The twilight, the tree stumps and scattered logs, the beautiful yet deadly sea below, the MOOD, DUDE
#CodeLyoko

Similarly, the season 1 mountain sector was much better IMO than the seasons 2-4 one. The fog of varying thickness. Several levels of usable terrain. The cold and quiet atmosphere. Moving platforms and other such hazards. None totally gone, but all reduced in the later seasons.

But I guess that's the price they paid when they decided to add vehicles. A not unwelcome decision, but one I can't help thinking was made solely to sell more toys. The only vehicle that I think "fits" its character is Odd's goofy Overboard, the others are just generic Sci-Fi.

Speaking of selling toys and Sci-Fi, those season 4 outfits. Might get some flack for this, but I think ALL of the Lyoko designs (and all the Earth designs, besides maybe Yumi and Odds') are strictly worse than the prior designs. But the changes roughly doubled the possible toys!

Worst changes IMO were:
-Moving Aelita's eye tags, turning them into jaw stripes
-Yumi's boob frame (THEY'RE ALL LIKE 12, DON'T SEXUALIZE THEM)
-Ulrich's ridiculous hunch, and his new, bland swordplay (he only triangulates ONCE)
-Odd becoming really tall on Lyoko
-Jeremie's pants

Also the new animation. Technically smoother (most of the time), but generally uninventive. For example, Ulrich went from blocking specific lasers with specific swings to just spinning his swords and magically deflecting everything. Compare "Straight To Heart" with "Hot Shower".

Also, they made an animation of Yumi failing to catch her fan, and decided that it was good enough to reuse several times. In previous seasons, she had failed before, but it was always either from exasperation, glitches, or them getting knocked away. Not simply failing the catch.

I could go on and on with how much I disliked season 4, but one thing I actually quite enjoyed about it was the DJ Aelita arc. Started in "Final Mix" from season 2, but not added to until season 4, we get to see our favorite pink programmer princess enjoy a *hobby*, a rare treat.

Honestly, I think seasons 1 and 2 were PEAK Code Lyoko. In season 1, the animation was inventive and interesting (albeit low fidelity, and clearly copying The Matrix), and the xana attacks were always interesting, if occasionally non-threatening (looking at you, "Claustrophobia")

Fave episodes were "Plagued" and "Killer Music", both because of specific scenes on Lyoko. "Plagued" gave us by far the most interesting setpiece in the series, the sideways plateau, and "Killer Music" gave us my favorite animation, Aelita's graceful back-twist double-jump thing.

Season 2 was probably the best objectively, with significant visual fidelity and facial animation improvements on Lyoko, and an expanded area to explore on earth. Some of the sectors got downgraded to better accommodate the vehicles, but they added some adrenaline to the fights.

Fave episodes were "Final Mix" and "A Bad Turn". "Final Mix", as said before, introduced Aelita as a DJ, which was fantastic. The Lyoko stuff was kinda ehh, but the party was great. Highlights were Yumi bobbing along to the song, and the music synced with xanafied Jim's attack.

"A Bad Turn" was another Aelita-centered episode, but this time everyone got a chance to shine (except Yumi, unfortunately). Aelita kicks ass on the Overboard and has fun doing it, with wonderful banter between her and Jeremie, while Odd, Ulrich, and William fight krabs IRL.

Honestly, I think that's the single best episode of Code Lyoko. Great action, great camera work, okay drama (for a 200X kid show, anyways), great audio mixing, and so on. The Lyoko segments especially are EXTREMELY well done, by FAR the best cinematography on Lyoko, it's a blast.

Season 3 was great in that it let Aelita fight properly, but it had a bunch of little issues. Some of it lasted the whole season, like the 3D environments on earth, the inevitable defeat with all the sectors getting deleted, and some missed opportunities for experimentation.

But then almost every episode, despite mostly being really good, had its own little issues, like the food monster in "Tidal Wave", Jeremie being an ass in "Aelita", Ulrich being an ass in "The Pretender", and the episodes "Triple Trouble" and "Double Trouble" being back-to-back.

You lose a lot of the good stuff in all the bad, like the Lyoko half of xana's plan in "Tidal Wave", the hilarious men in black in "False Lead", Yumi saving the ice sector in "The Secret", and the little "Thanks" Aelita gives in "Sabotage" (which gets cut off, but its still cute)

Wow this thread is a mess, started as an excuse to use @AelitaStones's version of the drake meme and rant about how much better the old forest sector was than the new one, went on to become a rant about how I didn't like season 4, then became a season-by-season review of the show