to a large dedicated fan base. The season consists of 26 episodes, as well as containing a mixture of live action and CGI. The show was then renamed "Code Lyoko: Evolution," and premiered 19 December 2012.

Plot

Jeremie Belpois, a gifted thirteen-year-old boy attending boarding school at the fictional Kadic Academy, one day discovers a quantum supercomputer in an abandoned factory near his school. Upon activating it, he discovers a virtual world called Lyoko with a young girl, Aelita, trapped inside it. Unusual events begin to occur at Kadic Academy. Jeremie learns of X.A.N.A., a rogue, malevolent artificial intelligence multi-agent system who also dwells within the supercomputer. X.A.N.A.'s goal is to conquer the real world and all human beings.

Jeremie must materialize Aelita into the real world and stop X.A.N.A. Jeremie is aided by his three best friends and classmates Ulrich Stern, Odd Della Robbia, Yumi Ishiyama as they, along with Aelita, are virtualized into Lyoko in order to save both worlds from the sinister virtual entity.

In the third season finale the group is joined by William Dunbar. Once virtualized in Lyoko, he is possessed by X.A.N.A. He remains possessed until the episode "Down to Earth". He officially rejoins the group as the sixth Lyoko warrior in Code Lyoko: Evolution.

Background

Origins

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.^[1] 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.^[2] 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.^[1]

Garage Kids was first 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 its succeeding show Code Lyoko, Garage Kids was originally intended to be a 26-episode miniseries detailing the lives of four French boarding school students who discover the secret of the virtual world of Xanadu; created by a research group headed by a character known as the "Professor". The pilot featured both traditional animation and CGI.^[3]

Garage Kids evolved into Code Lyoko, which began broadcast in 2003, with the virtual world renamed to "Lyoko". Romain, however, left the show to work on the Japanese anime series Ōban Star-Racers.

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.^[4] The school, Kadic Academy, is based on Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux.^[5]

Lyoko

Lyoko (pronounced "lee-oh-koh") is the virtual world contained within the supercomputer. It is composed of five different regions or sectors, each one representing a different landscape and environment. The first four being the Forest, Desert, Ice/Polar/Glacier, and Mountains, superficially resembling various real-world landscapes, climate, and 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/Heart of Lyoko itself, the code which maintains and supports the whole virtual world; and the hangar for the group's virtual submersible ship, the Skidbladnir. The first four sectors are arranged by four points leading to the center, around the fifth sector, a ball-like figure. All five sectors are eventually destroyed by the end of the third season; by destroying the Core of Lyoko in the third season finale, X.A.N.A. made it so that the five main characters would no longer pose a threat to him and his evil schemes to destroy the real world. In the fourth season, all five sectors are eventually recreated by Jeremie and Aelita due to a recreation, restoration program given to them by Franz Hopper.

Digital Sea

The Digital Sea (or Digital Void) is a liquid sea and ocean that resides below all of the four main sectors and is how the Lyoko program portrays the supercomputer's DOS or DOS's quantum computer equivalent. When something falls into the Digital Sea, a white/green column of light emanates from it; this represents that the person or thing is sent to the world wide web. It is the most forbidden place on Lyoko due to the permanent deletion, as well as eternal virtualization on Lyoko. Only two people have actually fallen in it: Yumi, who was brought back by a materialization program originally made for Aelita, and Aelita who was eventually brought back by her father. X.A.N.A. intended to constantly throw Aelita into the digital sea in order to lure Franz Hopper out of hiding so that he could destroy him once and for all.

Replikas

Lyoko is hosted on a supercomputer that is located in the abandoned factory; after destroying the original Lyoko, X.A.N.A.'s plan was to host more Lyokos on different supercomputers so he could launch attacks on the real world, much like he could on the original Lyoko. A Replika is a complete replica of one sector of Lyoko, complete with its own set of towers. The group attempted to rid the Network of all of the hundreds of existing Replikas, as doing so greatly weakened X.A.N.A., but there were too many to destroy one by one. Eventually, Jeremy's multi-agent program, due to Franz Hopper's sacrifice, had possessed enough energy and power to wipe them all out entirely, along with X.A.N.A. itself from existence.

