Elizabeth Steuerwald
Mr. Kozak
Creative Writing
1/28/14
Removing the Filter
Have you ever re-watched a show from your childhood only to find out it’s not as great as you remembered it? Most of us have fond memories of watching TV, particularly cartoons, in our childhoods and we may even have a favorite show. However, as the years have passed we may not watch as much TV, especially cartoons. It’s a part of growing up. You find other things to occupy your free time and you have more responsibilities. College is especially important as one nears adulthood. So we may not have time to go back and re-watch an old show, especially if there isn’t time or we’re just not interested enough. Recently I had a little time on my hands and decided “Sure, why not?” when the opportunity presented itself in the form of Code Lyoko.
I had fond memories of Code Lyoko from a summer I spent at Vetta. Since it happened awhile ago, my memories are incomplete and spotty, but I remember every day (or almost every day) at the end of the day, all the kids were crowded in a bar-like area with TVs connected to cable. It was specifically Cartoon Network that we watched. I believe it was close to the pick-up time, so it was just something “light” to keep us entertained until it was time to leave without starting anything big or getting us sweaty. I specifically remember three shows that aired around the time we were allowed to watch it: Totally Spies, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and, of course, Code Lyoko. This was a big deal for me because back then, I didn’t have cable, so this was the only time I could watch these shows. I don’t remember everything about the show, besides the fact that I had never seen the beginning, which is actually par for the course with me, and eventually I forgot everything about it except the basics, but I still harbored a fond memory of it because it was from my childhood. I also remember a counselor once saying that it was stupid when some kids around me expressed their like of it. I didn’t say anything, but it riled me up inside and I internally raged against the counselor’s comment. I couldn’t see why he didn’t like it.
The title refers to the concept of nostalgia filter. As a one-sentence summary from tvtropes.com puts it: The belief that things from the past are automatically better than things from the present. This definition doesn’t completely fit this situation, but basically I remember the show being better than what it actually (probably) was because I was young and people tend to defend things, such as TV shows, from their childhood because we all love and cherish our childhoods.
Ah, hindsight and age. Let’s just say that upon my first re-watching of it, I saw his point and felt really silly afterwards. It was after school on a Thursday and I was with some friends. Somebody brought a Code Lyoko DVD and, for a lack of something better to watch (and nostalgia filter), it was pretty much unanimously decided. Upon re-watching an episode, it didn’t take long to realize it wasn’t as good as we remembered it. The voice acting was pretty bad (especially Jérémie or Jeremy or however you spell it) and the plot was idiotic and episodic and jumped around a lot; in other words, a complete trainwreck of an episode.
To elaborate, starting with the voice acting, there were mainly 2-3 issues: voices didn’t sound right and/or they were too high-pitched and the screaming/groaning/what have you. Overall, they were pretty rough and the episode we had watched was in the first season, so the voice actors hadn’t had time to tweak them, so most of the time they came out grating and annoying, Sissi, Ulrich, Jeremy, and Odd in particular. Ulrich’s voice was slightly feminine. Odd’s was just high-pitched (even though he’s the only one of the main guys actually voiced by a guy!) and annoying, coupled with his androgynous looks is more than enough to confuse some viewers about his real gender. Jeremy had a nasally-like voice. It was like his voice actress was trying to go deeper with her voice for him, to make him sound more like a guy (albeit a prepubescent one), but you could still detect the feminine in it. Sissi is your typical bitchy, most-popular-girl-in-school head cheerleader, so her voice is pretty much that, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying to listen to. Milly, the girl reporting on the soccer game, was very much under acting. Although the only choice she probably had was to read the script just to keep up with the mouth flaps. Mouth flaps were a huge part of the problem; they were oddly shaped and sometimes went too fast, so most of the time the voice acting was a product of what the voice actors had to work with (and sometimes it seemed like the audio and visual didn’t match up). Odd even interrupted Aelita when she wasn’t finished talking. The screaming/groaning was exceptionally bad. Every scream/groan etc. was under acted. It didn’t sound convincing, like they were in pain; it just sounded cheesy. As long as they made a sound when they were supposed to, that was good enough. The worst were Aelita and Yumi. Not only did they succeed in under reacting when they were in pain/being shot at, all of their screams/moans managed to sound sexual! Not to mention Ulrich and Sissi’s ass shots. I thought this was supposed to be a kid’s show!
