Summary
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The ubiquity of anime and manga in this era is indisputable. As more and more creators who had their childhoods in the late 90s and early 2000s find themselves creating in the same spheres they once worshiped as kids, like animation or comics, we’re starting to see some very interesting works of art that are unique in their clear inspiration by some of the most iconic pieces of entertainment media the world has ever seen.
Pretty Pretty Please I Don’t Want to Be a Magical Girlby Kiana Khansmith (known online as Kiana Mai) is one such work that had its pilot episode animatic released on YouTube on March 8 to absolutely roaring applause. Here’s why you should be excited by this love letter to magical girl anime like Naoko Takeuchi’s legendarySailor Moon.
While I’d want this concept to mostly be a lighthearted comedy, since that’s more my forte, the North Star (heh) of this premise would be the loss of passion for something you once loved, feeling the pressure/expectations of sticking with something that you’re “a prodigy” at and the subsequent burnout. How hard do you fight for an old passion or at what point do you just let it go? Is it even okay to give up when so many people are counting on you?
Sounds bleak, but I promise I’m an optimist and that will always reflect in my work.
The Context
A Brief History of the Magical Girl Genre
The usual flow of magical girl narratives championed bylegendary anime and cartoons likeSailor Moon,Cardcaptor Sakura,Mew Mew Power,Winx Club,WITCHand many others will follow a young girl who undergoes the hero’s journey while grappling with the demands and difficulties of adolescence as a magical power is granted to them to defend the world from some kind of evil. The Magical Girl trope in anime and manga has a long history, with some of the first titles that were identified as such coming out as early as the 1960s, withHimitsu no Akka-chan(1962),Sally the Little Witch(1966), but back then, the term was “Majokko” (“little witch”).
The “magical girl” as it came to be known arose in the 1980s with titles likeCreamy Mami, The Magic AngelandPrincess Minky Momo, but it wasn’t until Sailor Moon’s redefinition of the genre through the incorporation of transformations andother elements inspired bytokusatsuthat the modern-day magical girl was born.
Since then, the subgenre has continued to enjoy popularity and be celebrated as a bastion of the eventual ubiquity of anime and anime culture, withPuella Magi Madoka Magica, released in 2010, becoming massively popular for its dark twist on the well-established tropes and existentialist themes that pushed the envelope of what magical girl anime aimed to do, and Toei Animation’sPretty Curefranchise enjoying continued popularity, with its films going on to become the 7th highest grossing anime film franchise in history.
Magical girls have emerged in various contexts in popular culture, with other attempts at subverting the genre’s main aspects emerging and carving out an interesting discussion regarding what actually constitutes a “Magical Girl Anime”, with titles likeKILL LA KILLalso being considered.Pretty Pretty Please I Don’t Want to Be a Magical Girlstands to be another interesting exploration of the genre with a unique twist.
Aika’s outlook on her job is a parallel to my own experiences as an artist in the animation industry. I grew up loving art and making art and ALWAYS wanted to be a professional artist at some point. When I was hired at Disney, I had an amazing time and I loved it! But then there was a point where the industry just started to feel bleak. The work really started to feel like WORK and I kind of lost sight of why I liked my job in the first place.
I’ve since come around with the help of my friends, who were an inspiration for Zira’s character! Being around people who are passionate helps bring that passion out of you. I hope Aika can come around in the same way as I did!
– Kiana Khansmith, Crunchyroll interview July 26, 2025
What Is Pretty Pretty Please I Don’t Want To Be a Magical Girl?
Who Wants To Be A Hero Anyway?
Created by Annie Award-nominated storyboard artist Kiana Khansmith,Pretty Pretty Please I Don’t Want To Be a Magical Girlis a concept in development that explores the life of Aika, a teenage girl with a major secret: she’s actually a magical girl. The twist is exactly what the title will have you think: Aika absolutely, positively, indubitably, undoubtedly, does NOT want to be a magical girl. Instead, Aika aspires towards genuine normalcy and even starts going to School McSchool Memorial School, a local high school, to get her new normal life going.
