What's your hottest hey Arnold take?
I don't dislike Lila, and I can't understand how most fans dislike her, considering that her personality is 99% similar to Arnold (that is, unless you happen to dislike him as well, for some reason...).
If anything, I respect her a lot for rejecting Arnold's feelings, and would dislike her way more if she reciprocated them in spite of knowing that Helga has feelings for him.
I wish we got lila centered episodes. She was always the subject of arnold or helga episodes and completely left out of the movie. It would have been nice to basically get girl versions of Arnold storylines or more built on her character. Tbh i could see her being a good focus a depression analogy
Lila had a great intro episode by portraying her as a hopeful, kind person whose family had went through / still struggled a lot. But then the rest of the series she’s just an obstacle for Helga and a one-sided love interest for Arnold.
If they had dropped / lessened her “ever so much” and “whatever do you mean” sorta annoying lines, her character could have easily carried a spinoff imo… if it was the original Lila from her intro episode. But by the time that would have been a possibility, they had already ruined it by making her more of an unintentional antagonist than anything else
Personlly I found her lines to be cute and fun. I guess it made her less of a realistic character but I’d argue all of the kids are exaggerations of their personalities. I think any audience dislike for her comes more from people picking sides in a love triangle. As i write this I realize Lila is really good at enforcing her boundaries but shes never antagonistic- we just usually watch her as Helga. As a kid she sometimes annoyed me but only because i felt jealous on Helgas behalf growing up just a little and looking back on the show I already didn’t dislike Lila as a teenager. If anything inherent about her character is to dislike I’d say that its her perfection - but even that only goes so far canonically. The boys in her class love her but even the adults in the show are somewhat indifferent towards her which isn’t how real life ‘perfect’ kids are treated. That was a long way of me saying I don’t blame the shows portrayal so much as the of fans feeling the need to pick teams