Code Lyoko

Code Lyoko
Genre	Adventure Science Fiction Action[1] Comedy
Created by	Tania Palumbo Thomas Romain
Written by	Sophie Decroisette
Directed by	Jérôme Mouscadet
Starring	Sharon Mann Matthew Géczy Barbara Scaff Mirabelle Kirkland David Gasman
Theme music composer	Franck Keller Ygal Amar
Opening theme	"Un monde sans danger" 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
Original language(s)	French
No. of seasons	4
No. of episodes	97[1][lower-alpha 1] (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Nicolas Atlan Christophe di Sabatino Benoît di Sabatino
Producer(s)	Nicolas Altan
Running time	26 minutes[1]
Production company(s)	Antefilms (Season 1) MoonScoop Group (Seasons 2–3) Taffy Entertainment (Season 4)
Release
Original network	France 3
Picture format	576i (4:3 SDTV)
Original release	3 September 2003 (2003-09-03) – 10 November 2007 (2007-11-10)
Chronology
Followed by	Code Lyoko: Evolution
Website	www.codelyoko.com/,%20http://www.codelyoko.fr

Code Lyoko is a French animated television series created by Thomas Romain and Tania Palumbo and produced by the MoonScoop Group. The series centers on a group of teenagers who travel to the virtual world of Lyoko to battle against a malignant artificial intelligence named XANA 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 on Cartoon Network. The show later spawned a 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 for the real world.

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

On 31 May 2011, the MoonScoop Group 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 13-year-old boy attending boarding school at Kadic Academy, 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. A series of bizarre events begin to occur at Kadic Academy. Jeremie learns of XANA, a malevolent artificial intelligence/multi-agent system who also dwells within the supercomputer. XANA's goal is to conquer the real world and all human beings.

Throughout Season 1, Jeremie works to materialize Aelita into the real world and stop XANA. Jeremie is aided by his three friends Odd Della Robbia, Ulrich Stern, and Yumi Ishiyama as they are virtualized into Lyoko in order to save both worlds from the sinister virtual entity alongside Aelita. In "Code: Earth," Aelita is finally materialized, but the group discovers that XANA had planted a virus inside Aelita, which prevents them from shutting down the supercomputer.

The second season focuses on the group as Aelita adjusts to life in the real world while Jeremie searches for an anti-virus for Aelita. In Lyoko, a fifth sector is discovered and the group explores more of Lyoko's secrets and mysteries, while XANA attempts to steal Aelita's memory in order to gain the Keys to Lyoko and free itself. At the end of the season, Aelita and Jeremie discover that Aelita does not have a virus, and instead is missing a fragment of hers. XANA tricks them with a fake fragment and succeeds in stealing Aelita's memory and getting itself out of the supercomputer.

In the third season, XANA destroys each of Lyoko's surface sectors one by one, until only Carthage, the fifth sector, is left. The group invites William as a member, but upon being virtualized, he is possessed by XANA. Shortly after, he destroys the Core of Lyoko, rendering the group helpless against XANA. After what they thought was their defeat, Jeremie receives a coded message from Franz Hopper, Aelita's father, that allows him to recreate Lyoko and continue the fight against XANA.

At the beginning of the fourth season, the group builds a digital submarine, the Skidbladnir, to travel across the Digital Sea to destroy XANA's Replikas, which are copies of Lyoko's sectors that are linked to XANA-controlled supercomputers on Earth. XANA uses William as its general throughout the season to defend the Replikas. Near the end of the season, XANA decides to gather energy from hundreds of his Replikas to create the Kolossus, a seemingly invincible monster that later destroys the Skidbladnir. Before it is destroyed, the group saves William from XANA's clutches. After he returned, he had a difficult time gaining the trust of the Lyoko Warriors. In Code Lyoko: Evolution he was referred to as a permanent addition to the group for the first time. While Ulrich defeats the Kolossus, Franz Hopper sacrifices himself in order to power Jeremie's "anti-XANA program," which destroys XANA upon activation.