There, she meets normal “loser girl” Zira, but, unfortunately for Aika, her secrets never stop following right behind her. While there’s only a short pilot animatic out for the series, it is more than enough to elicit excitement in viewers as it does more than just parody the magical girl genre: itexists at the nexus between subversion and parody, and faithful homage, doing both brilliantly. It follows in the footsteps of various titles before it with the way it presents Aika as a normal school girl (while clearly emphasizing that she isn’t), and the first really endearing thing about her is her appreciation of the mundane, in the same way one would be in awe of her magical girl powers (and eventually was).
The Characters Are Very Likable
Fresh Takes on Familiar Character Archetypes
During the conversation Aika has with Zira in the school cafeteria, the two connect, but it isn’t until Aika shows a genuine interest in Zira that the bookish, standoffish shell of her personality falls away, and we see that she’s just one of us. To say the characters inIDWTBAMGare likable would be an understatement; each is a clear reflection of charactertropes that we’ve seen in magical girl animetime and time again, and yet each of them is still uniquely refreshing. Like Aika, whose hatred for her job reaches a fever pitch when Eclipse, an agent of darkness, bursts into the cafeteria and threatens her.
Rather than react with righteous indignation at his endangering of innocent lives or anything else a normal magical girl would do, she wears an expression of complete detachment from what she’s about to do. Aika’s mascot character, Hoshi, is an aptly-named winged star angel that is possibly inspired by the various iterations of “some pink thing” that we’ve seen inPokémonFairy types, as creator Kiana Khansmith is heavilyinspired by titles likePokémonandBeyblade, which is evident inPretty Pretty Please I Don’t Want to Be a Magical Girl.
Aika and Hoshi’s dynamic is a humorouscallback to many mascot-protagonist relationshipswe’ve seen before, but because Aika hates her job, there’s a whole new kind of omen brought on by Hoshi’s appearance in the school bathroom. Aika’s reaction to seeing her mascot at school was one of complete and utter despair, driving home the point of the title. What also increased the likability of the characters was the quality of the voice acting, with a talented cast of stars including:
The Brilliant Reversal
Perhaps IDWTBAMG’s Strongest Weapon
The thing that makesPretty Pretty Please I Don’t Want to Be a Magical Girlspecial and a treasure trove of potential is how it approaches the thing it very obviously does with its story: subvert everything we’ve come to take for granted about the magical girl genre, but turn it on its head on much more deeper levels. For instance, not only is Aika’s entire character built around her aspiration to normalcy at first, she was wide-eyed at the concept of just being a high schooler, which is a reversal of the usual magical girl protagonist; someone seeking to escape the mundane through the magical.
When Hoshi breaks out of its containment to accost Aika at school, she hits the floor in despair, and when Eclipse arrives, rather than treat us toa brilliant transformation sequence; the bread and butter of this particular anime subgenre, Aika unimpressively blinks into her magical girl regalia (which looks amazing, by the way), hits “yes to all” on all of Hoshi’s standard follow-up interactions to quickly summon a lead pipe instead of some kind of dazzling super beam, to dispatch her foe.
Kiana is so epic. I’m honored to have gotten the chance to voice Eclipse in this pilot 🙏 They’ve brought together a team of incredibly talented people & I’m so proud of everyone 🔥 1 MILLION VIEWS BABYYYY 🎉
– Aleks Le, voice of Eclipse
The lowering of Aika’s eyelids upon transforming communicates discontentment or even disconnection from her job, which contrasts the overall look, feel and occasion of a magical girl transformation. The violent and crude manner of dealing with her adversary, because a lead pipe can also “get the job done”, is a brilliant portrayal of Aika’s jadedness, which is itself inspired by Khansmith’s own experiences working “the dream” of being an animator and soon dreading the work that she once loved.IDWTBAMGis exciting becauseit feels both nostalgic and fresh; like the hilarity and reflection of parody combined with the sincere admiration of homage.
The best visual expression of the core themes ofIDWTBAMGis the “de-transformation” sequence we’re treated to after Eclipse is defeated features all the elements of glamour and occasion we’ve gotten from transformation sequences across time are applied to Aika’s return to her normal form, the part of her character she wants to defend the most. It is hilarious, reiterates the core concept while also managing to bean out-and-out magical girl anime. The de-transformation sequence is one of several moments in the whole pilot that makes its viewer really wish there was more of it to watch.
