Pretty Pretty Please I Don’t Want to be a Magical Girl (2025- )
Photo Courtesy of Ron Lach- Pexels
In the past couple of years, indie animation has seen a significant surge in popularity. Indie animation is considered an animation project that is made from a smaller studio or separately from one of the giants of the entertainment industry, such as Disney or Paramount. Most commonly, many indie series simply get their start on YouTube, and thanks to the massive success of grassroots YouTube projects such as The Amazing Digital Circus (2023-2026) and Hazbin Hotel (2019- ), you never know when the next popular masterpiece is going to be posted.
One such masterpiece that is very likely to become much more popular as time goes on is Pretty Pretty Please I Don’t Want to be a Magical Girl (2025- ). While the first episode was technically released on Feb. 28, 2025, it was only in animatic form. This meant that the episode had not been fully animated yet: playing out as though it were a storyboard with many things still in black and white, and audio playing over a couple still frames. A second episode would be released with this same format.
However, just recently on Sept. 4, 2026, a fully animated version of the pilot was released, having partnered with the indie animation studio Mercury Filmworks, according to an article on Tech Times. Mercury Filmworks is the same studio that helped to animate shows like Hilda (2018-2023) and The Ghost and Molly McGee (2021-2024), according to the studio’s official website. This allowed fans not quite convinced by a simple storyboard animatic to see what a wonderful and enjoyable show Pretty Pretty Please I Don’t Want to be a Magical Girl (2025- ) could be.
The series was first created by Kiana Khansmith, who already has an impressive background in the animation world, being a writer for Big City Greens (2018- ) and in the art department for Pokemon: Path to Peak (2023), according to IMDb. The story is a parody of the classic magical girl stories often seen presented in manga, with the spin that the main protagonist, Aika, has already had her adventures as a magical girl before the series started. She has already faced her challenges and become good at her job, enough to find out that she did not enjoy being a magical girl; she attempts to leave it behind in order to live an average teenage life as a high school student.
Unfortunately for her, it would seem her old life is not willing to let her go. The first friend Aika makes at school, Zira, is a fan of the magical girl genre and does not understand why Aika would leave that life beyond. Worse yet, Aika’s “magical friend”—a companion from whom she gets her abilities—is a sentient and hilariously judgmental star named Hoshi, who follows her to school and repeatedly insists she must return home to do her job. Unfortunately, not just allies come to retrieve Aika, as villains from her past life come to find her as well. A villain who calls himself Eclipse breaks down the cafeteria door just to try and fight her, leaving Aika no choice but to return to her magical girl persona; she is able to take Eclipse down with hilarious ease—nothing but a lead pipe rather than any magic. The fact that the villains cannot seem to leave her alone for a single day is probably a pretty good indicator of why Aika may be looking for an early retirement.
One of the best parts of this series is that it manages to poke fun at the genre it is basing itself off of, creating some genuinely funny moments, without ever feeling like it is disrespecting it. Aika will still fall to her knees and cry out at her plans of escape being thwarted, only for Hoshi to roll their eyes and call her dramatic while barely reacting. Eclipse presents himself as an intimidating and dramatic villain, only for it to feel like he is just putting on an act for attention as he refers to Aika exclusively as “Star Guardian-Guardian of the Stars” while she simply tries to ignore him until he goes away.
Pretty Please I Don’t Want to be a Magical Girl (2025- ) can quickly draw an audience in with fun characters, wonderful humors, and now, beautiful animation. It is unknown when the second episode will get the same treatment, but you will want to be there when it does. The series is currently streaming for free on Kiana Khansmith’s YouTube channel.