Code Lyoko: Evolution

Code Lyoko: Evolution
Genre	Cyberpunk Drama
Created by	Tania Palumbo Thomas Romain
Directed by	Luccio di Rossa (live action) Florian Ferrier (CGI)
Starring	Léonie Berthonnaud Marin Lafitte Gulliver Bevernage Quentin Merabet Mélanie Tran Diego Mestanza Pauline Serieys Bastien Thelliez Frank Beckmann Sophie Fern
Country of origin	France
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	26[1] (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Benoît di Sabatino Christophe di Sabatino
Running time	23 minutes
Production company(s)	Moonscoop
Distributor	Mediatoon Splash Entertainment
Release
Original network	France 4
Original release	January 05, 2013 - December 19, 2013
Chronology
Preceded by	Code Lyoko
Followed by	N/A

Code Lyoko: Evolution is the sequel to the French animated television series Code Lyoko. It premiered on December 19, 2012, on France 4 and repeated October 9, 2016, on Boing. It blends live-action with CGI, picking up where the original series left off. In addition to improving upon the CGI in the original series, the soundtrack has been overhauled as well.

Plot

Set one year after the events of the original series, Aelita Schaeffer, Jeremie Belpois, Odd Della Robbia, Ulrich Stern, Yumi Ishiyama, and William Dunbar return to their daily lives and routines at Kadic Academy. X.A.N.A., despite their success in defeating it previously, suddenly reappears, reborn with even more strength and power than ever before. The protagonists reactivate Franz Hopper's quantum supercomputer, which runs the virtual world Lyoko, and resume their former double lives in order to protect humanity from X.A.N.A.'s evil schemes once again. Joined by William Dunbar, who has finally been accepted as the sixth Lyoko Warrior, and an unreliable girl-genius named Laura Gauthier, the seven heroes are bent on unraveling the reasons for such a return and to exterminate X.A.N.A., the malevolently evil sentient, autonomous artificial intelligence/multi-agent system that is threatening the world once again.

X.A.N.A. is currently unable to take over the network due to it missing some of its essential "Codes," which it injected into the Lyoko Warriors, except for William, during their final virtualization in the original series, and is now trying to steal them back through its Spectres. Jeremie reasons that if X.A.N.A. regains all of its Codes, it will take over the internet and nothing will stop it. One benefit to having Codes, however, is that the carrier can deactivate towers on Lyoko under X.A.N.A.'s control, making all but William capable of doing so, as opposed to just Aelita alone. With the help of Laura, Jeremie works to write a virus program that will be capable of hopefully eradicating X.A.N.A. for good this time.

In addition to X.A.N.A., the gang eventually discover that they have another dangerous enemy, a mad scientist named Professor Lowell Tyron, who seems to be the one responsible for unintentionally returning X.A.N.A. to life, despite his claim that he has no knowledge of X.A.N.A., despite its high level of activity in the Cortex system, which is a Replika (Lyoko-like virtual world) that Tyron created, though the reason why is never specified. He commands a group of several virtual human avatars in green and black-striped ninja-like costumes to counter the Lyoko Warriors' efforts to hack into his system. In Tyron's lab, the group also discovers Aelita's long-lost mother, Anthea Hopper-Schaeffer. They seek to discover why she is with their new enemy and how to reunite Anthea and her daughter.

In the open-ended cliffhanger finale, "Ultimate Mission", it is revealed that Tyron had been married to Anthea for several years, and is now Aelita's stepfather. His only intention of marrying Anthea, however, was to get his hands on her late first husband's archives, so that he could effectively create the Cortex, which a gravely weakened X.A.N.A. then secretly inhabited, as a temporary master location, to carry out its plans for world domination once again. Anthea herself only married Tyron to have a chance to see Aelita again. Tyron attempts to coerce Aelita into telling her friends to abort their plan to destroy the Cortex and coming with him, as he has legal custody of her, or risk never seeing her mother again. Aelita chooses to forsake her mother and go through with their original plan, and Tyron orders his subordinates to shut down his supercomputer while the Lyoko Warriors are still inside. They barely escape, having just injected Jeremie's virus program into the core of the Cortex, which means that X.A.N.A. would be destroyed upon rebooting of Tyron's computer, unless either X.A.N.A. was able to back itself up, or Tyron is able to repair his supercomputer, and by extension, X.A.N.A. along with it. Because there is currently no planned continuation of the series, however, it was never made clear if X.A.N.A. was destroyed.

Characters

There are several characters that do not appear in the original show:

• Laura Gauthier, portrayed by Pauline Serieys: is the latest Lyoko Warrior to be recruited by Jeremie Belpois in "Virus," though she is never virtualized into Lyoko. A tech-savvy youth, she is viewed with suspicion by the protagonists due to her uninitiated status. In "Mutiny," she is excluded from the group and has her memory erased for betraying them and risking William's life.
• Professor Tyron, portrayed by Franck Beckmann: inadvertently works alongside the malevolent artificial intelligence, X.A.N.A.. His character is unintentionally responsible for X.A.N.A.'s rebirth as well as antagonizing Jeremie and his friends. He has been married to Aelita's mother, Anthea, for four years, making him Aelita's step-father. On Lyoko, he uses human avatars named Ninjas to attack Jeremie and his friends.
• Samantha Suarez, portrayed by Louise Vallat, is an adaptation of Samantha Knight,^[2] a supporting character who appeared in the original series. Notable differences between Samantha Suarez and Samantha Knight include personality and skin color (Suarez is Caucasian while Knight is African-French).

Cast

Production

The budget for the series was expected to be €5,600,000.^[3]

See also

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

References