Let me start off by saying that I watched this when I was in elementary/middle school and enjoyed it immensely at the time. Recently I decided to start streaming it to relive the show and nostalgia. There's a lot more that I pick up on this go around than when I watched it on Cartoon Network all those years ago.
The story itself is simple enough, a group of friends battle in a virtual world to thwart the plans of a computer program known as X.A.N.A. from destroying the real world. In the process of trying to defeat the program the computer tech, Jeremy, attempts to find a way to free Aelita from being a prisoner of X.A.N.A.'s on Lyoko. As the show goes further into the narrative the viewer learns more about the group and their relationship with each other. This is pretty much where the show agitates me the most.
Of all the characters, Odd and Aelita are my favorites of the bunch. Odd being a goof and Aelita being calm, collected, and logical. Every character has their own unique personality which is great, but the way their personality affects the group can be infuriating at times. Take Ulric for example. He's a relaxed person the majority of the time but when anything impacts Yumi in a negative sense he lets his ego and arrogance get the better of him. He'll spend more than half an episode, if not the entire episode, sulking and letting his feelings about Yumi get in the way of his friendship with everyone else. Not to mention his pride plays a big role in his arrogance with his feelings towards Yumi. Everyone knows he has a crush on the girl, to include Yumi herself, but refuses to acknowledge it and gets angry when Yumi gives attention to another boy.
This doesn't get Yumi off the hook though, as she's as inconsiderate as most of the other characters. She's guilty of most of the same antics as Ulric. She has the same feelings for Ulric yet doesn't express them to him either. Instead she strings him along and gives attention to the other boys in her class, only to get jealous when Ulric does the same thing.
Now no one, and I mean no one, can hold a candle to the king of morons, Jeremy. On his own, Jeremy is tolerable. A regular computer geek looking to excel in academics and be the class genius. However, once Aelita is thrown into the equation one cannot identify the difference between his head and his ass. Aelita is his sweetheart and if anything so much as gets within sneezing distance from her Jeremy has mental breakdown. Even though he cares so much for this girl he is a terrible friend always abandoning her for his own endeavors and giving little to no cares when he's "in pursuit of knowledge." The first episode Aelita is in the real world, he completely abandons the poor girl to search an abandoned house for information about Aelita's familiarity of the place. Instead of taking the time to ensure Aelita adjusts to life at the academy he makes excuses to not take care of her, prompting her to runaway and revirtualize herself onto Lyoko.
With the exceptions of the characters I mentioned earlier and a few others, these kids could be "Ordered 66" and I wouldn't shed a tear because of how stupid they are. Luckily these kind of instances are few and far between so it doesn't affect my enjoyance of the program. With the amount of complaining I've done in this review I'm sure the question now is why do I even bother to watch the show if I'm that nitpicky about it.
The answer is because without those flaws of the characters, there wouldn't be much of a show. Yes their attitudes can get annoying at times and it can be infuriating seeing how stupid the decisions they make are. That's the point, to get the viewer so connected to these characters that you express these sort of emotions. This show is by no means the greatest cartoon ever, far from it, but it has qualities to it that makes it enjoyable to watch regardless of the negatives.
Review of Code Lyoko
