Lilo Pelekai

**Lilo Pelekai** is one of the titular protagonists of the *Lilo & Stitch* franchise. She is a young, orphaned Hawaiian girl who lives on the island of Kauai with her older sister, Nani, and her extended yet unconventional family of alien visitors marooned on Earth.

## Background

In the original movie, Lilo is a six-year-old girl living on the island of Kauai with her older sister, Nani. On a rainy night, Lilo and Nani's parents were killed in a car accident, leaving the two sisters orphaned. With Nani being of age by the time of the tragedy, she was dubbed Lilo's legal guardian.

### Personality

Lilo's spirited and highly eccentric personality, especially in light of her parents' death, has alienated her from her fellow children (whom she oddly still considers her friends despite them mistreating her and openly admitting that they hate her and don't want her around), yet Lilo makes the perfect best friend for Stitch, an alien experiment whom she adopts, initially believing he is a "dog" (although he actually bears more of a resemblance to a koala, which is pointed out several times). She is also extremely disobedient. Lilo is emotionally sensitive and usually cries whenever she's really hurt or if something bad happens to someone she loves and cares for (mainly Nani or Stitch), having been emotionally scarred by losing her parents at such a young age. Lilo was patient and faithful towards Stitch throughout the film, even after he causes Nani to lose her jobs and nearly drowns her. But when the Pelekais' house got destroyed, Lilo was about to be taken to foster care and her family photo got ruined, Lilo became so bitter towards Stitch that she wanted him to get out of her life, showing that she has breaking points as well.

She attends hula school and her hobbies include the photography of obese tourists, talking about creatures from horror/sci-fi movies, and capturing and rehabilitating Jumba's evil genetic experiments. She also idolizes Elvis Presley and often does not seem to understand that her eccentricities cause her to be an outcast from most of the other children. She is also naïve, believing Mertle, Elena, Teresa, and Yuki as her friends despite that they cruelly hate her, and often comes up with several unconventional ways to befriend them. Even when Nani points out that behavior does not make them her friends, Lilo refutes "they're the only ones [she's] got besides Stitch".

In addition to her naughtiness, she enjoys being messy and having fun, though her recklessness sometimes causes her to make a mess of her surroundings, much to the disapproval of others around her. She does have a tendency to act selfish and irresponsible, however, especially when an experiment is around that she can use for her own personal benefit, which usually causes huge trouble and brings out the worst in her. It is hinted once in the film through Nani that Lilo might have chased away a bunch of social workers before Cobra. She is very adventurous, brave, and clever, easily coming up with strategies to capture the experiments and never showing fear in the face of the many life-threatening dangers to her life that she faces while capturing the experiments. In fact, she views the experiments as part of her *ʻohana*, and as a result, devotes so much time to capturing them that it sometimes interferes with her life, but sometimes she abandons them and leaves them free for Gantu to capture (which Nosy calls her out for in the last episode).

Nonetheless, she is sweet and believes in the good of everyone as shown through her interactions with Gantu and the experiments, especially Stitch. Notably, despite all the misfortune Shoe caused with his bad luck power seemingly making it impossible to find his one true place and Pleakley insisting they get rid of him, Lilo refused to as Gantu would capture him. After his powers reversed to good luck, Lilo apologized and reconciled with Shoe, assuring him that she still liked him all the same.

Despite her kindness and generosity, Lilo can sometimes be a selfish hypocrite. In the first film, when Lilo attempted to push Nani out the door after calling out on a fallen star, Nani pretended gravity is increasing on her, prompting Lilo to call her weird. In "Fibber", while Lilo acknowledges about valuing honesty, there are some instances in which Lilo lies in order to gain what she wants, usually out of good intentions but sometimes for herself. In "Tank", when Lilo wins tickets to the Elizabethan Fair and invites Elena, Teresa, and Yuki, she got caught up with having human friends to where she neglected Stitch and even outright called him "weird". In "Heckler", she finds Heckler insulting others funny, even though Nani points out otherwise, until he starts insulting *her*. In "Angel", Lilo acknowledges about believing in love but when she saw Angel she didn't trust her, she even prevented Stitch from hanging out with her out of jealousy despite his affection toward her. Lilo was right to assume when she discovered Angel was working for Dr. Hämsterviel but was proven wrong when Angel sided with Stitch out of love. In regards to this, Lilo can learn from her mistakes and admits when she is wrong about something.

### Physical appearance

Lilo is a 6-year-old Hawaiian girl with long, straight black hair and brown eyes. She's most often seen wearing a red or green muumuu with white leaf designs and blue or black sandals but also wears other warm-weather clothing as well as traditional hula costumes - in hula class, she, like the rest of the hula girls, all wear red bandeau tube tops, grass skirts, grass headdress, grass wristbands, and leg bands.

Throughout the franchise, she can be seen wearing several outfits. Getting ready for bedtime, she wears a light blue nightgown. Some episodes of the TV series had Lilo wearing a T-shirt and shorts, which vary in either light green and dark blue or light purple and green, respectively. When swimming, she wears a red and orange striped swimsuit.

In *Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch*, her reflection in a mirror is compared to a picture of her mother when she was her age, suggesting that they look similar. In the episode "Skip", where an experiment is used to skip time, it's mentioned that the older Lilo resembles Nani.

Lilo turns 7 in the original movie's ending montage and remains that age throughout *Lilo & Stitch 2* and *Stitch: The Movie*. She then has her 8th birthday in the TV series and she is almost 10 by the end of *Leroy & Stitch*.