Code Lyoko

Code Lyoko is a French animated television series created by Thomas Romain and Tania Palumbo. The series centers on four boarding school students, Jeremy (originally Jérémie), Ulrich, Yumi, and Odd, who travel to the virtual world of Lyoko to fight against an evil and sinister sentient artificial intelligence/multi-agent computer program called XANA with a virtual humanoid being named Aelita. The series features both two-dimensional animation and CGI.

The series began its initial ninety-seven episode run on September 3, 2003, on France's France 3, and ended its run on November 10, 2007 and on April 19, 2004 on Cartoon Network through it's Miguzi block at launch in the United States. The series ran on their block from April 19, 2004 until June 1, 2007 where it moved into the Master Control block that year which replaced Miguzi. The block eventually ended on November 9, 2007, a day before it's series finale aired on France 3 on November 10, 2007. The series continued airing on Cartoon Network until late 2008. The series also aired worldwide on Cartoon Network.

On May 31, 2011, production company MoonScoop Group revealed on Facebook that the show is returning with a fifth season, rebranded as Code Lyoko Evolution, to air in late 2012. The new season will be twenty-six episodes long and contain a mixture of live-action for scenes on Earth and continue to be CGI for Lyoko scenes. Since 2015, the series can also be viewable on YouTube, As of October 1st 2020, the Code Lyoko series seasons 1-4 can now be viewable on Netflix.

Overview
Code Lyoko is about a group of four boarding school students enrolled at Kadic Junior High School: Jeremy Belpois, Odd Della Robbia, Ulrich Stern, and Yumi Ishiyama. The students travel to the virtual world of Lyoko — which is found in an extremely powerful and scientifically complex supercomputer housed in the basement of an abandoned factory near the school — to fight against a sentient, thinking, sinister and deadly multi-agent system (or artificial intelligence) called XANA and prevent it from taking over the real world and all of humanity. In the first season, they also relentlessly tried to bring a virtual humanoid being trapped on Lyoko, Aelita Schaeffer (Hopper) to Earth via a process known as materialization.

A malevolent, artificially intelligent multi-agent system named XANA is obsessed with achieving world domination and destruction. To do this, he first must escape a highly complex and powerful supercomputer that imprisoned him. XANA is able to attack the real world by activating towers on a virtual world called 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) in Lyoko's five sectors to deactivate them, thus 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, greatly strengthening and doubling its power tenfold and therefore XANA's with each use (in the first two seasons only, as XANA's connection to the supercomputer is lost by the start of the third season).

Main Characters
The series mainly focuses on Aelita Schaeffer (Stones), Jeremy Belpois, Odd Della Robbia, Ulrich Stern, Yumi Ishiyama,William Dunbar, and the primary antagonist XANA, an artificial intelligence. Although originally unexplained, the characters' origins, including how they met, were explained in a two-part episode that served as a prequel to season one, "XANA Awakens". During this episode, it is revealed that Jeremy discovered Aelita trapped in a virtual world while searching for parts in an abandoned factory, for which her rescue serves as the main story arc for the first season.

Secondary Characters
There are recurring or minor characters who the series does not entirely focus on, but play a big role in the show nonetheless. Such examples are Elizabeth "Sissi" Delmas, a fellow student who attempts to ruin the group, William Dunbar, a boy who wants to get closer to Yumi, Jim Morales, the physical education teacher, who always speculates on what the group is doing, the mysterious Franz Hopper, Aelita's true father, and Herb Pichon and Nicholas Poliakoff, Sissi's close friends.

Minor Characters
Also, some characters are developed to contribute to the storyline for only each separate episode. Examples include Taelia, a girl who had resembled Aelita that moved to Kadic, or Patrick Belpois, Jeremy's first cousin; there are many more.

Monsters
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 twelve types of monsters: Krabe, Blok, Kankrelat, Megatank, Hornet, Creeper, Kolossus, Kongre, Sharks, Manta,Tarantula and Scyphozoa. 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 do not fall into the same category as XANA's monsters. One is a monster Jeremy produced, called the Marabounta, which only appeared in episode thirty-six. There is also an entity known as the Transport Orb. It is 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 Jeremy 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 shots from the Skidbladnir Nickname {Skid}or Nav Skids.