Pretty Pretty Please I Don't Want to be a Magical Girl
Entry updated 28 September 2026. Tagged: TV.
US animated webseries (2025-current). Created, directed and written by Kiana Khansmith. Voice cast includes Bennett Abara, Shara Kirby, Aleks Le and Anairis Quiñones. Two 11-14 minute episodes to date. Colour.
Aika (Quiñones) insists she is "a normal girl of average talent living an unspectacular life" who has just "moved to a quiet little town where nothing ever happens" to start her first day of "normal high school". She finds this all very exciting and completes her first ever pop quiz long before everybody else, with a perfect score (see Intelligence), but is later upbraided by Hoshi, a winged star-shaped creature, for not doing her Job: Aika's response is, "Unless it's a minimum wage cashier job, I should not be working! I'm fifteen." She befriends, Zira (Abara), self-proclaimed loser – Aika is envious: no one expects anything from losers. Zira loves Manga, her favourite being Moon Sailor (see Sailor Moon), but Aika admits to having problems with that particular genre.
Then the cafeteria wall collapses and a voice enquires "where are you Star Guardian, Guardian of the Stars?": as the dust clears a boy of about Aika's age is revealed – "Eclipse, Servant of Darkness!" (Le) who claims to be Star Guardian's "arch-nemesis. And also ... " Zira interrupts "double gasp! Magical love interest?" – "Ew! No!" and "Ha-ha yes!" are Aika and Eclipse's responses. Aika transforms into a magical girl, complete with magical staff, but at her request Hoshi turns it into lead piping and she uses it to smash his shins. Eclipse painfully departs and Aika notes he can use Magic now, then confesses to Zira how she does not want to be a magical girl: nonetheless Hoshi insists she returns "home". But there's a second attack by Eclipse, where he turns the tree holding Aika's treehouse into a Kaiju, forcing Aika to protect Zira by transforming again, declaring, "Pretty, pretty please, I wish for a chainsaw/" (Hoshi, delighted: "You said the whole thing this time!"). Eclipse's attacks are enough to persuade Hoshi that Aika can stay in the town.
Eclipse has been given his new powers by Lady DeVoid (Kirby), which he discovers have quickly repaired his shattered shins; she nonetheless points out he is not invincible. Lady Devoid has a grudge against Star Guardian, who is apparently responsible for the partial loss of her memory (see Amnesia) and powers. Zira – who clearly has a crush on Aika – worries she only gets in the way, but Hoshi points out Aika has not been so happy for a long time: "Plus, by being so useless and pathetic and helpless and in danger ... you actually got her to do her job. Twice!" At one point Zira confesses she has "a couple of secrets", as yet unrevealed.
The setting and overarching plot is still being laid down, with much unexplained, but so far Pretty Pretty Please I Don't Want to be a Magical Girl has been a funny (see Humour) and affectionate Parody of magical girl Anime such as Sailor Moon (see also Acro Trip; Magilumiere Co. Ltd.; Makeruna! Makendō; Puella Magi Madoka Magica; Puni Puni Poemy). It is currently too gentle to be called Satire, though there is Swearing; but the Clichés are fondly sent up. For example, magical girls traditionally have an extended and glamorous transformation set-piece, yet in the pilot Aika's is over in a second; it is her reversion to her mundane clothes that has the prolonged scene. Also of note is that all main characters save for Eclipse (who is Asian) are black (see Race in SF). The series is an independent animation broadcast on YouTube: the animatics for the first two episodes were released in February 2025 and January 2026, receiving 5.3 and 2.7 million views respectively (as of September 2026); a fully animated version of the first was released on 4 September 2026 and had 7.5 million views by 22 September 2026. [SP]
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