Your sc_selchar (within common5) is too large.
Open up the Klonoa CSP's in GIMP (or Photoshop, or any other image editing software), index the images, then import them into common5/sc_selchar.
The CSP's will be at a lower quality, but the game should not freeze any more.
thanks for the replies, I'll be sure to try this when I get a chance in a few days

I have since found a
tutorial that confirms that I'm doing the replace image in brawlbox correctly but I haven't tried indexing the images yet (I figured the modders who published the newest build would have done that). This time around however I made it to the main menu but immediately after selecting Brawl for versus mode it froze and my wii insisted on making that awful buzzing noise.
Lastly I have NTSC.