Monsters are virtual creatures created by X.A.N.A. to serve as its proxies and the closest thing it has to an incarnation inside the virtual world.

They are directly virtualized onto Lyoko and are primarily used to fight its enemies, mainly the Lyoko Warriors and Waldo Schaeffer whenever he shows himself, as a means to devirtualize them in order to prevent Aelita from accessing the Tower it activates and usually leave her defenseless, or in Waldo's case, to terminate him due to the massive threat he poses to X.A.N.A.

According to codelyoko.fr, X.A.N.A. uses a base template which is used to make it easier to create new monsters.

Overview

X.A.N.A. virtualizes monsters to use as its minions inside the virtual world. In place of avatars, they are made to interact with Lyoko's sectors and mostly uses them to fight the Lyoko Warriors and its enemies in the virtual world, protect or help its assets, and attack targets that it wants to neutralize or destroy, with the number of monsters sent depending on their current necessity. When the goal has been lost or fulfilled, X.A.N.A. either has them retreat or devirtualizes them at will, proving its monsters are nothing more than minions to serve its own needs.

Virtualization

Monsters are created from a basic template program, with all their characteristics, allowing X.A.N.A. to create many monsters, all almost identical. This would correspond to the program created by Jeremie to virtualize vehicles. In some episodes, such as Marabounta, X.A.N.A. virtualizes creatures directly in the field as Jeremie does with the Lyoko Warriors.

Like all programs, X.A.N.A.'s monsters take up resources on whichever virtual world they appear on. It is capable of sending large hordes as a necessary part of larger schemes, but mostly virtualizes small groups at a time to preserve its own machine resources. This is also demonstrated with the Kolossus, which can only be created using the combined power of multiple Replikas around the world network.

When monsters fall into the Digital Sea, they are deleted. The destruction of their virtual envelope corresponds to their complete disappearance within the virtual world. Most of them have relatively simple artificial intelligence.

Monster POV

Most monsters have the ability to aim their laser, though they do not seem to do so often. This is shown from the monster's point of view, which is dominated by a trisected, white circle. When targeting something, an upside-down, red triangle follows what they intend to shoot. When it locks on, the red triangle centers within the circle and three red lines connect each vertex of the triangle to the circle. Only a few monsters have directly demonstrated this targeting system, but it is safe to assume that others utilize the same system.

Powers and Abilities

X.A.N.A. equips the monsters accordingly with distinguished weapons and abilities that make each of them a force to be reckoned with in their own right. The primary means of attack they all have in common is their Lasers, their primary weapon. They are usually fired as bolts shot from their emission points, and they can be charged to do more damage. Megatank Lasers, however, take the form of vertical waves fired from their eye symbols. Aside from being simple weapons, X.A.N.A. once used the Lasers of two Mantas to infect Odd and Ulrich with a hallucinating virus.

List of Monsters

Surface Sectors

• Kankrelats: These monsters are X.A.N.A.'s weakest creatures, but arguably the most versatile. They usually attack in large swarms. They are much faster than Bloks, and are fairly hard to hit because of their small stature. Sometimes they attack from surprise.
• Hornets: These are the first monsters that are capable of flight and are one of the few to have more than one attack. They can fire rapid-fire lasers from their stingers and spray poisonous acid from their heads. Cutting off their wings makes them completely immobile.
• Bloks: They are one of X.A.N.A.'s most used monsters. Bloks are cube-shaped turrets with six crab-like legs and have three different attacks: standard laser, fire ring, and freeze ray (which can immobilize its target in ice for exactly three minutes if it doesn't cost the target the remainder of their life points as is has done with Ulrich on multiple occasions). However, with an eye on each side of their 'heads' (four in all), their major weakness is that hitting any eye can destroy them and turning them upside down makes them completely immobile. When they are stacked on top of each other like a wall, they shoot an absolutely devastating grand laser.
• Krabs: They are arguably the tallest of monsters, the most versatile, and generally found in groups of two or three. They can use their legs to stab their enemies, and fire strong lasers from their eyes. In The Chips Are Down and Wreck Room, they demonstrated the ability to project pulse beams from underneath them. This is the only monster that can be destroyed by cutting off its legs.
• Megatanks: These are one of X.A.N.A.'s most powerful monsters. They are huge, armored spheres with indestructible armored outer-casing. They attack with a powerful elliptical laser that can run straight in all vertical directions. To do this attack, it must expose its support ring the laser is fired out of where the Eye is under its armor, making it vulnerable in that moment.
• Tarantulas: They were first introduced in New Order, where they were depicted as X.A.N.A.'s deadliest monsters due to having more life points than the others and their lasers doing twice as much damage. They are excellent shooters and are very durable. They can fire ray beams from the tips of their front legs that take twenty life-points per impact. As of Evolution, however, they now fire ray beams from their heads.

