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In 2015, she launched a clothing line called Ghost & Stars. She is the author of So Much I Want to Tell You: Letters to My Little Sister (2017), in which she describes her struggles and experiences from her sister's suicide to her celebrity status.[3]
Early and personal life
Akana's father was an officer in the United States Marine Corps, including during her childhood.[4] Her father moved every few years to a new state or country.[5] In a 2020 interview, she said that she loved Sailor Moon, Inuyasha, and Ranma ½, expressing her surprise that her dad would make them watch Tenchi Muyo! with him despite its "perverted" nature.[6] Her father stated that she loved shows like The Powerpuff Girls, animation in general, and anime, the latter especially because she spent "four years growing up in Japan".
On February 14, 2007, Akana's younger sister, Kristina, died by suicide aged 13.[7] Several months after, Akana watched Margaret Cho perform on a Comedy Central special and laughed for the first time since her sister's death. She began to see laughter as a means of trying to move on with her life and decided to seriously pursue comedy.[8] Akana has been vocal about her sister's suicide and is a strong advocate for suicide prevention. In 2013, Akana uploaded a YouTube video, "please don't kill yourself", in which she explains how it felt for her to have a family member die by suicide.[9] In that same year, she released a book Surviving Suicide which contains her journal entries from the two years after her sister's death.[10]
In 2019, she stated that she had undergone an abortion when she was twenty and felt it was one of the best decisions she had ever made.[12] She later presented her story as a movie for YouTube titled "Take Your Birth Control".[13]
Akana is of Japanese, Filipino, Hawaiian, Spanish, French, Irish, German, and English descent.[14][15]
Career
Akana first started performing comedy at age 19 but switched to YouTube video performances in 2011 after experiencing panic attacks and anxiety before going on stage.[8] She later resumed performing stand-up onstage. During this time she went under the stage name "Anna Math" (a play on the stereotype of Asians being smart, specifically good at math) and performed at various venues across California. She first struck online recognition with a semi-popular internet video on Funny or Die in 2010 of her mother discovering she masturbates as a teenager after finding condoms in the trashcan revealed to have been used to keep her vibrator clean. Around the same time, she made her acting debut in a The Sims 3 game trailer titled Confessions and as an uncredited background extra in 90210.
YouTube
Akana became a public figure after meeting YouTube celebrity Ray William Johnson at a CBS Annual Diversity Showcase event in January 2011. Johnson encouraged Akana to create her own YouTube channel to build an audience. Two months later, Akana started her own channel centered around a web mini-series titled 10 Second Traumas created with her then-friend Deirdre Devlin. The series consisted of 10-second short sketches related to the women's struggles in Los Angeles, usually pertaining to their sex lives. 10 Second Traumas was also done in affiliation with FMyLife and Funny or Die. It gained mild traction but did not blow up until Ray William Johnson liked the videos in his public channel feed and starred in the sketches himself before Akana and Devlin started appearing in Ray's own videos. During this time Akana also posted the sketches as well as her standup hours on a predecessor channel called 'bicuriousears' (made in 2008).
With the encouragement of Ray William Johnson to start her own channel after accumulating enough recognition from the 10 Second Traumas series and her roles in Katy Perry's "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)" music video and MTV's Awkward, Akana created her current YouTube channel in August 2011 and garnered an algorithm for her collaborations with Johnson. Originally uploading sketches and vlogs from her phone, Akana began making comedic life advice videos featuring prop guns and use of cloning to convey cutaways related to her storytelling. She was a huge fan of Batman and adopted the sign-off catchphrase "Stay awesome Gotham". Akana also began a music career by releasing the singles "Screw You", "Stoner Anna Versus Regular Anna", and "Against the Darkness".
Akana and Ray William Johnson began dating in 2011 but broke up in July 2014 after Akana felt a power dynamic in their relationship due to Johnson being richer and more successful.
