Code Lyoko Prequel Part 2

## Plot

At lunch, Ulrich is reluctantly eating with Sissi. Odd joins them. He has a new hairstyle. His hair is gelled so that it's really high, just like his avatar. In his room, Jeremie tells Maya that since she's an AI, she can't be devirtualized if she loses all of her life points. On the bright side, now she knows how to change sectors. Jeremie figured out that the towers are portals from Lyoko to our world, and they may be the key to materializing Maya on Earth. When towers are red it means that they're activated. Jeremie tells Ulrich and Odd that they have to go back to Lyoko to get Maya into a red tower to materialize her. Ulrich, Odd, and Sissi promise to keep Lyoko and the supercomputer a secret. Ulrich meets Yumi in the gym for a rematch. Maya is on Lyoko when she feels pulsations while meditating. She senses that something is wrong. Meanwhile at Kadic, a giant ball of electricity appears. Maya keeps asking for Jeremie, but he's not there. She leaves through the tower and starts running. Ulrich and Yumi are still sparring. They officially introduce themselves. Yumi kicks Ulrich when he accidentally calls her Yuri. Maya has entered a new sector with mountains. She keeps running, but is attacked by a monster. Since she has no weapons or powers to fight back, she's forced to stay behind a rock for cover. Sissi is attacked and electrocuted by the ball of electricity. Jeremie uncovers a new program called Return to the Past. They overhear other people gossiping about Sissi getting electrocuted. Maya still can't contact Jeremie because he's at school. She makes a run for it to a walkway, but she runs into another monster. She runs another way, but she gets to a cliff. You know what she does? Maya, *the girl with no powers*, jumps off the cliff and and makes it to another area of the sector. Sure, the monsters actually followed her and jumped too, but it's still awesome. Plus, unlike her, the monsters don't exactly stick the landing. Unfortunately, two Hornets show up and chase her. Ulrich and Yumi *are still sparring*. Ulrich flips Yumi and pins her. Just like the previous episode, they blush. Except this time Ulrich won. They still agree to call it a tie though. Then the ball of electricity attacks them. Ulrich brings Yumi with him to the tunnel and calls Jeremie. Yumi wants to know what's going on. They all head from the sewer to the factory. Maya is still being chased by monsters. One of them hits her in the arm. Then her arm briefly *disappears*. Fortunately, she's able to make it into a blue tower. Then she falls off the platform to head to another sector. She's in the Ice Sector, where she's spotted and attacked by Bloks immediately. Jeremie finally contacts her. She left the tower because she heard some strange pulsations and wanted to see what they were. Jeremie advises her to hide somewhere until backup arrives. She heads into a tunnel behind a waterfall. Then she jumps across some icebergs. The monsters follow her. However, the Bloks are too big and clumsy to stay on. Jeremie starts the virtualization process, which Yumi decides to participate in. "Transfer Odd. Transfer Ulrich. Transfer Yumi. Scanner Odd. Scanner Ulrich. Scanner Yumi. Virtualization!" Yumi's avatar is a geisha. She has a GIANT yellow bow on the back of her outfit. It turns out that this is where she keeps her tessens, which are fans made of razor sharp steel. Sissi finally wakes up in the infirmary. She quickly spills her guts about the supercomputer, believing that Ulrich is in danger. As it turns out, she's not entirely wrong. The ball of electricity followed the group to the factory. Meanwhile, on Lyoko, more monsters have shown up. A Blok shoots Maya's iceberg, and the energy sends her onto an ice slide. Some smaller monsters attempt to follow her. However, when they jump, only one of them makes it. Maya gets smacked against an iceberg, and so does the monster. Unlike the monster though, Maya doesn't blow up. *Even more* Bloks show up to attack her *again* when Ulrich shows up with his katana. Odd just flirts with her. This is the first time that she's officially met them, aside from Jeremie and briefly Ulrich. Yumi throws her tessen, which goes through *two* Bloks and blows them up. Sissi is leading her father and Jim straight to the factory. Jeremie finally notices the giant ball of electricity inside the factory on a security camera. He also alerts the others to monster attacks, which appear on his map. They run into some Krabs. The electricity ball is inside the computer room and right above Jeremie. Odd is devirtualized. Another Krab shoots Yumi in the leg. Ulrich jumps onto its leg, but it easily throws him off. He lands in front of Maya. He tells her to get to the red tower as he's being devirtualized. Ouch. Maya runs into a Krab. She gets on her knees and starts singing angelically. A wall of ice appears that separates her and the Krab. She runs to the tower. The Krab tries to break through the wall. Yumi, with no peripheral vision or situational awareness, happens to be standing right in front of it when it breaks, which devirtualizes her. Sissi, her father, and Jim are in the computer room. Maya has entered the tower. A panel appears in front of her. She puts her hand on it. Some text appears. It reads AELITA CODE: LYOKO. The electricity ball disappears. A heated confrontation ensues between everyone. During it, Ulrich tells Jeremie that Maya didn't materialize. The principal orders him to shut down the computer. Instead, he launches the Return to the Past program for the first time. "Return to the Past now!" A bright light engulfs the factory and the whole city. Time is rewound to the previous day, just before Jeremie was electrocuted. The others remember what happened, but he doesn't, so they fill him in. He wonders why he didn't remember anything. Yumi speculates that it could be because he was the only one who wasn't virtualized onto Lyoko. He wants to scan himself, but Maya doesn't want him to. She wants him to shut down the supercomputer. She says that it's too dangerous and he knows it. She also tells him her real name: Aelita. She remembered it when she went into the tower. By the next day, he still hasn't found a way to materialize her, but he has found something else: XANA. XANA is a dangerous AI program, like a computer virus. It activates towers on Lyoko to gain access to our world. However, Aelita can counter the attacks in the real world by deactivating red towers on Lyoko. Unfortunately, Jeremie is going to need more time to figure out a materialization program for her. She says it'd be safer to just shut down the supercomputer. However, the others want to help her and fight XANA while Jeremie works on his program. Yumi officially names their group the Lyoko Warriors.

## Review

This was a great episode. It really sets up the status quo for the series. Aelita is easily my favorite character. This episode proves that she *does* have human emotions and shows them all the time. She experiences curiosity, worry, fear, empathy, and happiness all in the same episode. She goes through changes and characterization. She *never* complains about her less than ideal situation or her amnesia. Her meditation is her way of staying calm and level-headed. She's not afraid to put herself in a dangerous situation or try something that may get her killed. She actually *wants* to shut down the supercomputer because she knows how dangerous XANA is and doesn't want others to get hurt just because they want to get her out. Jeremie is the mission control guy. He's essential to the team because he's the only one who can use the supercomputer without disastrous results. Odd is the joking comic relief hero. He takes little to nothing seriously and isn't the smartest of the bunch, but he still has a good heart. Ulrich is the serious, brooding loner type with an attitude. He gets better later on though because he finally has some friends. Yumi is the oldest and most acrobatic of the group. She's generally the sensible, responsible, and logical one, but sometimes her emotions cause her to make bad decisions. I recommend this episode and I'd gladly re-watch it any time.