User Reviews

1.) The Actors/Characters

I'll start off by addressing the elephant in the room. The show is in live-action to the dismay of many of the viewers.While I don't find this to be a flaw in of itself, it is connected to many of the shows faults.

The Actors: Aelita(Léonie Berthonnaud) looks like an alternative punk rocker.Her pink hair looked fine in animation but in live action she just looks silly. She lacks the level headed, kind and intelligent demeanor she had in the original series. Odd(Played By Gulliver Bevernaege)while lacking a likeness to the original has actually improved from the original series. Other than that, Yumi(Melanie Tran),Ulrich(Quentin Merabet),Jeremy(Marin Lafitte) and William (Diego Mestanza) as well as Leonie and Gulliver play their roles adequately.

On a side note, I couldn't help but notice the whitewashing of a well known, or should I say the only black character in Code Lyoko, Sam.There were plenty of colored women on set so claiming that there were no auditions is not an excuse.

The Rule Changes: So, it seems now that everyone has the ability to deactivate towers, due to "codes" that X.A.N.A left within our heroes to insure it's survival. If the children lose these codes, they will lose their ability to deactivate towers, including Aelita. This is problematic in numerous ways. First of all, there is Zero explanation as to how X.A.N.A. did this or how exactly the heroes carry them around. Are the codes just floating around in their bloodstreams? Your guess is as good as mine. Does this now mean that X.A.N.A. can take away Aelita's ability to fight it? How does the transfer of these codes into the other kids give it the ability to take away Aelita's predestined abilities? Plot holes like these are rampant in this season. And to retrieve these "codes" from the warriors, X.A.N.A. sends specters to hug the children... Oh, how I wish I was making that up.In order to retrieve the codes from our heroes, X.A.N.A. sends indestructible, polymorphic, superhuman electro-kinetic specters to HUG the protagonists... It's not even a suffocating hug...

The Lack of Progression: What I mean by this is, for something with 26 episodes, there was a noticeable lack of any significant events in the season. There are no new sectors, in fact two of the sectors are missing entirely. There are no new characters... worth mentioning at least, as well as characters straight up missing from the original show. No new locations and very little done with the license.

The Enemies: We have the return of X.A.N.A., the rogue homicidal Artificial Intelligence that terrorized our heroes in the original series, which would have been fine if it wasn't a dry inferior copy-paste cut out of the original. Previously, X.A.N.A. was set on the destruction of humanity, here he just seems set on screwing with a group kids.We have Tyron, who's laughably absurd hair looks like something out of a Dr.Seuss book.I kid you not, Google image him now.The specters,practically the main threat of the original series have been reduced to slowly walking Hugga Bears who pose no threat whatsoever. In the original series, the specters/possessed were sinister villains with taunting dialogue,monstrous features and brutal superhuman abilities. Here, they're just blank silent zombies with nothing to offer but Jason Vorhees style chase scenes and maybe banging on a couple of doors.

5.) X.A.N.A. Itself:Possibly the greatest fault of all. Let's face it,the greatest part of Code Lyoko, was it's villain. It was a clever, decisive and versatile foe that would destroy everyone and anything in it's path. Let's look at the interesting ways X.A.N.A. has left us in awe.

It rampaged through the town as a giant teddy bear, turned flesh to stone, hijacked military assault aircraft and orbital lasers, raised armies of wasps, rats, robotic canines, plants and even zombies for crying out loud.X.A.N.A. was a brilliant super villain and it pains me to see it reduced to nothing, whilst this Tyrone persona replaces it as the main antagonist.

The Conclusion:What conclusion? Beyond my comprehension, the season had the audacity to end on a bloody cliffhanger.That's really funny considering that this was meant to be a series send-off and that years later, no news for a sixth season have been announced.

Update(6/13/17): It has recently come to my attention that the writer of the original series, Sophie Decroisette not only quit mid-production but also disowned this season. She claims that it's "Not Code Lyoko". Need I say more?

Code Lyoko Evolution continues in an undisclosed period of time after the original series ends. The series splits itself into two styles, CGI and live-action. Both styles have their flaws and pros standalone and compared to the original series.

