Anna Kay Akana (born August 18, 1989 in California) is an American YouTuber, comedian, filmmaker, actress, and musician. She currently has over 2.8 million subscribers on her YouTube channel
, where she's known for her comedic life advice videos and her short films.
In 2013, she starred in Riley Rewind, the first scripted series by Ray William Johnson of =3. After making a cameo in Marvel Studios' Ant-Man, she landed recurring roles in two Disney Channel animated series: Big City Greens (as Gloria Sato) and Amphibia (as Sasha Waybright).
Her works include:
- Riley Rewind (2013)
- H A L L U C I N A T I O N (2014)
- ''Afflicted Inc. (2014)
- Emergency Call (2014)
- PREGNAPOCALYPSE (2014)
- Miss 2059 (Pilot released in 2014 as Miss Earth; Official series ran in 2016)
- Command Center (2015)
- Loose Ends (2015)
- Hipsters (2016)
- The Transformers: Combiner Wars (2016) as Victorion
- Metro Manners (2017-2018) as Super Kind
- Youth & Consequences (2018)
- Big City Greens (2018-) as Gloria Sato
- Amphibia (2019-2022) as Sasha Waybright
- Let It Snow as Kerry
- Magical Girl Friendship Squad (2020) as Daisy
- Jupiter's Legacy as Raikou
- Oni: Thunder God's Tale (2022) as Ann-Brella, Ninjin and Momotaro
- Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (2023) as Odessa Drake
Discography:
- Casaulty (2019) (debut studio album)
- No Longer Yours (2021) (EP)
'''Pretty Girls Don't Trope:
- Actually Pretty Funny: After Anna learns that the expression "Over my dead body" dates back to at least the 1800s, she decides to look up what passed for a joke back then. She finds one amusing Pun-centric anecdote, which she acts out for the viewers. A child sees his mother making bread, and calls her "very lazy", explaining that making bread "...is neither more nor less than loafing!" As punishment for the insult, the mother denies him hotcakes for the next few days. Anna then calls this "comedy gold" by that period's standards.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: During the Victorian flashback sequence from "The War on Masturbation".Doctor Anna: Does it seem implausible that my sperm is made up of tiny microscopic men? That digging holes in the ground leads to rain? That blowing tobacco up the butthole heals, especially in reviving drowning victims?
- Bland-Name Product: "How to feel pretty" features Vague magazine and Grand Theft Otter V.
- Brain with a Manual Control: The Command Center shorts feature Anna in charge of some policemen who work inside a young woman's head, and try to help the young woman make rational decisions.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: In "The War on Masturbation", Victorian-Anna says she hates the 19th century after receiving bizarre and unhelpful advice from her doctor.
- Break-Up Song: In "Screw You", Anna calls out a boy who cheated on her with other women, then boasts that she found someone bigger and better.
- But I Can't Be Pregnant!: PREGNAPOCALYPSE begins with Anna and her friends panicking over suddenly developing baby bumps without having sex beforehand. They soon discover that this happened to every female in the world, regardless of age or species. Things go From Bad to Worse after Anna gives birth to a baby alien, which gobbles her up when she tries to touch it.
- Comeback Tomorrow: Anna recalls in "Too late for a comeback" when a grouchy old lady at the gym interrupted her training session, by demanding Anna and the trainer to move out of her way. Anna laments failing to come up with any retorts until after the session, until she decides they might have pissed off the lady even more.
- Comical Overreacting: Anna often uses this in her videos to demonstrate how not to behave.
- Coming-Out Story: In "how I came outnote (and what my parents think)", which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: According to Curse Of Eve, God created neckties and high-heeled shoes to torture Adam and Eve after they ate the Forbidden Fruit.
- Cross-Cast Role:
- She often takes on male roles in her advice videos usually accompanied by wearing a gag mustache, although sometimes she gives them to her brother or her boyfriend instead.
- She plays Batista in Max Landis' Wrestling Isn't Wrestling, in which several young women portray male WWE Superstars.
