Kyubey (キュゥべえ?), also known as the Messenger of Magic (魔法の使者?), is a cat-like creature featured in Puella Magi Madoka☆Magica anime and manga series as well as several subsequent works.
Bio
Appearance
Kyubey is a small, cat-like creature. It has white fur and four ears, one pair representing the average cat and the other similar to those of a rabbit. It has red eyes and golden rings around its long ears. At the bottom of the ears, it appears that it is separated into three, along with a pink-white fade and three red ovals. These ears seem to be what turns the girls into Magical Girls, as seen when it makes Sayaka Miki's Soul Gem. It has a large tail and pointy ears, the inside of them being pinkish peach color. On its back is a hot pink egg-shaped oval that can flip open to remove Grief Seed fragments.
Personality
Despite appearing and sounding somewhat human, Kyubey is an Incubator and has no personal understanding of human emotion. Despite appearing as an individual, Kyubey and the rest of the Incubators do not seem to have a distinct sense of self. On the occasions where a Kyubey is killed, another will step out and continue to converse as if nothing had occurred.
The Incubators are an emotionless race, but seek to exploit the thermodynamics-violating emotions of the human race to produce energy and prevent the Heat Death of the Universe, the ultimate end of the universe itself. The fact that the system they use to harvest this power-- Magical girls and Witches-- would be considered horrendously evil by humans is inconsequential to the Incubators. They choose this method because it is the most expedient to their goals. No action they take is ultimately malicious, as they do not themselves experience or understand the emotions required to act in such a way. Everything about Kyubey, however, is implied to make it as appealing as possible to the Magical Girls, as well as emulating behaviors and 'emotions' for the same purpose.
This lack of understanding ultimately results in Kyubey being unable to predict or understand the actions of the Magical Girls or the results of those actions, despite them being obvious to the girls themselves.
Etymology
Kyubey's name comes from the word Incubator (インキュベーター?).Episode 08 Incubator comes from the Latin word "incubare" which means "to lie".[1]
Prior to the series' premiere, Urobuchi pointed out that Kyu (キュゥ?) came from the English word "cute" which was proven to be a lie.[2] Kyu however, matches Juubey's Juu, which mean "nine" and "ten" respectively.
Biography
Kyubey is a creature who makes contracts with young girls to turn them into "magical girls" so that they can fight witches. In this process, the girl makes a wish and Kyubey grants it, but in return, the girl's soul is put in a small gem, which is also the source of their magic. If destroyed, the magic will disappear and the girl will die. If it is corrupted with darkness from grief, the gem will turn into a grief seed and the girl will turn into a witch. This is the ultimate fate of all Magical girls.
Much like the rest of its race, Kyubey does not possess any human emotion. As seen in a later episode, Kyubey refers to magical girls' bodies as empty shells while explaining why Sayaka "died" when separated from her soul gem. This may also be why Homura Akemi got angry when Madoka Kaname threw it. Kyoko Sakura claims that it tricked and turned them into zombies, though it wasn't its intention. It believed that it was doing a good thing, seeing as it was convenient that they were invincible.
Despite its emotionless attitude, it apparently likes hot baths and human food, as seen in episode 2. It is also able to bleed, though it can reproduce its body and eat the old one. This body reproduction ability can be used whenever Kyubey's body is too damaged to be used or simply at an inconvenient state. (For example, is shown covered in bullet holes from being shot at.) It has an unlimited amount of these extra "bodies" that could be used, but it says that it would be more convenient to not use them so much.
Relationships
- Madoka Kaname: Madoka and Kyubey used to share a bond because Kyubey always saw a great potential in Madoka and wanted to make her a Magical Girl. As the story was unfolding, she hated him more and more even when she made the contract to become Ultimate Madoka.
- Sayaka Miki: Sayaka is very protective of Kyubey in the beginning and likes him a lot. However, after finding the truth about Soul Gems, Sayaka starts being aggressive towards him and has even come to a point to stab him.
- Mami Tomoe: Mami is very good friends with Kyubey, at least in most timelines as long as she doesn't know the dark secrets of being a Magical Girl. She takes good care of Kyubey and is very protective of him towards Homura.
- Homura Akemi: Homura dislikes Kyubey to no end. No matter the timeline, she will always attempt to kill him and prevent Kyubey to form contacts with Madoka and to a lesser degree with Sayaka. Kyubey usually comes to Homura whenever there is something new he has discovered or wants to talk to someone aside of Madoka.