Development

Original promotional poster for Garage Kids

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.^[2] 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.^[3] 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.^[2]

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.^[4]

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, which has since been demolished.^[5] The school, Kadic Academy, is based on Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux.^[6]

Characters

Episodes

Lyoko

Lyoko (pronounced /liːˈoʊkoʊ/) is the virtual world contained within the supercomputer. It is composed of five different sectors (referred to as regions temporarily), each one representing a different landscape and environment. The first four are called the Ice Sector (called Polar Region in the first season), the Desert Sector, the Forest Sector, and the Mountain Sector, superficially resembling various real-world landscapes, climate, and ecosystems. The fifth sector, Carthage (mostly recognized as Sector 5), serves as the central hub of Lyoko; it contains all of Lyoko's data, including XANA. It also contains the Core (sometimes 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 (nicknamed Skid). 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, XANA hoped to make it impossible for the kids to interfere with its plans. 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.

Lyoko seems vital to the abilities of XANA, with the AI creating the Replikas to allow it to interact with and control the physical world.

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 deeper computational layers. 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 Network (World Wide Web). It is extremely dangerous, with those that fall in either being permanently deleted or permanently trapped in a virtualized state. Three people have fallen in: Yumi, who was brought back by a materialization program originally made for Aelita, Aelita who was eventually brought back by her father, and William, who while under XANA's control seemed able to travel through it unharmed. XANA intended to constantly throw Aelita into the digital sea in order to lure Franz Hopper out of hiding so that it could destroy him once and for all. XANA also created three monsters specifically for combatting the heroes in the sea during their forays with the Skid, the Kongres, the Sharks, and the Kalamar.

Replikas

Lyoko is hosted on a supercomputer that is located in the abandoned factory. After destroying the original Lyoko, XANA's plan was to host more Lyoko copies on different supercomputers so he could use them to take control of facilities all around the world to complete its plan to dominate the world. A Replika is a complete replica of one sector of Lyoko, complete with its own Towers. The group attempted to rid the Network of all of the hundreds of existing Replikas, as each one destroyed greatly weakens XANA, 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 XANA itself from existence.

Throughout the television series, a replika of the Mountain Sector does not appear, but in Code Lyoko: Quest for Infinity, the Mountain Replika is present. Additionally, a Volcano Replika was added into the game, despite not being a replica of a Lyoko sector. In Code Lyoko: Evolution, the Lyoko Warriors discover a new sector (dubbed as another Replika, not a sector) called the Cortex, which is one of the key plot points later on.

Accolades

The series received mostly positive reviews. Code Lyoko was voted as the best show by Canal J viewers in France,^[7] 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^[8][9] and Kabillion having it as #4 in monthly average views in 2010.^[9] The show has reached success in Spain as one of Clan TVE's highest rated shows,^[9] on Italy's Rai2 network,^[9] 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.^[10]

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 XANA 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.^[9][11]

A series of Clan TVE festivals in Spain included live stage shows based on Code Lyoko among other things.^[12] A game show known as Code Lyoko Challenge was planned to be released in late 2012, but fell through.^[9]

In January 2011, all four seasons of Code Lyoko were released on iTunes in the US and in France by Moonscoop Holdings, although as of July 2017 only season 4 vol's 1 and 2 are available and other seasons have been removed. 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.^[13] 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, XANA has miraculously survived and returns, though weakened and initially missing its memories. XANA 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 was confirmed that the series will never be released officially in English, nor the final two books released in French. However, some time later, a fan community came together and sought to not only finish the series but translate it into more languages, including English. They have since completed their work and made it available for free download in September 2014.^[14]

Broadcast

In the United States, the series premiered on 19 April 2004 on Cartoon Network. The second season started on 19 September 2005. The two-part XANA Awakens prequel aired on 2–3 October 2006, and the third season started a day later on 4 October 2006. The fourth and final season began on 18 May 2007. The last episode aired on Cartoon Network was "Cousins Once Removed", and the remaining seven episodes were released online. The show also aired in Latin America and Japan on Jetix.

Since 2017, all of the episodes aired in English (including the prequel XANA Awakens) is currently viewable via YouTube.

See also

• List of French animated television series
• List of French television series

Notes

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Code Lyoko

• Code Lyoko on IMDb
• Code Lyoko at TV.com
• Code Lyoko on YouTube

References