- Despair Event Horizon: In her video on religion, she stated that her little sister's bullying-induced suicide essentially broke her, disconnecting her from things such as the devout Christianity she was raised on, which made her go atheist at the time.
- Double Vision: Anna often plays multiple roles at once in her advice videos.
- Downer Ending: "Emergency Call". A terrified Anna desperately reaching a 911 operator from a dark room trying to hide from a killer is eventually found, and the operator is ultimately unable to do anything but listen to Anna's tortured screams in horror.
- The Dreaded Toilet Duty: "The shittiest day of my life" revolves around Anna's roommate clogging the toilet and leaving out rain boots by the bathroom door hoping it would cover up the smell. Anna goes into the bathroom with a mask and cleaning supplies and grossed out, exclaims...''"I'M CLEANING SOMEONE'S SHIT!!"
- Exact Words: "Pokémon GO Ruins Lives" eventually culminates in Anna making a Deal with the Devil for him to bring her a Pikachu. He doesn't let her catch it.
- Failed Future Forecast: In September 2020's "How 2020 Ends", the Anna representing November cries that Donald Trump got re-elected. Once November actually rolled around, he ended up losing the Election to Joe Biden.
- Gender Flip: "All Female Cast", written in response to the controversy surrounding Ghostbusters (2016), demonstrates sexist men's worst fears for all-women remakes of Rush Hour and Entourage, until the men admit that one movie might actually prove interesting if given that treatment.
- Generation Xerox: "I'm Mean to People I Love" includes a re-enactment of Anna shooing away company so she can concentrate on her work. She then wonders if she inherited this tendency from her Workaholic father, queuing a flashback of him shooing her away to concentrate on "work". Anna's delivery and dialogue for her father sounds exactly the same as that she used for her present self (except he at least calls little Anna, "Sweetie", before she leaves).
- Genre Shift: "Things Only Cat People Understand" begins as another advice video, until Congress marches in with a giant robot suit, and Anna must prevent him from taking over the universe.
- Girls with Moustaches: Anna very often wears a fake mustache when taking on male roles in her videos.
- I Am Not Pretty: Anna recalls in "How to feel pretty" when her attempt to compliment a friend's appearance resulted in the friend stating, "I don't feel pretty", provoking a Flat "What" from Anna.
- Inherently Funny Word: Anna admits in "How to Get Fired From Phone Sex" that the word "penis" makes her giggle.
- Ironic Nursery Tune: Her song "Against the Darkness", a rap from the perspective of her talking to her late little sister, ends with her coldly narrating a grim variation on the "Itsy Bitsy Spider" nursery rhyme that instead has the spider drowning itself in the rain from the water spout.
- Kindhearted Cat Lover: Anna has four cats which she seems to spoil rotten, and often features in her videos. However, she refuses to call herself a Crazy Cat Lady.
- Lady Swears-a-Lot: This was most common in her earliest works, where Anna was noted for having a dirty mouth skilled in the art of Vulgar Humor, which is most prominently displayed in "Screw You" and her Intercourse with You performance at the Ice Box in 2012 about sodomy with a woman's father. Her vulgarity became toned down as time went on and she aimed to produce more serious life advice videos than being solely comedic, but it still pops up from time to time.
- Mama Bear: Exaggerated in You Wouldn't Understand, in which Anna becomes enraged at anyone who presents anything that could prove the least bit dangerous to her baby (eg, a pesticide-ridden lemon peel, a sharp plastic knife).
- Magical Girl: The "Metro Manners" Public Service Announcements star Anna as Super Kind, who uses the power of music... and New Powers as the Plot Demands to punish monstrous "Metro Menaces" who act inconsiderate on the subway.
- Musicalis Interruptus: Anna's Epic Rap Battle between a scientist and her clones runs shorter than an Epic Rap Battles of History video, because an Anna from an alternate universe barges in, and shoots everyone.