- Iroha Tamaki: Like many other Magical Girls, Iroha, prior to finding out the secrets of a Magical Girl's life, used to be good acquaintances with Kyubey, contacting each other on a daily basis. Though after Iroha found out the dark secrets of a Magical Girl and seeing Kuroe transforming into a Witch, she despises Kyubey endlessly, to the point that she even shot him.
- Touka Satomi: It is described by many characters that Touka and Kyubey are really alike in terms of ideology. Though Touka does despise Incubator like everyone else because she knows the secrets of a Magical Girl's life.
Powers and Abilities
Kyubey has a wide variety of magical abilities which he uses in his mission to counteract entropy.
- Telepathic communication - Kyubey communicates with Puella Magi and potential Puella Magi through telepathic communication, as opposed to verbal. Exposure to this apparently enables Puella Magi and potential Puella Magi to also communicate telepathically amongst each other when Kyubey is nearby.
- Invisibility - Kyubey is invisible to everyone, except for Puella Magi and candidates. Normal humans do not seem to notice his presence at all, just as he never communicates with them.
- Teleportation - Kyubey has been evidenced to cross long distances in impossibly short time spans, the method for which is yet unknown, but can be assumed to be teleportation. In episode 10, he also fades into reality above Homura, which may be the visible manifestation of him teleporting.
- Wish granting - Kyubey can grant the wishes of young girls, in the same manner a Genie would. Unlike most genies, Kyubey does his best to grant the wishes accurately, without twisting the wording, and wishes that end up backfiring do so for factors entirely beyond the Incubator's control. Kyubey only allocates one wish per contract. It appears that Kyubey can only grant the wishes of others, since he has never been seen using his reality-warping power to his own ends. Wishes are fueled via the magical potential of the new Puella Magi. Because of this, while Kyubey can grant almost any regular wish, particularly high-impact wishes cannot be granted for most girls.
- Energy conversion/collection - Kyubey is able to collect energy from witch transformation and battles through unseen means. In Timeline 6, he collects it when magical girls drop grief seeds into a hatch-like "mouth" that opens in the red oval on his back. How he is able to transport this energy also remains a mystery.
- Soul Gem Creation - Kyubey is capable of rending young girls' souls from their bodies and placing them within small egg-shaped gemstones called soul gems. This makes the newly formed Puella Magi capable of transformation into their "magical girl form", granting increased agility, strength, endurance, pain threshold, conjuring of magical weaponry and other magical abilities. Although this process is invaluable to allow the girls to fight without being overwhelmed by pain, Kyubey tries to avoid mentioning fact that it involves separation of soul from body, as it tends to be traumatic to the Puella Magi. It is unknown whether Kyubey can create a Soul Gem at will, or whether a contract must first be formed.
- Replication - After being killed, another identical Kyubey will appear nearby and consume the remains of his predecessor if possible. This duplicate appears to retain most, if not all the knowledge of the last one. This may suggest a "hive mind" or cloning process. It has been stated that Kyubey "instantaneously generates a replacement body out of the surrounding mana". The ability may reference the saying "cats have nine lives", as Kyubey resembles a cat.
- Soul Gem Stimulation - As seen in episode 7, Kyubey can create impulses of certain feelings on a soul gem simply by touching it. In Sayaka's case, he emulates a pike (probably mimicking Kyoko's) impaling Sayaka's stomach.
- Soul Gem Purification - Jubey, another Incubator, has been shown in the spinoff comics to be able to purify Soul Gems. Kyubey likely has the same ability.
- Advanced magical technology - The Incubators are stated to be a highly advanced alien race. They are obviously capable of space travel. The Inhibition Field seen in Rebellion movie is an example of their technology. Since they are not overly hostile to humanity and do not need to defend themselves if attacked, preferring to regenerate in a new body, it is unknown whether the Incubators dispose of any weaponry or offensive magic.
Etymology
- The spelling of Kyubey's name in Japanese is peculiar. It uses a mixture of hiragana and katakana, and the long u sound in "Kyu" is marked with a small u (ゥ) instead of a large u (ウ) or dash (ー). Both features are fairly uncommon and non-standard.
- People still argue as to how to write his name. Is it Kyubey or Kyuubey? His name is written in both Hiragana and Katakana as キュ(kyu)ゥ(u)べ(be)え(e), so Kyuubee or Kyuubey would be most accurate as a romanization. On the other hand, the fifth commercial has his name romanized as "Kyubey", which resulted in controversy. However, the lack of the extra u is probably just a use of the modified Hepburn system, which never accounts for extended vowels.
