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Oh neat 👀 I'd seen the one with the season 4 artwork before but not the green one. Unfortunately I don't think either are official, though I guess I can't say for certain when I don't know much about DVD production in Russia.

I assume when a company licensed a show for DVD production (or other merchandise) Moonscoop would provide them with an asset pack to pull from containing things like backgrounds, character images, fonts, text boxes, etc. so although the cover designs vary, there are still plenty of commonalities.

These ones don't really have any of them though. The character images were something you could easily find online whenever these covers were designed, the backgrounds aren't from the series, the copyright information on the back doesn't match what you'd usually find there, and the biggest giveaway for me was that they don't have the official logo. (ty Semie for helping find more images) (also who picked those screenshots on the back omg 😭)

And after seeing better pictures of this one I'd say it's actually unofficial too, they just did a much better job of replicating the style of the Funimation season 1 DVD set so when you see a low quality image of the front cover it looks more convincing. My bad 😅 Like I don't think Moonscoop would have approved it for sale when it said "Moonscope" on the back but who knows.

I wouldn't dismiss the idea of buying bootlegs when official ones are really difficult or impossible to find, but in the case of the green one in particular, if they managed to fit 26 episodes onto a single DVD disc, I can't imagine the quality is very high. They could be fun to own as novelty items though, and to help preserve that particular dub of the show.

Then I realised something: Yknow who it WOULD make sense for him to say that to? Laura

Consider this: Laura having her first Lyoko mission with William. Laura is excited but William is a bit freaked out for her because he doesn’t want her to repeat his mistake. He wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone.

Yeah I really hate how that episode was written. With Laura specifically it would've been nice to see the characters concerned about getting a new person involved in the fight against XANA considering the danger and what happened with William, like it's super messed up that they decided to drag her into it without fully informing her of everything and knowing the impact it would have on her life? The fact that Laura can waltz into the lab and help them out one time and Jeremie immediately asks everyone to vote on letting her join without even considering how it would affect her if they voted yes

And it sure would've been nicer if William said that to any character out of concern because of his past experience…but I feel like it was pretty in-character for him to be condescending about it in that episode, he does tend to show an I-know-best attitude.

Do you think they ever told William that Aelita and Odd weren't actual cousins?

William: Sorry about your uncle, Odd

Odd: Wut?

omg right 😭 there's so much he'd need to be caught up on, why would they pass up on that comedic potential

The gang talking about their previous experiences with Xana casually and Laura just getting increasingly more concerned these people’s sanity-

Laura: first day This is so cool! :D

Laura: A week in …Jesus Christ- are y’all okay???

lol for sure I've thought about this with William before, since he was originally only with them for less than a day there's no way he could know everything so I like to imagine that everyone keeps casually talking about Lyoko-related stuff he's never heard of before and he's secretly very confused all the time and just can't show it or ask questions because it'll hurt his pride. I was going to draw some little scenes of that years go with questions like "Odd is a cat? I thought he was more of a dog person." "They keep talking about something called Kankrelats, I think that's a monster? But I have no idea what they're like so I'll just nod along." "Who is Franz Hopper? Oh thank you Laura for asking, now I don't have to- nope they're refusing to answer, dammit." I'm not sure if I saved any of the sketches but here's a recreation of one.

But yeah on the serious side, I love the potential of Laura's character in exploring how much the gang have been impacted by their experiences. Kinda like Taelia I guess: they drag a normal girl into a dangerous situation and she gradually realises how messed up it all is, has a very normal reaction to that realisation, and is shunned by the gang for it because they're so used to things being that way.

The Code Lyoko Chronicles are a series of 4 sequel books originally released in Italian in around 2010. Set a short while after the season 4 finale, parts of book 1 recap a story similar to the TV series but with a number of small changes (there's no RTTP for example) while the gang uncover some new secrets in the Hermitage that set them on the path to finding Aelita's mother, Anthea. But XANA survived and is coming back for revenge, and the gang's investigation into the secret history of Franz Hopper, Project Carthage and the Supercomputer puts the men in black on their trail as well, not to mention the shady Green Phoenix organisation who funded Hopper's work.

The books were published in a number of languages, but not in English - so that's where the fans come in. As one of the first translation projects we did for CodeLyoko.fr, finishing in 2014, the original completed English release was pretty rough. 10 years later, armed with more translation sources, better resources and many years of translation experience, I decided to take another crack at it. And after many months of hard work and procrastination, I've produced a version 2.0 that I'm pretty happy with.

Links and notes on the various changes under the cut!