In 2014, Akana formed a comedy music duo, Cat Benatar, with fellow comedian and writer Megan Rosati.[16] (The duo's name is wordplay for the pop singer Pat Benatar.)
Akana creates both comedy and documentary YouTube videos.[17] In 2014, Akana was listed on New Media Rockstars Top 100 Channels, ranked at #72.[18] In that same year, Akana decided to focus more on her skills as a director and attempted to make one short film a month.[19] While she did not reach her goal of twelve short films, she did make six short films which were received well by her YouTube audience. Akana starred in all of her short films and has starred in various other short films, and she has since continued to create short films.[20]
One of her short films, Miss Earth, was partially financed by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard's production company, New Form Digital. It was part of the 2014 Incubator, a series to showcase and produce original stories by YouTube Creators and filmmakers.[21][22][23]Miss Earth was later adapted into a web series, Miss 2059, and released on Verizon'sgo90 app in June 2016, with a second season released in late 2017.[24][25][26][27][28]
Akana executive produced and starred as the lead role in the original comedy-drama web television series Youth & Consequences, created by Jason Ubaldi and released in March 2018 on YouTube Red. She is also the host of the web series Crash Course Business: Entrepreneurship beginning in August 2019.[29]
On October 10, 2019, she was featured in a 30-minute YouTube documentary created by SoulPancake in collaboration with Funny or Die wherein a variety of comedians discuss mental health called Laughing Matters.[30]
Akana also hosts the podcast Explain Things to Me with fellow comedian Brad Gage where the two interview experts in various fields about their work.[36]
In 2021, Akana was announced as starring alongside Emma Roberts in the romantic comedy About Fate.
Other ventures
In 2015, Akana released a clothing line, Ghost & Stars, which features several cat-themed designs as well as formal dresses, leggings, and a variety of T-shirts.[37]
In 2017, Akana's book So Much I Want to Tell You: Letters to My Little Sister was published. The book describes Akana's struggles and experiences growing up and offers advice to her late sister.[3]
In 2019, Akana transitioned from comedy into music, and released her debut single, "Intervention". Its music video was directed by Auden Bui.[38][39] She has since released two more music videos, one for "Pretty Girls Don't Cry" in July 2019 and "Not My Proudest Moment" in August. She continued to release music videos for songs named "Alone Together", "Disappointment", and "Let Me Go". Her debut album, Casualty, came out in October 2019.[40] Her follow up project came out early 2021 called No Longer Yours.[41][42]
Critical reception
In reviewing her video, "Why Guys Like Asian Girls" (which references "Yellow Fever", a term for an Asian fetish),[43] Cate Matthews of The Huffington Post wrote: "A step-by-step takedown of 'yellow fever' or the desire to date Asian women often accompanied by bizarre, offensive attempts to do so, could start the healing. Luckily for us, YouTuber Anna Akana was more than up to the video-making task."[44]
In reviewing her video, "How to Deal with a Breakup", MTV wrote: "In this sketch, comedian Anna Akana envisions the flurry of activity inside the cranial command center of a newly single dumpee."[45]
Deadline referred to Akana as "a prolific online creator whose channel boasts 60 million views and 900,000 subscribers, and last year wrote and starred in her own narrative feature Riley Rewind, scoring a none-too-shabby 20M views online."[33]
^ abJarvey, Natalie (January 29, 2015). "AT&T Launches Scripted Series on Snapchat". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on June 13, 2015. Retrieved May 23, 2015. The series, SnapperHero, stars YouTubers Anna Akana, Freddie Wong, Harley Morenstein, and Jasmeet Singh alongside Snapchat celeb Shaun McBride, who also served as creative director.
^ abcde"Anna Akana (visual voices guide)". Behind The Voice Actors. Retrieved October 21, 2023. A green check mark indicates that a role has been confirmed using a screenshot (or collage of screenshots) of a title's list of voice actors and their respective characters found in its credits or other reliable sources of information.
