Random Comments about the Lilo and Stitch series

Yes, I know it's just a cartoon and the writers probably didn't intend for it to be taken very seriously. I'm not losing sleep over it or anything but sometimes.....I just enjoy overthinking things.

The premise of this series is seen up in a movie called Stitch: The Movie. Jumba's evil genetic experiments programmed to cause mass destruction, have all been set loose on Hawaii. Instead of sending in the intergalactic military or something of that sort, the intergalactic council decide that the reformed genetic experiment Stitch and the little girl who tamed him are the most qualified people to be given the enormous responsibility of catching these monsters, reforming them, and finding places where they can be productive members of society. I guess form a certain point of view, taming Stitch makes Lilo well qualified but yet she is still a little girl with irrational ideas and probably not the most reliable person for the responsibility of protecting the world from devastation. Than again, she is aided by Stitch, who is one of the few beings capable of subduing this beasts, and Jumba who is an expert on how to handle them because he created them. Jumba is untrustworthy because he created this problem in the first place and just barely qualifies as reformed, but he has the heroes to try to keep him in check morally. Pleakley helps out to, he is incompetent but at least h balances out Jumba's evil. Meanwhile, Lilo's legal guardian (her sister Nani) tries to keep an eye on all these yahoos but has to work to support them financially and so is mostly absent from monster hunting. She leaves Jumba, the evil one, and Pleakley, the incompetent one, to supervise Lilo on her adventures. Like I said, one is evil and the other is incompetent but at least Nani knows she can trust them to keep Lilo alive, at the very least we can trust them both to pull Lilo out of a ditch if need be. Sometimes though, Lilo is the one taking care of them. Strangely, we rarely see them have to leave the city, realistically there'd be some monsters to hunt on other islands and they'd do some travelling.

The family situation is unusual. Before ether aliens came, Nani was trying to raise her sister alone as a single parent and was struggling. Social services was close to taking Lilo into foster care and then aliens landed. Then, the intergalactic federation wanted the family to stay together to keep an eye on Stitch and presumably Jumba. Since the social worker knows about the aliens, I sort of head canon that he is covering for the family to human authorities and using the fact that they now have an aunt and uncle helping out as justification for letting Lilo stay with Nani. Though Nani is still Lilo's official guardian, social services is placated by the presence of two other adults helping out, even though Bubbles presumably had to forge something to cover up that legally these two relatives don't exist. and Pleakley is somewhat helpful in household chores and keeping Lilo fed.

Is Nani the only one earning income in the family? I sort of choose to head canon, even though there is no evidence of it, that Pleakely is getting paid by someone for Earth research and Jumba is getting paid by someone for science work. However, they would be getting paid by organizations in outer space and I am not Sur how these resources would convert into Earth currency. At one point Pleakley racks up a galactic ton of Earth credit card debt and we never find out how they get out of that.There are some episodes where Jumba and Pleakely run a Bed not Breakfast but they don't make very much money that way.

on the subject of aliens getting paid, what does Hamsterveil pay Gantu with? at one point he fires him and Gantu looks for other work. Somehow Hamsterveil is apparently paying for Gantu's cable. It doenst make much sense how he is paying for Earth stuff with intergalactic currency. and where does 625 get all this sandwich food? and why in the name of Armstrong does 625 stay with Gantu? he doesn't like Gantu. he doesn't care about catching experiments. why stay? why can't he go get a job at a sandwich shop?

oh and about Stitch's cousins getting jobs around town. How do the townspeople not find this weird? people still don't believe in aliens or supernatural phenomena even though this random girl its giving people little creatures with spectacular powers left and right. we have one that clones ice cream so it has fewer calories and nobody questions it. we have one that magically gives people the best haircuts for them and nobody his weirded out. we have one that can literally reverse the aging process and NOBODY QUESTIONS THIS MIRACLE!

Sometimes the writers couldn't figure out how to possibly make some of the powers useful and they didn't mention it. Sometimes they couldn't figure out and had the villains capture the monster. Was to really so hard for the writers to pick a home for the lie detector one? have him assist police investigations. There are some episodes where Lilo straight up GIVES them to the villains. She gives Poxy, the germ, and Felix, the clean freak turned messy, to the villain to punish him. and in Nosy's episode, she straight up give shim to villain because he's annoying. I think it was supposed to be funny, he's so annoying they'll just let him be captured, but I did not find it funny. It was mean spirited and completely against the shows message of Ohana. but don't worry, eventually Nosy escapes and comes and tells them how to free all the experiments which Nosy calls Lilo out for heartlessly abandoning. We never find out what happened to Poxy though.

alright, this is enough for now, I'll add more comments later

 

I can't believe it's been a month since I posted this, it feels like it hasn't been this long. Nobody seems to care but I think I'll try and finish my train of thoughts anyway.

