#myimaginationplain

Better character development/growth

As much as I love the characters, it feels they didn’t get as much growth through out the show and kind of stayed static? Only exception to this is Aelita, who has grown extremely well since the first episode. She went from naive AI to complete human within the four seasons and I wouldn’t really change in how that was portrayed (except in CLE, she was horrible there)

As for the others, I’d go on to say Jeremie and Ulrich got some development here and there but Yumi and Odd… I just didn’t find much development they went through that actually stuck with them. 

Despite Yumi being my most favorite character of the show, I might go on to say Yumi might’ve gotten some character deterioration just merely based on S3 and S4, where she either became the punching bag for XANA, the target of romance drama or just a complete bitch compared to S1 and S2 where she was the closest the gang had to a “voice of reason” character and was arguably the most normal out of everyone. When they brought Hiroki more into the focus of some S4, I really liked it since it might’ve shown more into Yumi’s character by showing her with someone that’s not the main gang and I really like Hiroki. Sadly, it just brought out Yumi’s negative side even more and made me much more disappointed in her in general. 

As for Odd, I know he’s supposed to be the comic relief and the wannabe casanova but what else. It’s one of the reasons I hardly care for him cause I don’t really find him that interesting other than his design. Hints about his family have sparked an interest for him but as that never really got touched upon, most of my interests might be based solely in headcanons and I don’t like that.

The worst offender to this, however, is William but he has his own section.

Better relationship development 

Its obvious that the gang had a close relationship with each other but I’d like to see like the inner relationships in the gang. Odd/Ulrich, Yumi/Aelita, Jeremie/Aelita and Ulrich/Yumi already had enough moments to satisfy me but how bout the others like Ulrich/Aelita, Yumi/Odd, Jeremie/Ulrich and etc? I don’t want the previous friendships I’ve mentioned to be split up but I’d like to see other friendships to be explored or have their moments. Some of the friendships I’ve mentioned, I see just them just putting up with each other just for sake of the whole XANA business or that they couldn’t really survive with the two of them alone that long. 

A possible friendship that would’ve had really great potential and something I would’ve really enjoyed but got wasted for romance drama purposes is William/Yumi. Again, mentioning in the William section/

Better romance development

THIS SHOULD’VE BEEN AN EXPECTED TOPIC CAUSE OH LORD, THE ROMANCE IN THIS SHOW.

Look, I’m an ex-shipper in this fandom that used to ship everyone with anyone but after looking at things in a critical view, I can’t be satisfied with many of the ships in a romantic sense, particularly of the “canon” ships and ship teases the show puts out there. Out of the ones I can name that has evidence of it possibly happening in the show itself (which seems to be Jerlita, Oddlita, Ulumi, Willumi, Sissodd and SamOdd), I can only find Ulumi and SissOdd tolerable. While the excuse of “they’re teenagers, you can’t expect healthy relationships at that age”, I still find it bullshit lol. 

Of course, out of all the ships I mentioned, Ulumi has to be the worst out of all cause jfc

Look, I consider Ulumi to be my otp for the show but I’m still critical bout in the sense they could’ve handled it a lot better and by “handled it a lot better”, I mean not creating drama for the sake of drama, which also includes not creating William for the sake of creating unnecessary love triangle drama. I understand Yumi and Ulrich are both meant to be emotionally conflicted and confused teens with dysfunctional families, which can reflect in their emotional capacity to form romantic relationships, but does it really mean they need to have some sort of drama every day of the week. It’s not healthy and practically the reason why people hate Ulumi (and then go to Willumi, despite it being a just as bad or even worse ship). They have their moments of fluff and being sweet to each other but its not really worth over the drama they have to go through. 

If there’s one good thing S3 did, it was putting a buffer in Ulumi so that there’s no more romance drama between them. Bad thing is some drama still happened between them anyway.

If there’s one good thing CLE did, its showing the character’s growth in Ulumi that they are willing to be more considerate with each other’s feelings and talk about their issues with each other in a mature fashion that doesn’t involve the cold shoulder and jealousy tactics.

I’ll talk more bout the Willulumi love triangle in the William section.

Season 3 and Season 4 (alternative title: Better Story Writing)

Either rewrite these seasons or just throw them out completely. Season 3 directly ties into Season 4 so removing one or the other is not possible unless you rewrite the seasons completely. 

Season 3 was where things got…bad. The attacks either got more dangerous or completely ridiculous, Yumi got a lot more punishment than usual, there was not much plot development other than “Franz is alive” and “William joins the gang and destroys Lyoko”, the last one was completely BS’d cause why even bother bringing him in to begin with, oh wait it’s to set up Season 4.