- Gen Urobuchi joked that the "Kyu" comes from the katakana of the English word Cute so it could also be Cubey. However, episode 8 suggests that his name actually comes from the word 'Incubator', which would be romanized as 'inkyubeetaa.' In the same episode, it is revealed that he has multiple replacements.
- Some fans of 2ch have taken to assigning the kanji 「九兵衛」 (Kyūbē, lit. nine protector soldiers or nine warriors in defense) to his name, speculating that like Doraemon (whose name can be written as 「銅鑼衛門」), Kyubey's naming might have been inspired by old Samurai dramas.
- Kyubey's name's spelling is supposed to be Kyuubey by Puella Magi Kazumi Magica logic. There is another Incubator called Juubey (which is "Juu" (ten) + bey). Thus, Kyuubey is "Kyuu" (nine) + bey. This also means that there are at least ten Incubators in the Puella Magi world.
- 'QB' is short for 'Kyubey' in Niconico Douga. This name is also common on 2chan.
Trivia
- Kyubey's appearance and name share an affinity with Kyuubi, which are mythical Japanese foxes with nine tails. In folklore, Kyuubi is known to possess men and have them do the Kyuubi's bidding, a trait identical to Kyubey's desire to collect energy from Magical Girls.
Kyubey throughout the world and eras is known with various other names such as White God, Lord Cubius, White Angel.
- Kyubey is fond of human food and hot baths.Episode 02
- Pointed out by Kyubey in the second drama CD and Gen Urobuchi in the Blu-ray audio commentary, Kyubey is genderless. However, official translated sources adress Kyubey as a male.
- According to NewType April 2011 issue, Shinbo wanted to make Kyubey look cute, but the staff ended up making Kyubey look scary.
Customs
- Kyubey always uses boku (僕) as a first-person pronoun, this being typical for boys and young males. When addressing the girls, he always uses kimi (君), which, in modern Japanese, is usually used when addressing people of the same or lower social status, usually by male speakers. He also never uses honorifics when referring to people by their names. This is uncommon in real life, especially when referring to people present around. He also always uses plain (as opposed to polite) verb forms, which is normally used only in close relationships. While he does not say anything specifically to insult the girls, these patterns of speech (especially calling by full name without honorifics) can be considered rude and may indicate he doesn't respect the girls and considers himself clearly above them in the social ladder.
- This may also be used to give a "foreign" touch to Kyubey's speech, as this pattern emulates the typical way of speaking in other languages, such as English.
- It can also be interpreted as Kyubey treating personal names just as tags for identifying individuals, similar to a social security number.
- Boku can be used by girls, too, but this is uncommon in real life. In manga, anime and alike, this is often employed for girls exhibiting "boyish" personality traits. Such girls are called boku-kko (僕っ子).
- Given how many times Kyubey says he just doesn't understand humans, it might be he doesn't understand the need to be polite. That aside, since he isn't even human, it's also possible that nobody ever bothered correcting him. You can't expect magical familiars to abide to the same rules. This may be similar interpretation above one. It is possible. He however could use more general and short expression, last name (or family name is more formal) without honorifics, which are identical enough if he just doesn't need to be polite. I feel his social advantage (upper stage of social layer) as incubator against incubating eggs from his choice.
Entropy
- Kyubey claims that he turns girls into magical girls (and thus eventually into witches) to keep a surplus of usable energy in the universe. He explains that through entropy, energy is gradually lost and the energy formed by the emotions of magical girls restocks that energy.
- It's a bit more complex than that. Entropy dictates that in a closed universe, producing energy always costs more than it produces. Common examples of this include the fact it takes dozens of years to grow a tree which will in turn grow apples, but that the total of apples that tree will produce in its lifetime will give less energy than it took to grow the tree itself. In this end this means that all energy is destined to eventually run out, even if it's at a pace our human minds can't conceive. Emotions however aren't bound by entropy; to Kyubey's species, humans are basically walking emotion dispensers and can produce hundreds to thousands of times more emotional energy in their lifetimes than it takes to give birth to them. Since they themselves don't have emotions, Kyubey's species has decided to use humans and to convert their emotions into energy they then, presumably, pump into the cosmos somewhere to give entropy the middle finger. Madoka's transformation into a witch is said to be able to produce so much energy that they "collect even more energy than their quota", meaning that her transformation has enough juice to save the entire universe.