Live action amplifies contrast to the viewer between the real world and Lyoko more than the previous series' animation. The problem with the animators' obsession with giving children huge foreheads is no longer an issue. However, transitioning has its repercussions. While some of the characters, such as Ulrich and Yumi, pull off the designs of their animated counterparts with ease. Others... not so much. American Audiences beware, Odd is as he was in the original French version of the first series. Aelita looks silly, and her actress is almost always grouchy. The acting is okay for some characters, such as for William, Jim, and newcomer Laura, but subpar with others, such as for Aelita, who now seems to have a stick up her bum most of the time, and for Yumi. Never is the acting over-the-top, which can turn some people off that liked the livelihood of the animated segments. Overall, 3/5. I'd give it 2/5, but Sissi only speaks in two episodes, which is a good enough perk for one full point.

Just as well, XANA's plans have been reformatted to cope with the live action. Keeping the plot going is the injection of codes from Lyoko into the warriors, similar to season 2's reason to keep the computer on. XANA attempts to steal back the codes by grabbing the warriors with specters (don't ask my how this works), which also powers XANA up with each code stolen. On paper, this is great; it recaptures the suspense of the first season of the show and gives the warriors a reason to never let their guard down that could really play well for the drama. In practice, it's 2/3 of the time just a studio extra power-walking towards the kids that never seek the company of an adult when strangers try to touch them or power-walk slightly faster at a constant pace. Needless to say, it can get lame. One episode even climaxes with XANA having three specters just stand and stare at the warriors for a while before exploding. Food for thought, specters never run until XANA is nearly at maximum restored power. To compensate for this, a new human antagonist, Tyron, is introduced. It's played out rather well by comparison; the only problem with it is that he comes too late in the series and his involvement with the warriors is left at a cliffhanger at the end of the series. I won't spoil it, but I will hint that it (surprise) involves Aelita, and that it's an adult fear (tvtropes, anyone?). Aelita's role is otherwise downplayed, tower deactivation is done on a basis of whoever has codes left in them can deactivate the tower. While this seems like an unwelcome deviation to some, this works well with the almost classic comparison of the virtual world to a video game in that escort missions suck.

The virtual parts are decent. The CGI is on recent technology, so it's barely aged yet, and the series uses a healthy dose of enemy types, sometimes creatively. However, there are no real "boss" monsters anymore like the Colossus. The Scyphozoa appears once, and while it's a pushover it helps to further the drama in the episode it does appear in. Again, no spoilers. The most used enemy is most likely newcomer Ninjas, human-controlled guardians for the new Cortex sector. Sectors in the series are severely cut back in how often we visit them, most of the action is done on the way to and in the Cortex, a supercomputer housing XANA owned by Tyron. Lyoko is mostly visited in the beginning, as the heroes for a change often are on the offensive against XANA and newcomer Tyron. The fighting is decent, and each character can pull their own. Overall, for an action cartoon, it isn't bad. 4/5

3 + 4 = 7

(Spoilers if you haven't watched the series)

It was amazing when I heard back in 2012 that Code Lyoko was coming back again. I have been a fan of that series since 2003 and personally when I saw the series first episode, I thought "Oh crap live action was a mistake" The Live-Action was horrible, that actors looked like they barely gave any effort. I only give credit to Gulliver Bevernage-Benhadj for actually trying. When the actors would run they would only look like they were running half-speed and slow as hell!! To top off the slow running the production company would throw in a very dumb slow motion to make it "MORE EPIC" (Not at all). The producers came into the series with no idea of what Code Lyoko was and not knowing what to do. The set designers did not have ONE DAMN CLUE OF WHAT THEY WERE DOING. They used a Nintendo 64 as a key-holster also instead of using the old lever for the super computer they would use a chip WTF! William looked horribly designed. I could have made him look better in Photoshop. Plus they screwed up the story line and left the series in a huge cliff hanger. Not destroying XANA but paralyzing him. Plus the specters who normally ran in Code Lyoko would just walk very slow in Evolution and still catch up. 1/10 HORRIBLE.

I appreciate that this show came back but came to be at it's worse for the live-action. Ii just makes both the classic series and evolution to fall apart due to character misconception(view based on understanding) in the real world aside from the virtual world. I rate the live- action and characterization a 1.5/5

Talk about the real world? The animation and or CGI is, as, so in its best but could use a bit of improvement on Williams "hair". For the action in the virtual world, above all looks good but I prefer the classics over evolution. I rate the animation and or CGI, a 4/5. Not to mention the big heads again in the virtual world.

In addition I have no problem with the "big heads" and been a 2007 classics fan since.