Season 4 got a little better in terms of bringing some things to light like the whole business with Odd’s family and involving the gang in some mundane things that feels like S1 but they didn’t do much good with plot here either. Half the episodes being in filler and the remaining episodes, everything towards the end was just rushed and eventually in vain cause Franz decides to off himself anyway. Also William. You know the drill.

Season 4 Lyoko outfits

This isn’t a big thing but I always hated the spandex outfits. If you’re going to give them new Lyoko outfits, please give them something with remnants of their previous Lyoko outfits and isn’t spandex.

William fucking Dunbar

The moment you all have been waiting for. If you’re a William fan and/or sensitive to blatant character hate or as I would call it, “cruel and unusual” character criticism, please do not read this.

If case it were not obvious already, I really hate William. Like REALLY hate him. If anyone knew me pre 2014, they’d know I had no issue with him and hell, I even liked him. Once I took off my honeymoon lens, stopped listening to all the grossly positive things people have been spoonfeeding to me since my time in the fandom and saw him for what he really is, I was just mind blown at how much I hated this guy. This was a character that I used to be fond of and considered to be my one of my favorite characters. I didn’t know how I could be so blind to his faults.

As this is a question concerning the show itself, I’m not gonna speak about the fandom-related reasons as to why I hated him so much. That can be saved for another ask.

One of my main show-related issues with William is the fact he has no character other than being involved with some Ulumi love drama thing. The show says that he’s a rebel who got kicked out of his previous school for posting love letters for a previous crush all around campus (which can qualify as some sort of harassment, I’m sure), he can’t dance, and he’s afraid of spiders. Other than the part where he can act like an arrogant asshole to some characters, like Ulrich, there’s really not much depth to him. I don’t see anything remotely likable about him other than the fact I consider him to be one of the most attractive characters on the show. 

During the show, I see no distinction that separates him from the rest of the background characters. If you take him out of the show, there wouldn’t be much of a different in the show/plot cause his main role isn’t really that necessary. Before you go, “BUT HE WAS THE MAIN VILLIAN IN S4/WHO ELSE WOULD’VE GOTTEN POSSESSED IN S3″, I can think of a few other characters who deserve that kind of role way more than William does, as in a character who’s gotten much more development and been there since the start. 

In relating to wasted character writing, there’s the whole thing between Ulrich, William and Yumi. I really hate love triangles and Willulumi is no exception. I just found the whole thing…totally unnecessary and a danger to both Ulrich, William’s and Yumi’s characters, well as fans’ perceptions to these characters. Ulrich’s jealousy towards William was a major factor into demonizing the boy and portraying him as abusive in most Willumi fics while William’s advances onto Yumi has made fans portray him as some sort of disgusting rapist. As for Yumi, its made her look as some form of “damsel-in-distress” character that needs to be rescued by Ulrich/William or some sort of bitch that led the both of them on. I DON’T KNOW but the whole Willulumi triangle thing is the one thing that messes with a whole bunch of fans and really didn’t need to be written in and before you say “BUT HOW BOUT WILLULUMI AS A POLY SHIP THO”, Willulumi would be so messed up as a ship tbh. Ulrich still has yet to handle his jealousy and negative emotions towards William in a proper and healthy fashion, William doesn’t know how to take a hint without throwing a hissy-fit and Yumi has no chill over these guys. This can only end in disaster. 

AGAIN IN RELATING TO THE ABOVE, Yumi and William’s relationship didn’t have to necessarily be romantic based specifically. I can tell in early S2 that they could’ve had a strong friendship going on if it wasn’t for the romance butting in:

Yumi and William could’ve had a really strong friendship going on and he would’ve served as her outlet of having some sort of normality in her life during the whole Lyoko business. Because of this, it would serve as some sort of reason as to why Yumi didn’t want him on the gang to begin with and would be much more heartbreaking when he got possessed and in “The Lake” when William momentarily broke free of XANA’s control. What I’m trying to say is that they could’ve shown that Yumi and William had some sort of strong connection better in the show than how they portrayed it. 

Unfortunately, you had William being infatuated with Yumi to the point of stalking her home and trying force romantic advances onto her, as well trying to force himself into the gang for no apparent reason other than to butt in into Yumi’s life, despite her wanting him to leave her alone. This is probably my main issue with him. His interactions with Yumi showed me he doesn’t know how to take a hint and look where that got him: kick out of a school, possible lost friendships and getting held against his will by an evil AI for god knows how long. Because of that and my fandom related issues (which has a lot to do with an old chat ground I used to be a part of and some big drama that happened last year) with William, I cannot bring myself to even be remotely interested in him without getting so angry and just a complete monster.