The first season’s episodes in particular were very formulaic (though later seasons moved away from this by adding other stuff, such as character development): discover XANA’s plan, go to Lyoko, fight and defeat XANA, rewind time to how the day was before XANA appeared. The “plot” in question of this episode doesn’t start until several minutes in and not much detail is put into it and not a lot of time is spent on it. XANA wants to gather as much electrical energy as possible (or something) to reverse gravity around the boarding school where the main characters are (no mention of the rest of the world or is there?), sending the school and everyone nearby into space (where they will presumably die). More attention is spent on the school’s soccer game, in which Ulrich is a part of as it’s the only way to please his dad. This causes some tension (and weak drama) with Ulrich and Jeremy as Jeremy’s much more concerned with Lyoko (and Aelita). The back-and-forth between the game and the plot gets old and stupid after awhile. It gets even stupider when Ulrich puts an earbud in his ear to listen to Jeremy (somehow) while still playing the game. He eventually fakes an injury to help his friends defeat XANA. This prompts Sissi, who has a crush on him, to follow him and just gets in the way. The plot is hastily resolved by Aelita using a decoy to draw XANA’s forces away from her, Odd, and Yumi, activating a tower, and allowing Jeremy to return to the past, nullifying the episode’s events, so all that drama was unwarranted as they all end up watching Ulrich play. Yet somehow XANA can never try the same plan twice, even though there’s really no evidence that turning back time stops XANA from accomplishing what he originally set out to do. He just sits back and comes up with a new plan. Although the kids win the day-to-day battles, XANA pretty much wins every season (except spoiler alert the last), so maybe he can afford to sit on his throne.
It was such a mind-shattering event that I pretty much resolved then and there to never watch another episode ever again. Nostalgia filter is a powerful thing, but woe betide the thing that rips it up into a thousand tiny pieces, burns it, and dances on the ashes. Our tiny minds were a lot more easily amused back then which is probably why a lot of adults don’t like watching cartoons, even with their kids (that is if the cartoon is even worth anything to begin with).
But I kept thinking about it, about the filter, the very few fond memories I had, what I had watched, etc. When I found out I had to do one of two essay types, I was stumped. I couldn’t possibly think of what to criticize, except this because I just couldn’t get it out of my mind. At the suggestion of Mr. Kozak, I watched another episode (on Youtube). He suggested watching an episode I had never seen before which wasn’t really a problem because I actually saw very little of the series that one summer. I don’t even remember which episodes I watched. It seemed logical to me to start at the beginning with episode 1, so I typed “code lyoko episode 1” (capitalization nonexistent) into Youtube’s search box and clicked on the first result. I honestly didn’t know what to expect.
I was pleasantly surprised. This episode was the background/origin story, explaining how the group met and got together, discovered XANA, and decided to help Aelita. Well, actually, it was the first part of a two-part, so I watched the whole episode, but didn’t see the whole origin story. The voice acting was better, particularly for Jeremy, so the actors had finally found voices that worked for the characters. It was less episodic and therefore there was less idiocy and it didn’t jump around a lot. It had an actual plot. Overall, it was a much more enjoyable experience and the filter had been restored a little. Then I decided to look at its Wikipedia page, just to refresh my memory (something I had deliberately decided against earlier so it wouldn’t cloud my judgment, I guess would be the best way to phrase it).
As it turns out, I probably should have looked up the title of the first episode before deciding that if I just typed in the name and episode number I would be sure to find it. Bad idea. Even though it was labeled as such, the episode I had watched on Youtube actually wasn’t the first episode, in order of airing, that is. Technically, it was the first episode chronologically, but didn’t air until later (meaning the writers/creators hadn’t really decided what the origin story was until the show got moving and found its groove), explaining the huge disparity between the first episode I had seen in years (which was an early episode) and the one I recently watched; the show obviously improved as it went along, which isn’t uncommon.
I don’t think I’m qualified to pass judgment on Code Lyoko’s worth as a show. After all, I’ve only seen two episodes in how many years? And I never saw the entire show to begin with; I only remember bits and pieces from my childhood, which is just as well as the last few episodes could only be seen online, which makes no sense. I can say that it did improve at the very least a little bit between the first and third seasons; the voice acting improved and plot was actually added to the show, instead of relying on cheap tricks to fix things. There were actually consequences and apparently the more you press the reset button, the more powerful XANA gets. Overall this made the show better. I didn’t say great. It’s probably not a great series, but it’s more than likely an okay or good series. So if you feel like taking a trip down memory lane, it’s worth checking out; however, you will have to wait for that worth. Who knows, it just might become one of your guilty pleasures. And if not, well, we all have our own opinions. I’m not forcing to you watch it. Ultimately, it’s up to the individual to decide what works for them and what doesn’t. Critics are only one opinion after all.