Accolades

Code Lyoko was voted as the best show by Canal J viewers in France,^[6] and has achieved international fame as well; the show has been rated as one of the best shows on Cartoon Network and Kabillion in the United States, 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 in Finland and the United Kingdom as well. The show also won France's Prix de l'Export 2006 Award for Animation in December 2006.

Merchandise

Several Code Lyoko products have been released, including DVDs, a series of cine-manga by Tokyopop, a series of four novels by Italian publisher Atlantyca Entertainment, apparel and other accessories. In 2006, Marvel Toys released a line of Code Lyoko toys and action figures.

The 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. There have been other games released through various mediums, one being Facebook.^[7][8]

A series of Clan TVE festivals in Spain included live stage shows based on Code Lyoko among other things.^[9] A game show known as Code Lyoko Challenge was planned to be released in late 2012, but fell through.^[7]

In January 2011,all four seasons of Code Lyoko were released on iTunes in the US and in France by MoonScoop Holdings. in October 2011, all four seasons were released on Amazon Instant Streaming and via DVD in the same countries, however these DVDs are now out of print and extremely difficult to find.^[10] On 6 August 2012, all four seasons were made available on Netflix DVD and Instant Watch.

Book Series

A series of four chapter books was released by Atlantyca Entertainment and distributed in Italy and other countries. The novels delve deeper into the unanswered questions of the series. Taking place after the end of the series, X.A.N.A. has miraculously survived and returns, though weakened and initially missing its memories. X.A.N.A. takes control of Eva Skinner, an American girl, and travels to France in order to infiltrate the gang and kill them off. Unaware of their enemy's presence, the group works to find clues about Aelita's past, left by her father Franz Hopper, and confirm whether or not her mother is still alive somewhere. But at the same time, a terrorist group, the Green Phoenix, has become interested in supercomputer and intend to use both it and the virtual world of Lyoko for evil purposes.

It has been confirmed that the series will never be released officially in English, nor the final two books released in French.^[11]

International Release

Country	Channel
United States	Cartoon Network
Saudi Arabia	MBC3
Australia	Network Ten Cartoon Network
Belgium	RTBF 2BE La Deux
Colombia	Cartoon Network
Czech Republic	Megamax
United Kingdom	GMTV Kix
Brazil	Jetix
Finland	MTV3
France	France 3 Canal J (2003-) TV5 Monde
South Korea	Animax SK Broadband
India	Sun TV
Indonesia	SpaceToon PLUS
	Jetix
Spain	Clan TVE Canal Panda Boing
Israel	Arutz HaYeladim
Sweden	SVT
Italy	Rai 2 Rai Gulp Disney Channel
Japan	Jetix
Canada	SRC
Lithuania	LNK TV
Hungary	Megamax
Norway	NRK
Pakistan	Starlite
Poland	ZigZap
Portugal	Canal Panda Panda Biggs
Romania	Megamax
Russia	TNT (Russia)
Serbia	Ultra TV
Turkey	JOJO Cine5 Maxi TV Kidz TV
Vietnam	VTV
Greece	Mega TV (2013-)
Hong Kong	TVB

See Also

• List of French television series

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Code Lyoko

• Code Lyoko at the Internet Movie Database
• Code Lyoko at TV.com

References

Code Lyoko Garage Kids Code Lyoko (episodes) Code Lyoko: Evolution (episodes) Characters Code Lyoko characters Code Lyoko Evolution-specific characters Media Music Subdigitals Video games Code Lyoko Code Lyoko: Quest for Infinity Code Lyoko: Fall of X.A.N.A. Unaired pilot Garage Kids Book Category Animation portal / Television portal