Code Lyoko


Code Lyoko is a French animated television series created by Thomas Romain and Tania Palumbo and produced by the MoonScoop Group that premiered on France 3. The series centers on a group of teenagers who travel to the virtual world of Lyoko to battle against a malignant artificial intelligence known as X.A.N.A. who threatens Earth with powers to access the real world and cause trouble. The scenes in the real world are presented in 2D hand-drawn animation, while the scenes in Lyoko are presented in CGI animation.
The series began its first, 97-episode run on 3 September 2003, on France's France 3, and ended on 10 November 2007. It started airing in the United States on 19 April 2004 on Cartoon Network.
Code Lyoko aired every day on Cartoon Network, and was also in their Miguzi and Master Control programming blocks, at 5:00 or 5:30 P.M. U.S. Eastern Time, sometimes even showing two new back-to-back episodes consecutively, in the cases of season finales.
On 31 May 2011, the MoonScoop Group announced on its Facebook page that the show would be returning for a fifth season. This follow-up series was officially named , which began airing at the end of 2012. This "sequel" to the series featured live-action sequences for scenes taking place in the real world instead of its traditional 2D animation but retained the iconic CGI for scenes taking place in Lyoko, now with an updated style. The show consisted of 26 episodes with the final episode airing in late 2013, leaving off on a cliffhanger with no second season planned as Moonscoop later filed for bankruptcy in 2014.

Plot

Jeremy Belpois, a 14-year-old prodigy 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 an artificially intelligent girl named Aelita trapped inside it. Jeremy learns of X.A.N.A., a fully autonomous, malevolent, and highly intelligent multi-agent system, that also dwells within the Supercomputer. Using Lyoko's powers, X.A.N.A can possess electronics and objects in the real world like a virus to wreak havoc. X.A.N.A.'s primary objective is to eliminate anyone aware of the Supercomputer's existence so that it will be free to conquer the real world and destroy all humanity.
Jeremy works tirelessly to materialize Aelita into the real world and stop attacks caused by X.A.N.A. Jeremy is aided by his three friends Odd Della Robbia, Ulrich Stern, and Yumi Ishiyama, who are virtualized into Lyoko to save both worlds from the sinister virtual entity. They achieve this by escorting Aelita to various Towers on Lyoko, which serve as interface terminals between Lyoko and Earth. Once the Tower is deactivated, Jeremy can launch a "Return to the Past" program, which sends the world back in time, while anyone scanned into the Supercomputer retains memory of the other timeline, to undo any damage caused by X.A.N.A. In "Code: Earth," Aelita is finally materialized, but the group discovers that X.A.N.A. had planted a virus inside of her that will kill her if the Supercomputer is turned off. They realize that they cannot destroy X.A.N.A, or Aelita will be destroyed along with it.
Aelita adjusts to life in the real world, while Jeremy attempts to develop an antivirus program to liberate her from X.A.N.A.'s power. On Lyoko, a fifth sector is discovered and the group explores more of Lyoko's secrets and mysteries. The gang begins to uncover information about a mysterious man named Franz Hopper, who went missing ten years ago. He supposedly created the Supercomputer, Lyoko, and X.A.N.A., and is eventually discovered to be Aelita's father. They finally find out that Franz Hopper is indeed alive somewhere, hiding in the uncharted parts of Lyoko to avoid X.A.N.A. further. All the while, X.A.N.A. attempts to steal Aelita's memory to gain the Keys to Lyoko and free itself. At the end of the season, the group discovers that Aelita is actually human and does not have a virus, and instead is missing a fragment of herself. In "The Key," X.A.N.A. tricks them with a fake and succeeds in stealing Aelita's memory and escaping the Supercomputer. Aelita appears to perish as a result but is revived when Franz Hopper restores her completely, along with her missing fragment: the memories of her life on Earth before she was virtualized on Lyoko.
Since succeeding in escaping the confinements of the supercomputer, X.A.N.A. targets the virtual world itself by destroying each of Lyoko's surface sectors, until only Carthage is left. Initially reluctant, the Lyoko Warriors decide to invite William Dunbar as the sixth member. However, shortly after being virtualized, he is possessed by X.A.N.A. via the Scyphozoa. Shortly after, he destroys the Core of Lyoko, destroying the entire virtual world and rendering the group unable to fight X.A.N.A., putting the entire real world in danger. After what they thought was their defeat, Jeremy receives a coded message from Franz Hopper that allows him to recreate Lyoko and continue the fight against X.A.N.A.
Jeremy and Aelita construct a digital submarine, the Skidbladnir, to travel across the Digital Sea to destroy X.A.N.A.'s "Replikas," which are copies of Lyoko's sectors that are linked to X.A.N.A.-controlled supercomputers on Earth, all created for its goal of world domination. X.A.N.A. uses William as its general throughout the season to defend the Replikas and target the Lyoko Warriors in any way he can. To prevent suspicion regarding William's disappearance, Jeremy manages to program a spectre to take William's place at Kadic, although the clone has low-level intelligence and acts very stupid. Near the end of the season, X.A.N.A. decides to draw energy from all of its Replikas to create the Kolossus, a gigantic monster that later destroys the Skidbladnir. Before it is destroyed, Jeremy frees William from X.A.N.A.'s control. After his return, he has a difficult time gaining the trust of the group. While Ulrich defeats the Kolossus, Franz Hopper sacrifices himself to power Jeremy's "anti-X.A.N.A. program," which destroys X.A.N.A. forever upon activation. Shortly after, the group, albeit reluctant due to their nostalgia, decides to shut down the Supercomputer.