The aliens! nobody on Earth notices the people with four eyes or one eye or the giant fucking shark man. They inexplicably believe Gantu is Samoan and that explains his strange appearance. There are several episodes where the aliens go on TV. In real life, the world would take notice. Everybody would know about the aliens by now. Cat out of the bag a long time ago (I have a theory that in the live action film, they will make it more believable by giving Jumba and Pleakley technology to look human). But the show is inconsistent with whether the plains are supposed to be kept secret or not anyways. In the crossover with Recess, Lilo asks them not to tell anyone about aliens. But a few episodes ago, in the Proud Family crossover, you let Penny Proud write about aliens in a newspaper! but fuck consistency.

The mean girl Mertle has an alien and doesn't know it. Hers looks like an ordinary dog. At least it''s believable that she thinks Gigi is a dog. more believable than it is that people think Stitch is a dog and that the other cousins are normal animals. But some episodes forget Gigi exists. Maybe they take place before she got Gigi. At one point she seeks out a dog like Stitch. Girl, you have one already, have you not tried teaching Gigi tricks? she probably isn't as powerful as Stitch but she can probably do some spectacular things.

the old lady with the fruit stand has a fuckton of Stitch's cousins living with her and she inexplicably thinks they're cats! what incredible weirdness filters these people have! the ones who decided to live with the old lady all somehow manage to fit in without causing issues, even though some of them could singlehandedly destroy the house if left unchecked! So Lilo gets Jumba and Pleakley and takes all the "cats" without asking and then Lilo realizes she made a mistake and that she shouldn't help the old lady without asking her if she needs help first. SO the experiments stay. That's a good moral message. I agree that Lilo should have asked the old lady if she wanted the experiments removed before just taking them. However, some of them could singlehandedly destroy the house!! I think Lilo did the responsible thing, as the person responsible for trying to manage these aliens, by getting Jumba (the expert on them) to come and make sure the lady was safe. They should have gone about it differently though, checked to make sure the aliens weren't causing any issues and then let them be.

Now about Lilo helping the lady with the fruit stand. In the aforementioned episode, Lilo screws things up by trying to help organize the fruit stand without asking first. However, this is inconsistent with a previous episode where she apparently does help out at the fruit stand regularly. But this was only for one episode to contrive a situation where Lilo is juggling multiple responsibilities. The writers needed, for the plot of that episode, for Lilo to really be taking on too much. But they had to contrive it by having her apparently have a job at the fruit stand which was never mentioned before and never mentioned again. For the majority fo the series, the only responsibility Lilo has outside of alien hunting is hula school. Weirdly enough, we don't see her go to actual school (besides in the end credits of the first movie) just hula school. And in said episode, Nani threatens to not allow Lilo to hunt for the aliens anymore if it interferes with her other responsibilities. hum I THINK NANI'S PRIORITIES ARE A LITTLE ASKEW! PROTECTING THE EARTH FROM LITTLE DESTRUCTIVE MONSTERS, A JOB SHE WAS HIRED FOR BY THE GALACTIC FEDERATION, SHOUDL BE TREATED AS HER HIGHEST RESPONSIBILITY! INSTEAD NANI IS TREATING IT LIKE SOME UNIMPORTANT HOBBY THAT IS INTERFERING WITH LILO'S RESPONSIBILITIES! in another episode Lilo points out how she is treated as too immature for anything besides protecting the world from certain doom. At least that line gives proper weight to her job of alien hunting.

Did I mention how often the house gets destroyed? these people must have really good insurance.

There is an episode where Lilo finds an alien that lets her skip ten years of her life. This is one of the most bizarre episodes that operates on really childish logic. Lilo skips ten years and becomes a teenager, and from the perspective of other characters she is just gone for ten years. And without her there to help the aliens, shit is fucked up. Then she skips another ten years and fucks shit up even more, now the villain has conquered the Earth. and her family is impoverished because of ten years of parking tickets. Really. This is a story a child would think makes sense. Why didn't they move the car? Lilo had the keys. At some point you hot-wires the car, or smash the car, disintegrate it or something, not go into debt over parking tickets. And the writers couldn't figure out any possible way to make this alien positively contribute to society so they never mention it again. But he could have solved the series man conflict. Give him to the villain, press the button, now you have ten years to plan what you're gonna do when he comes back. Meanwhile he can't stop you from finishing the work of saving the aliens. But then there wouldn't be a finale movie. I think I'm gonna head canon that Skip doesn't really skip time and merely created a simulation.

in conclusion, this show is weird

 

Now I'm watching Sofia the First. I enjoy this show. As a fan of Disney in general, I like the Disney cameos. I'm just getting to the one that introduces Elena of Avalor, which I watched a few years ago so I'm excited to see those characters again. One episode of Sofia the First I thought was a little dumb was when Sofia joins a band of do-gooders and their leader throws shade at the royal family for not going around rescuing people in emergencies. Yes, a good royal family helps people. But their job is to help people by running the government, not by going around helping in emergencies. When I have a medical emergency and the paramedics come, I don't ask why isn't parliament here? I'm upset that my government isn't doing more about helping poverty and that sort of thing, I'm not upset that they delegate helping in emergencies to the professionals in such fields. At least in my country, the government pays medical care workers. The current premier of my province is actually a surgeon and so theoretically would be good to have around in an emergency, but that isn't the norm.