- Small quibble: technically, energy is never lost. It is only made unusable.
- The quota statement was likely just that he got more energy from Earth than he was assigned to (or what was expected to be extracted). You'd require an infinite amount of energy to permanently stave off the heat death of the universe after all.
- It is also possible that transforming a girl into a witch converts heat to energy, and that Kyubey's explanation was simplified.
- For more information about energy and thermodynamics in general, see Thermodynamics.
- Freud also has a concept, an extension of his Pleasure Principle, that he terms 'entropy', which he defines as a state of reduced or absent tensions that are caused by differentiation (the recognition of 'separateness' of self from others and the world, etc.). Entropic pull refers to the desire to return to that state. So, the use of the term 'entropy' here could also be subtly implying the idea that the girls eventually return to the undifferentiated state of the universe's energy. For more information, please see Rosemary Jackson's "Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion".
Methods
- In Episode 9 Kyubey states to Madoka that his race is incapable of producing emotions, that they are driven by logic and utilitarian beliefs. Their lack of emotions makes it difficult for them to harness their own emotional energy to offset entropy, so it is for this reason that they sought the solution outside of their own galaxy. However, in Episode 11 Kyubey reveals to Madoka that while this statement is true on the majority of their race, there have been extreme rare cases of those capable of expressing emotions, but because this is a very rare phenomenon they are considered to be mentally ill.
- Spa Weekly! Article: Kyubey's utilitarianism prioritizes the continuation of the whole universe and takes precedence over the happenings of individual entities. Kyubey's actions are not based on ignorance since he is aware of the cause-and-effect law of nature, he consciously decides that the law is immutable and conveniently uses it to exploit the Puella Magi system. Apparently this makes Kyubey a Bad Buddhist. "If you meet Kyubey on the road, kill it with fire."
- Gen Urobuchi comments in the Audio Commentary for Episode 12 that (the) Kyubey's presence is world wide (WWQB). This can be interpreted as that multiple Kyubeys are being used to contract and reduce entropy; and are not limited to just using one single incubator at a time. If all Kyubeys are coordinating with each other as a global network in their efforts to contract and collect despair energy, it would make their labor process and collection very efficient.
Character inspiration and design
- According to the Blu-Ray Episode 2 voice commentary, Kyubey was not based on any animal, just the concept of a "small mahou shoujo animal".
- When asked what animals were used as the basis for Kyubey's design, Ume Aoki was very cryptic because of spoilers. The only clue she gives is "coil". According to the drama CD interpreter, it was possible that this hinted Kyubey's design is based on the uterus. Supporters of this theory believed Kyubey's ears look like fallopian tubes and that this inspiration might connect to his name "incubator". However, this interpretation was proven wrong in the commentary for episode 8, where Chiwa Saito explained that the truth is that the marking on Kyubey's back is intended to resemble an egg, which still connects to his name "Incubator".
- According to Shinbo, he had just finished reading Michael Sandel's book, and he describes Kyubey as a Michael Sandel-esque character (this is regarding with the book's section on Utilitarianism).
- During the Sakura-Con 2012 panel interview, Urobuchi explains that Kyubey is not evil, it is his lack of human feelings that makes him scary. Urobuchi compares Kyubey to H.P. Lovecraft's eldritch creatures, in that both are uninterested in humans.
Voicework
- In an interview with NewType, Shinbo was thinking of giving lip-synching to Kyubey in the new world but Yukihiro Miyamoto said no since fundamentally Kyubey remains the same creature as before, only interested in energy efficiency, so he remains unchanged. Also in the interview it's stated Kyubey doesn't move his mouth to speak because he is communicating by telepathy. It also enhances the creepy factor.
- Prior to broadcasting, no one told the seiyuu (specially Emiri Kato) that Kyubey's mouth doesnt move, so she tried to properly lip-synch her lines. When they saw the first episode on the air, the seiyuu were shocked that they were tricked.
- Aoi Yuuki (Madoka), Chiwa Saito (Homura), and Kaori Mizuhashi (Mami) tried for the role of Kyubey. Saito was told her Kyubey sounded too stupid, and in Yuuki's part hers sounded too naive and that she was too cute for it (no surprise there). They all found the role for Kyubey to be too difficult for them. They also found the Kyubey character to be too smart for them.
- In the Audio Commentary for Episode 9, before reading the script or knowing the nature of the show, Emiri Kato (VA of Kyubey) was very happy that she was voicing a cute animal character, though she was horrified when she found out Kyubey's true nature.