Episodes

Characters

Main (Lyoko Warriors)

Jeremy Belpois '
Aelita Schaeffer
Odd Della Robbia
Ulrich Stern
Yumi Ishiyama
William Dunbar'''

Antagonists

X.A.N.A.
Monsters

Recurring characters

Elisabeth "Sissi" Delmas
Herb Pichon '
Nicolas Poliakoff
Jean-Pierre Delmas
Jim Morales '
Suzanne Hertz
Milly Solovieff and Tamiya Diop
Hiroki Ishiyama
Takeho and Akiko Ishiyama

Supporting characters

Franz Hopper

Development

Origins

Code Lyoko originates from the film short Les enfants font leur cinéma, directed by Thomas Romain and produced by a group of students from Parisian visual arts school Gobelins School of the Image. 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. 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.
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.
Garage Kids eventually evolved into Code Lyoko, which began broadcast in 2003 on France 3 and 2004 on Cartoon Network, 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. The school, Kadic Academy, is based on Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux.

Broadcast

The series premiered on France 3 on 3 September 2003 and ended on 10 November 2007 in France. 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 at Cartoon Network video. When the series aired on Cartoon Network, it was simultaneously both part of its after-school weekday afternoon action animation lighter-toned programming block, Miguzi from 2004 to 2007, and also a standalone show on its primetime timeslot. The show aired on Kabillion from 2007 to 2015.
The show also aired in Latin America and Japan on Jetix. In Italy, the show aired on Disney Channel and was published on DVD by Delta Pictures under the label 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.
All four seasons were made available on Netflix on 6 August 2012, but have since been removed for unknown reasons. Since 2015, all of the English dubbed episodes are currently viewable on YouTube. Since 2019, an upscaled HD version of the series is also available on Prime Video in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Accolades

The series received mostly positive reviews. Code Lyoko was voted as the best show by Canal J viewers in France, 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.
When the series started to come to an end in 2007, The Game Factory released three video games based on the show: Code Lyoko and ' for the Nintendo DS, and ' for the Wii, PSP, and PlayStation 2. The games were met with mixed to positive reviews from critics despite some criticisms of gameplay. There have been other games released through various mediums, one being Facebook.
A series of Clan TVE festivals in Spain included live stage shows based on Code Lyoko among other things. A game show known as Code Lyoko Challenge was planned to be released in late 2012, but fell through.
In January 2011, all four seasons of Code Lyoko were released on iTunes in the US and France by Moonscoop Holdings, although as of May 2019 only seasons 1 and 2 are available and other seasons have been removed. In October 2011, all four seasons were released on Amazon Instant Streaming and on DVD in the US, however, these DVDs are now out of print.

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. possesses 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 the 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, sometime 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.