Lilo Pelekai

Lilo Pelekai (first name pronounced LEE-loh) is the star of Disney's 2002 animated film Lilo & Stitch and its subsequent sequels and television series. Lilo (literally, "lost" in Hawaiian) is a young Hawaiian girl who lives on the island of Kauai with her older sister Nani and her extended family of alien visitors marooned on Earth.

Background
Lilo is a young 6 year old (7 at the end of Lilo & Stitch) Hawaiian girl with long, straight black hair and brown eyes. She's most often seen wearing a muumuu and sandals, but also wears other warm-weather clothing as well as traditional hula costumes. She also appears to be a little on the chubby side. In Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch, her reflection in a mirror is compared to a picture of her young mother, suggesting that they look similar. In the episode "Skip" where an experiment is used to skip time 10 then another 10 years, it's mentioned that older Lilo looks a lot like her sister Nani. By the the end of Leroy and Stitch, she is almost 10.

Personality
Her spirited and highly eccentric personality, especially in light of her parents' death, has alienated her from her fellow children (whom she still considers to be her friends despite them maltreating her), yet Lilo makes the perfect best friend for Stitch, an alien experiment whom she adopts as her dog. Lilo attends Hula school and her hobbies include the photography of obese people, talking about creatures from horror/sci-fi movies, and capturing and rehabilitating Jumba's evil genetic experiments. She idolizes Elvis Presley.

Friends
Lilo's Friends were mostly Victoria, Stitch and Keoni. Lilo's ex-friends were Mertle Edmonds, Yuki, Elena and Teresa. The reason why Lilo's friends were now her ex-friends because her parents died and they didn't seem to show sympathy when she was explaining it to them. Victoria and Lilo's ex-friends all belong in hula class. Reuben and Gantu became two of Lilo's alien friends.

Family
Lilo's parents died in a car accident some time before Lilo & Stitch (it is suggested that rain made road conditions treacherous), and they have not appeared in the series apart from three photographs: one of Lilo, Nani, and their parents having a picnic on the beach, a photograph of Lilo's mother winning the Hula contest at her school's May Day celebration, and a photo of Nani with her parents when she graduated to intermediate Hula.

Lilo's mother is depicted as kind and loving (and perhaps eccentric like her younger daughter), as well as an excellent hula dancer. She would placate her children by holding a family night, singing lullabies, and making up funny constellations. Lilo's father played the ukulele and was the one who coined the phrase Ohana means family, and family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten. The phrase becomes a sort of family motto for his daughters and their intergalactic adopted clan.

Lilo loves and misses her parents very much. She keeps a picture of them under her pillow and initially would not allow Stitch to touch it (rejecting him when his fight with Jumba caused her house and the picture to become damaged). In the episode "Remmy", which takes place on the anniversary of the accident, Lilo is depressed and takes a nap to help deal with her sadness. The picture is used to turn Lilo's nightmares into a dream of the day the photograph was taken, which manages to make her happy again.

Lilo writes a thank you note to an "Uncle Joe" in "Glitch/Woops". Otherwise, Lilo and Nani are the only known living members of the Pelekai family.

The development of Lilo's ohana (extended family) begins with the adoption of Stitch in Lilo & Stitch. Though Lilo technically owns Stitch by Hawaiian state law, the relationship between the two is more like siblings and best friends. By the end of the series, Lilo's extended ohana includes Nani, "Uncle" Jumba and "Aunt" Pleakley, David, Cobra Bubbles, the Grand Councilwoman, all 627 (627 and 628 was shown dehydrated in the episode of 627, although it could be argued that he still counts) of Stitch's "Cousins" and Gantu.

Lilo & Stitch
Lilo first appears in the film running late for her hula class. After causing some of her classmates to slip and explaining her strange reasons for being late (feeding Pudge), she gets into a fight with Mertle Edmonds and classes are ended early for the day as a result to her dismay. Rejected again by Mertle and her friends, she heads back home by herself and depressed, starts listening to Heartbreak Hotel. Nani arrives trying to frantically get ready for a visit from social worker Cobra Bubbles that ends up turning out disastrously. Lilo and Nani get into a fight, make up and Lilo spots a shooting star (Stitch's starship) and makes a wish for "an angel". The next day, Lilo and Nani visit the local animal shelter and there, Lilo meets Stitch.

Stitch!
Though the series was originally planned as an alternate continuity, Lilo would appear in the third season, now a mother with a child that looks exactly like she did when she first met Stitch; the identity of the girl's father remains unknown. Stitch left Kauai sometime after Lilo went off to college, but her busy schedule kept her from visiting often and on the day she was to meet Stitch again, she showed up late. Afterwards, Stitch left Earth and after several years of cruising through space, finds his way back to Earth, landing on an island off the coast of Okinawa and meeting a new owner.

Disney Parks


Lilo appears along with Stitch at Disney parks around the world as a meetable character.

It's a Small World
Lilo appears with Stitch on a surfboard in the tropics scene of the Disneyland version

Fantasmic!
Lilo is one of the many characters who can appear in the Steamboat finale

Gallery
Lilo Pelekai