Pretty pretty hilarious: Kiana Khansmith’s pilot hits 3.0M views on YouTube. What’s next?

Pretty Pretty Please I Don’t Want to Be a Magical Girl  - Kiana Khansmith

What began as some character concepts on Tumblr evolved into a true community that generated lots of fanart and ultimately became a hit on YouTube, amassing more than 2.9 million views so far. The protagonist of this real-life story is Kiana Khansmith, who started drawing these characters on social media last August and made the fortunate decision to animate them. As you might already know, Kiana is a storyboard artist and director at Disney Television Animation and worked on Big City Greens. Inspired by anime such as Pokémon, Ojamajo Doremi, and Panty & Stocking, among others, she created a pilot titled Pretty Pretty Please I Don’t Want to Be a Magical Girl. However, this is not your usual magical girl story—what makes her pilot so special is the way Kiana beautifully deconstructs the genre she truly loves.

The long title Pretty Pretty Please I Don’t Want to Be a Magical Girl is pretty self-explanatory. The pilot follows the main character, Aika, a 15-year-old girl who simply wants to live a normal life. It’s interesting, for example, how Aika is so happy about going to a boring school, yet looks completely bored while transforming and fighting the bad guy. Almost everything here is inverted, and the result is hilarious. I mean, which girl on Earth wouldn’t want to be powerful and look as cool as a Sailor Moon-like heroine? Aika is everything a teenage girl is supposedly supposed to want to be, but ironically, she’s striving for the exact opposite.

The conversation scene in the cafeteria during the break is quite funny. Zira, Aika’s new school friend, refers to herself as 'kind of a loser,' and Aika reacts a bit overly, saying, 'Wow! A real-life high school loser!' and adds, 'Being a loser is awesome! No one bothers you or expects anything from you, and you’re free to do whatever you want!' I was amazed, not exactly because of Aika’s exaggerated reaction to the 'loser' – it’s like a fan meeting a superstar or something – but because Aika admires this situation, and, more than that, she sees it as a genuine way to be free.

For most people from past generations – I’m a millennial, by the way – being a loser has been one of the biggest fears you can have in your lifetime. Of course, Aika’s overenthusiasm has a comic purpose. However, it’s not hard to connect that reaction to aspects of her own generation. I mean, she’s fifteen years old and belongs to Generation Alpha, which is characterized by a strong desire for autonomy. It seems like the responsibilities of being a magical girl get in the way of her just being an independent teenager. Fifteen years old is a very important age, when a girl is growing up; it’s time to prepare for coming of age. Aika looks so ready, though. She is far from being as insecure as teenagers usually are. Remember, 'With great power comes great responsibility.' Aika is still a mahou shoujo, a magical girl, a heroine, but watching how she deals with it is a lot of fun.

Another moment that is quite comical is Kiana getting into her magical mode and her scepter turning into a lead pipe (!), which she casually uses to spank the bad guy until she breaks his legs. Oh my, I cracked up so hard.

Although it's just a pilot animatic, a lot of ideas came to mind while watching it, and it's safe to say that 'Pretty Pretty Please I Don’t Want to be a Magical Girl' has the potential to become a full-fledged show. Social media has been an important ally to indie animation. In addition to helping people get jobs and find opportunities, a good reason to post drawings and pilots online is that you can experiment with your art and get responses and feedback quickly from people. This can be very encouraging for artists to keep going with their projects.

With 3.0 million views on YouTube and a bunch of admirers popping up, it’s impossible not to ask, 'What’s next?'. Well, Kiana has mentioned in comments online that she doesn’t know if she’s going to continue with the pilot. In her opinion, it was supposed to be just a new portfolio piece, but it evolved into this 10-minute pilot animatic with the help of her friends. 'If it does well, I might consider pitching it around, but I’m also content with it just being a pilot and then doing little comics about the characters,' she said recently in her Tumblr FAQ. Hopefully, she takes into consideration that it really did very well and moves forward with Aika’s adventure.