|
"Mature Content Warning!" |
| “ | I want you to make contracts with me and become magical girls! | „ |
| ~ Kyubey |
Kyubey is the main antagonist of the anime and manga series Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
Kyubey is a small, cute alien creature that forms contracts with girls to create a source of good to fight against the seemingly supernatural manifestation of negative emotions called witches by granting them any one wish in exchange. However, Kyubey betrays their trust by leaving out a few large details about the true nature of their contract with him, and is unable to earn it back when telling them his true purpose. He is the arch-nemesis of Madoka Kaname and Homura Akemi.
He is voiced by Emiri Katō in Japanese and by Cassandra Lee Morris in English.
His Evil Ranking[]
What Makes Him Heinous?[]
In General[]
- Kyubey tricks girls into making a deal to fight witches as magical girls in exchange for any one wish, not telling them that magical girls are doomed to become witches and all witches were once magical girls. The only reason magical girls become witches is because Kyubey steals their soul without their knowing and seals it into something called a Soul Gem, which easily becomes tainted by negative emotions and forces them to transform into witches. Kyubey has the power to stop this transformation, but he doesn’t. He is responsible for all the conflict in the series.
- Kyubey completely lacks empathy, continuing to create contracts with magical girls despite knowing that this usually ruins people's lives, and is more than just OK with having despair event horizons turning them into witches against their will that make the world worse for everyone and kill magical girls.
- He caused Mitakihara, the city the series takes place in, to be populated by witches, which are amoral entities that feed off of negative emotions and supernaturally cause many crimes and suicides.
- His species as a whole have spread witches across the entire globe, but Kyubey is the only one of his species seen in the plot, and he stands out among his species anyways for reasons mentioned below.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica[]
- His deceit led Madoka to die. This forced Homura to make a deal with Kyubey to go back in time to be able to save her, failing countless times due to Walpurgisnacht, who Kyubey may have been responsible for but has no intention of stopping regardless, and Kriemhild Gretchen, who Kyubey is responsible for, the latter of which would go on to destroy the world, which Kyubey is OK with.
- He is responsible for turning several characters into villains.
- His actions in making Madoka into a magical girl and giving Homura the ability to go back in time to stop a powerful witch (that Kyubey may or may not have been responsible for making but has no intention of stopping regardless) from killing her but not the strength demoralized Homura and gradually turned her love into an obsession caused by repeated failure and alienation (Madoka was the only girl to treat Homura with kindness in the timelines after she had grown aloof). Having gone unrewarded for her heroism for so long, she cannot accept Madoka's heroic sacrifice to undo what Kyubey had done, because it meant Homura would lose who she fought so hard to protect from Kyubey, causing Homura to go insane and become a villain by proxy.
- Introducing himself to Kyoko, who wanted people to take his father's preachings seriously because they were poor and he was becoming depressed over being treated as a heretic, seemed like a good thing at first, but when her father found out she had used magic to get everyone to treat him better, he had a mental breakdown and killed her family, including himself. After this tragedy, Kyoko was sentenced to hunt witches for life to prevent her Soul Gem from becoming corupted and turning into a witch. Subjecting Kyoko to this cruel fate is what turned her into a (ultimately redeemable) villain.
- Also played a direct role in ruining Sayaka's life. Learning she had no soul meant she could not be with the boy she made a deal with Kyubey in order to save. This, her obsession with justice, and not being able to escape the fact that magical girls are doomed to become witches accelerated her transformation into a witch, murdering two people right before her transformation for talking down on women. Homura advising Sayaka not to make a deal with Kyubey is a major reason why Sayaka was a jerk to Homura, so Kyubey is a bond destroyer as well, as they were friends in previous timelines, and only drifted apart because of his manipulations.
- Caused Mami in one of the timelines to have a mental breakdown and kill Sayaka and Kyoko immediately after finding out that magical girls are doomed to become witches.
- He misled Kyoko into believing Sayaka could be saved after turning into a witch, which he is responsible for, tricking her into committing a heroic sacrifice just so Homura would be the only one left to fight Walpurgisnacht, ruining her plan to team up with Kyoko to keep Madoka safe, knowing that this would force Madoka to make a deal with him either for her well-being or for Homura's.
- Kyubey wants to make Madoka a magical girl more than anyone else because of her immense potential, even knowing that her witch form, Kriemhild Gretchen, is powerful enough to destroy the Earth in 10 days. He said that as it was happening in front of his and Homura's very eyes in the fourth timeline. This also happened in the second timeline. Madoka prevents this from happening in the timeline that most of the anime takes place in, but Kyubey manages to do continue doing heinous things after a cooling-off period.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Rebellion[]
- When Madoka rewrites reality so that witches don’t have to exist, both saving Earth from being destroyed by her witch form and making magical girls around the world able to die peacefully, Kyubey attempts to undo this in the next reality after Homura told her about her past life, callously not caring that she was telling him about how tragic her life was.
- For both of the above two reasons, even for his species, he stands out.
- Even after Madoka makes her wish, he continues to make deals, which he was harvesting energy, albeit at a slower pace.
- Although he ended up being enslaved by a demonic Homura Akemi, it's played for a poetic karmic satisfaction, as he is the one who exploited multiple magical girls (including Homura) in the first place, and Homura is returning the favor by exploiting himself. (This only occurs in the Rebellion movie. In the original anime, he avoids this)
What Makes Him Inconsistent?[]
- Incubators are a hive mind species that cannot act against their desire to prolong the life of the universe because they are a purely logical species with no understanding of emotion. According to Kyubey, emotion is treated as a rare mental illness by his species. This means that he is motivated by what he considers right and wrong, preventing Kyubey from being PE or NPE due to not having a proper moral agency and being a well-intentioned extremist.
- We don’t know how imminent the heat death of the universe is in the Puella Magi universe, so it’s possible that Kyubey and the rest of his species could be saving the universe through their actions, especially since their species has the capability of sensing entropy levels and make a combined effort to prevent the universe from reaching a state of maximum entropy. This is still ambiguous however, since Kyubey wanted to screw the system Madoka has created simply because he thought he didn't produce enough energy despite having no proof of that with the implication he wanted to take control of Madoka entirely and has no problem of running like a coward when Akemi Homura become more powerful than him despite being an entity capable of destroying the universe.
Trivia[]
- He is the one of two Madoka Magica characters, so far, to be Inconsistently Heinous, along with his archenemy Homura Akemi.
External Links[]
- Kyubey on the Villains Wiki
- Kyubey on the Wikipedia
- Kyubey on the wiki.puella-magi.net
- Kyubey on the Ultimate Evil Wiki
- Kyubey on the Entertainingly Detestable Wiki