Kyubey

• 1. Introduction

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  Kyubey first appears in the 2011 anime series Puella Magi Madoka Magica as something that looks like a small, white, cat-like creature with enormous eyes and a cheerful disposition. It offers girls a deal: any wish they want, granted instantly, in exchange for becoming a magical girl and fighting witches. It sounds almost generous. The problem is what Kyubey leaves out.

  What are the Incubators, and what do they actually want from these girls? Why does a creature that claims to feel nothing end up as one of the most memorable villains in modern anime? And what happens when a plan billions of years in the making finally falls apart? Those are the questions Kyubey's story forces you to sit with.

• 2. Design and Intent

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  Gen Urobuchi created and wrote Kyubey with a specific moral dissonance in mind. He wanted the character to feel genuinely alien, not simply wicked. Urobuchi drew a direct comparison to the monsters found in H. P. Lovecraft's horror fiction, and he described Kyubey this way: "He is not evil, it is his lack of feelings that make him scary."

  Producer Atsuhiro Iwakami described the collision of sweetness and menace as the central theme of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and called Kyubey an epitome of that theme. One of Urobuchi's explicit goals was to dramatize the ethical gap between Kyubey's worldview and the young girls who encounter the creature. A scene where Kyubey eats their own corpse to recycle energy was written deliberately to illustrate that gap. It is not played as horror in the conventional sense. Kyubey treats it as routine, which is precisely what makes it disturbing.

• 3. The Contract and Its Costs

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  Kyubey is a sexless extraterrestrial being who passes as a familiar, visible only to magical girls and those with magical potential. When a girl agrees to a contract, Kyubey extracts her soul and places it inside a soul gem, then rebuilds her body into a more resilient shell suited for fighting witches. None of this is explained beforehand.

  Kyubey belongs to a hive-minded race called the Incubators, who eat their dead and seamlessly adopt the predecessor's identity. The race evaluated countless species across the universe before settling on humans, and specifically on pubescent and prepubescent girls, because these subjects produce the highest yield of emotional energy. That energy reaches its peak when a magical girl's soul gem transforms into a grief seed, a process that also produces a witch. The witches the girls are sent to fight are, in fact, former magical girls.

  Kyubey acknowledges that members of the Incubator race who do experience emotions are considered abnormal. The creature also claims the Magi-Witch system is responsible for the major turning points in human civilization, an assertion Kyubey states directly but does not fully elaborate on. According to the source, there is still much about the universe Kyubey has not spoken of, even after answering every question put to them.

• 4. The Entropy Imperative

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  The Incubators developed a technology that converts emotions into usable energy. Their stated purpose is to counter entropy and prevent the heat death of the universe, a physical inevitability they treat as an engineering problem requiring a very long-running solution.

  Kyubey characterizes their actions as utilitarian rather than cruel, and maintains that the Incubators have little understanding of mortality or the value of life. The creature is also a skilled manipulator who withholds key information and reveals the truth only when directly asked. The removal of the soul from a girl's body during contract formation, for instance, is not disclosed until after its consequences become undeniable.

  In the 2013 sequel The Rebellion Story, Kyubey attempts to restore the old witch system because the Incubators have been harvesting less energy under the new arrangement. Their strategy involves sealing Homura outside the Law of Circles to force Madoka back into the physical world. The plan collapses when Homura takes Madoka's powers for herself and turns the Incubators into servants forced to absorb the curses of the new world. In the film's final moments, Kyubey is shown on the ground, shivering and mentally scarred.

• 5. Across Other Stories

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  In the side-story manga Puella Magi Kazumi Magica, Kyubey serves as the contractor for all the magical girls in Asanaru City, including a group called the Pleiades Saints. When the Pleiades learned the truth about magical girls, they took one of Kyubey's corpses and used it to build a modified version called Jubey, designed to absorb darkness from soul gems rather than harvest it.

  To protect other girls in the city, a member of the Pleiades named Umika cast a spell that made Kyubey invisible to everyone else and rewrote the group's own memories so they believed they had contracted with Jubey instead. The attempt to break the cycle from within ultimately fails. Jubey turns out to be a failure, and the workaround collapses.

  Merchandise built around the character spans a wide range, including a nendoroid figure produced by Good Smile Company, a plush doll, a hugging pillow, and a product called the QB Sofa and Bath Set.

• 6. Reception and Legacy

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  Kyubey won the 1st Newtype Anime Awards for Best Mascot Character in 2011, then placed third in 2013 and fifth in 2014. In 2011, the character also took the Bronze Prize at the Net Buzzword awards for a popular catchphrase. The Nikkan Sports newspaper gave Kyubey the 1st Nikkan Anime Grand Prix's Worst Dark Character award. The voice actress Emiri Kato won the 6th Seiyu Awards for Best Supporting Actress in 2012 for her portrayal.

  In December 2015, a MyNavi Student poll included Kyubey among anime's most despicable villains, while also voting the character third cutest mascot. Paste magazine listed Kyubey as the eighth-greatest anime villain. Anime News Network's Lynzee Loveridge ranked Kyubey third on a list of eight shocking betrayals for deceiving the magical girls. Comic Book Resources ranked Kyubey first on a list of the twenty strongest alien species in anime, with writer Ashley Glenn calling the character "perhaps one of the most powerful aliens out there."

  Andy Hanley of UK Anime Network initially called Kyubey an "odd cat-like figure." Gabriella Ekens of Anime News Network characterized the character as "the alien embodiment of utilitarian logic." A review from THEM Anime Reviews noted that Emiri Kato's voice work conveyed "the relentless, strange rationality, what one might call the alien logic, that drives him." EJ Rivera, a marketing specialist for Aniplex of America, said in 2012 that "Fans love to hate him."

  One critical assessment described Kyubey as a screenwriting accomplishment in itself, noting that the character's worldview is so fully realized that it becomes difficult not to ironically empathize with how Kyubey sees things. Game Revolution included the character on their list of greatest anime betrayals ever.