Sector 5

• Creepers: They are exclusively found in Sector Five. Creepers are lethal snake-like monsters that attack by firing lasers from their mouths and make up for having less life points than other monsters by having much more powerful lasers, taking forty life points per hit.
• Mantas: The strongest flying monsters. They are large manta ray-like creatures with strong lasers and hatch flying mines. They can fly but are slower than Hornets. In Cold War, X.A.N.A. shows that it grew powerful enough to send them to Lyoko's surface sectors and as of Evolution, they can survive within the Digital Sea, showing how much more powerful X.A.N.A. has become despite lacking its full source code. A special black manta acts as a vehicle for William.

Digital Sea

• Kongres: Found only in the Digital Sea. They have the appearance of giant piranha eel monsters. They are the most common monsters seen in the Digital Sea and have only one laser weapon, which is fired from their eyes.
• Sharks: Found only in the Digital Sea. Shark-like creatures that attack by shooting torpedoes from their mouths.
• Kalamar: Found only in the Digital Sea. A special monster created to destroy the Skidbladnir. It attacks by latching onto its target and drilling into it.

Unique Monsters

• Guardians
• Scyphozoa: One of X.A.N.A.'s most unique monsters. It has the appearance of a giant jellyfish and is almost impossible to destroy. It is the only monster that lacks offensive abilities but makes up for it by being able to siphon digital memory from a victim with its tentacles. It can also implant X.A.N.A.'s virus code into their memory, controlling their minds to do its will. Aelita has been its main target, but it has attacked Yumi once and William twice.
• Kolossus: X.A.N.A.'s largest and ultimate monster. Created by drawing computing power from all of the hundreds of Replikas that it has established all over the Internet. It has the appearance of a giant lava elemental being, with a giant blade replacing its left hand. Its body is indestructible and one attack from it results in instant devirtualization. The only way to destroy it was to simultaneously attack the Eye of X.A.N.A. on its head and its left sword arm.

William

After possessing William through the Scyphozoa and retaining control of him for the majority of Season 4, William held a unique role in combat where he acts as a de-facto general and orders the monsters what to do, mostly with simple commands such as "Fire" or "Go on". He could even vocally summon a special black Manta to act as additional help or to use as a personal vehicle.

Video Game Only Monsters

• Dark Monsters
• Scorpion
• Exploding Roachsters
• Mites
• Volcanoids
• Insekts
• Omegatank
• Ubertank

Real-world Monsters

Unlike in Lyoko and its Replikas, X.A.N.A's monsters can't manifest in the real world unless it activates a Tower and these monsters are different from the ones inside the virtual world. Instead of simplier A.I. created to fight the Lyoko Warriors, these monsters are a direct result of X.A.N.A.'s multi-agent system appearing in the form of spectral impulses that appear out of electrical sockets/devices and usually either possess creatures/machines to act as the program's instruments of destruction or under certain circumstances, uses the Scanners inside the factory in order to allow its monsters to appear in the real world as physical incarnations.

On three separate occasions, however, they were sent to Earth. Interestingly, in their first two appearances, False Start and Bad Turn, they appeared to be destroyed and show that they have a similar build to robots.

• Specters
• Zombies
• Polymorphic Clone
• Kankrelats - in False Start and Hard Luck
• Krabs - only in A Bad Turn

Trivia

• It is confirmed in New Order that Odd is the one who comes up with the monster's names. Interestingly, there are several instances where X.A.N.A. has taken to using these names as well. It specifically refers to the Scyphozoa by name in a text to Jeremie in Ultimatum. Also, X.A.N.A.-William summons the Mantas by name in Opening Act. X.A.N.A. likely assigns no names to his monsters itself, using the ones that the heroes come up with when communicating with them to use terminology they would understand.
• Aelita, likely inspired by Odd's humor, seems to enjoy referring to the monsters as 'ladies.' This happens repeatedly throughout season four, beginning in Opening Act.
• Monsters tend to be a cross between robots and organic like creatures. On Earth, they break down and seem to imply they are closer to robotic entities. As an aspect of their hybrid nature, there are several monsters that resemble real world animals, such as stinger rays and crabs, and tend to gain a name in relation to what animal they most closely resemble to. In the English dub, some of these names are derived from their French counterpart.
• Krabs are the largest monster to be sent to Earth.
• William, while under the control of X.A.N.A, is not categorized as a monster and unlike monsters, was able to enter towers.
• William once pet a Block appearing as a wolf in Distant Memory.

Gallery

Early design monsters attacking a tower, from "Garage Kids".

A Kankrelat in the scanner.

Concept Art

These designs were created by Michael Guarniere in 2005 after the third and fourth seasons were approved, but were ultimately scrapped.^[1]

References