- Naïve Everygirl: Played With as Anna's videos are marketed more toward adults looking back on their teenage years, but whenever Anna flashes back to her early adolescence, she plays a clueless and ingenious young girl with an innocent fashion consisting of braces, pigtails and colorful overalls complete with a Valley Girl lisp. In "3 Things I Wish I Knew Before Having Sex" recounting entering her sexual awakening only with the knowledge that she had from anime porn, reading her mother's romance novels, and the few images that were up online during the dialup internet era.
- Nested Story: In "The Creepiest Night of My Life", Anna recalls when she tried to become a "cocktail waitress", and the man she served grabbed her hand, and ordered her to tell him a story. The tale she delivers to him in the flashback has the same beginning as the video itself.
- Open-Minded Parent: When Anna admits to her mother that she masturbates, she expresses disgust with hearing Anna's description of how she does it, but doesn't actually tell her to stop doing it.
- Overcrank: Several of Anna's videos have slowed-down dialogue, such as "When It's Okay to Speak Up", in which Anna gives a slow-motion "The Reason You Suck" Speech to a boy rudely interrupting her "alone time".
- Parody Commercial: Anna made one for "Rape Prevention Leggings", camoflauge-patterned leggings promoted to render the wearer's bottom half, including her vagina, invisible to rapists.
- Polar Opposite Twins: Miss Earth and Miss 2059 stars Anna as beauty queen Victoria Young, twin sister of intergalactic competitor Arden Young (played by Anna in Miss Earth, and Nikki Soohoo in Miss 2059).
- Public Exposure: She's posed for a few nearly naked photoshoots, sometimes with Body Paint, and some fully nude ones (mostly covered by shadow).
- Seamless Scenery: She's quite fond of doing this in her videos, the most prominent examples being "When I've Wanted To Die" and the "Intervention" music video.
- Signing-Off Catchphrase: "Stay awesome, Gotham."
- Copyright issues with DC Comics temporarily made her change it to, "I'm Anna Akana. You stay awesome."
- After her cameo in Ant-Man, Anna remarked that she might have to change her catchphrase to something Marvel-related. On the spot, she came up with, "I'm Anna-Man. Stay Marvelous", which didn't stick.
- Her newest videos now omit a sign-off catchphrase entirely and instead have her talking about her video's sponsorships before a simple "bye".
- Skewed Priorities: "Pokémon GO Ruins Lives" demonstrates some of the dangers of placing catching Pokémon as the utmost importance.
- Speech Bubbles: Sometimes Anna uses these to emphasize the important parts of her videos. Other times, she uses them for a more comedic purpose, such as translating her cats' meows.
- Split-Screen Phone Call: "When You're Unfriended" has one in which the split disappears near the end of the scene, allowing the callers to share an actual hug.
- The Talk: Anna recalls in "3 Things I Wish I Knew Before Having Sex" that her mother's version consisted only of scare tactics warning her not to have sex before marriage.
- Theme Tune Roll Call: "I Have Six Cats" consists mostly of Anna naming and describing her cats.
- Toilet Seat Divorce: Inverted in "The Little Things", which ends with Anna proposing to her then-boyfriend/roommate Ray William Johnson, who always put the toilet seat down for her.
- Twin Switch: Anna admits in "The Twin Fantasy" that she used to fantasize about pulling this, even though she doesn't have a twin sister.
- Unusual Euphemism: "Am I An Adult Yet" uses "zigazig ah", a phrase from the Spice Girls song "Wannabe", as a euphemism for "penis".
- Vocal Evolution: When Anna impersonated her Filipina mother in 2012's "Appreciate Art (TV is Awesome)", she didn't bother with the accent. In 2018's "3 Things I Wish I Knew Before Having Sex", Anna impersonates her mom with convincing Filipina inflections.
- Vanity Plate: Anna has experimented with various idents over the years.
- What the Hell Is That Accent?: More recently, Anna ends her video advertising the sponsor of her video while speaking in another accent. It isn't uncommon for someone to complain about her accent. Although there was one interesting example where some said her Japanese accent didn't sound very Japanese and she did it again in a Japanese school girl outfit.
