Jubey

Jubey
Japanese Name	ジュゥべぇ (Jubey)

"Playtime is over." - Jubey, Chapter 4.

Jubey (ジュゥべぇ, Juubee) is a character in Puella Magi Kazumi Magica: The Innocent Malice.

Described as a fairy (妖精, yōsei), but very likely an Incubator, he was the Pleiades Saints's contractor. He is particularly notable for being able to clean their Soul Gems on his own, relieving the girls of the need to compete for Grief Seeds.

Chapter 19 reveals that the Jubey in the story is not a real Incubator. He is a "Subordinated (Juu-zoku-su-ru) Incubator" created by Niko Kanna using one of the cast-off bodies of Kyubey.

Personality

While he is an Incubator, and should therefore be emotionless, he has displayed more emotional behavior in a few panels than his colleague has in the entire anime. He displays annoyance/embarrassment when violently hugged by Satomi, and disgust when he is fed Evil Nuts instead of Grief Seeds. Furthermore, he dislikes being called Bey-chan.

Most importantly, he appears to be able to understand the concept of deception: he says he 'doesn't know' why Soul Gems turn into Grief Seeds, and claims it only happens 'sometimes.' He also appears to look sad when he tells Kazumi that restoring a Grief Seed to Soul Gem is impossible. Also, when describing the difference between Niko and Kazumi's magic, he starts to call Kazumi's power is 'sacrilege' but then corrects himself saying instead 'destruction.' He has also been shown outright lying to Kazumi, something Kyubey never does. While he behaves in a more usual mascot fashion around the Pleiades, he has been shown looking down on them with an evil grin, as well as when describing the details about The Freezer (which he'd have no reason to do so if he was simply play acting emotions).

Another thing that strangely separates him from his business partner is that while Kyubey stays completely neutral when magical girls turn on each other, Jubey openly speaks with Kazumi and Niko on the best strategy to neutralize the Soujous, and appears worried when Kazumi is clearly outmatched by them alone. This grows even more bizarre when if he had done nothing or given them bad advice leading their deaths or simply refused to purify their Soul Gems, which would have eliminated them and their 'cheating' of the magical girl system with The Freezer. His actions seem contradictory to his function of harvesting emotions. This was explained in Chapter 21, that Jubey is actually a reprogrammed Incubator made to be loyal to the Pleiades and circumvent the Magical Girl system.

History

This section may contain major spoilers for the Kazumi Magica manga!

Please refrain from reading if you haven't read the latest chapter yet.

Jubey cleaning house, literally.

Jubey has so far only appeared in Kazumi Magica.

He first appears after the Pleiades rescue Umika and Kaoru from an escaped witch, watching their celebration from a rooftop alongside Kyubey. He jumps down and greets the girls, much to Kazumi's surprise. Satomi introduces him as the fairy who made contracts with the team. He proceeds to absorb the darkness inside the girls' Soul Gems by spinning in the air, and eats the Grief Seed they collected from the witch. When asked to dispose of Evil Nuts, however, he spits them out in disgust and says that they're not real Grief Seeds. Soon after, he and the Pleiades are attacked by Yuuri.

Jubey returns to Umika's house with the Pleiades, and sleeps with Kazumi's cat Toto as they discuss Yuuri's attack. He accompanies them to Asunaro Dome to meet with Yuuri, and at Saki's behest, attempts to purify her Soul Gem as the Pleiades fight with her. However, Yuuri shoots him in mid-spin and becomes a witch. He gets up shortly after, still bleeding, and explains what has happened to Kazumi. Interestingly, he claims that he doesn't know why the transformation from a magical girl into a witch happens, and that it only happens "sometimes".

Some time after the events of that night, Jubey accompanies Niko and Kazumi on a "witch hunt" to the Lavieland Amusement Park. He remains with them during Niko's fight with Ayase Souju, and answers several of their questions over the course of the battle. When Kazumi asks him what happens when a girl's Soul Gem is lost, he replies that she loses her magic and may even die "depending on the situation". He also identifies Kazumi's magic as "sacrilege", but then seems to correct himself and says it's "destruction". Finally, he helps Kazumi and Niko launch a synchronized counterattack against Ayase by biting their hands.

Ayase is defeated, and Niko unexpectedly becomes a witch; however, another Niko appears, who he identifies as the "spare" created by her contract. Jubey accompanies the Pleiades to the Freezer, where he explains to Kazumi the connection between a girl's Soul Gem and her body. Umika then restores Kazumi's memories with magic, triggering a flashback that Jubey features in.

In the flashback, a Kyubey-esque silhouette appears alongside Kazumi as she saves the Pleiades Saints from a witch. Stepping forward, it is revealed to be Jubey, who says that he is the one who made a contract with Kazumi. Kazumi explains that she met Jubey one day after being rescued from a witch by Mami Tomoe. He offered her a contract, which she used to speak to her ailing grandmother again. Somewhat oddly, Jubey is seen right next to Mami as she speaks to Kazumi, and his tone of voice more closely resembles Kyubey's than his own.

Jubey with Mami Tomoe, when he first spots Kazumi.

Jubey then makes contracts with the six Pleiades Saints, and offers them advice as they fight witches for some time. One night, he hurriedly calls the Pleiades out to Asunaro Dome, where they see Yuuri Asuka becoming a witch. They demand that he tell them what happened, and he explains the Incubators' goal of harvesting energy from witches. Umika suddenly headbutts him and fires lasers into his eyes. He falls to the ground, speaking in a different tone of voice and expressing confusion. Umika explains that she rewrote Jubey's memories and prevented him from making further contracts.

The story then returns to the present. Jubey is next seen on a rooftop with Niko, watching from afar as Satomi reveals to Kazumi that she is Michiru Kazusa's clone and her memories are fake. He presumably remains with the Pleiades as Kazumi flees, and is next seen with them as they receive telepathic instructions from her to meet her at the Freezer.

At the Freezer, the Pleiades speak with Kazumi, and prepare to kill her at her request as she becomes a witch. After she dies, however, her body suddenly turns into a clone of Niko, who steps out with the real Kazumi safely in tow. This Niko suddenly turns on the group, forcing Saki to become a witch with an Evil Nut and killing Mirai in the process. She reveals herself as Kanna Hijiri link, and attacks the Pleiades with several witches. Strangely, Jubey appears in her flashback, making a contract with her after his supposed brainwashing.

Having previously stayed at a safe distance, Jubey then leaps forward to purify Kazumi's dangerously-corrupted Gem. However, he falls to the ground midway through and begins to break into pieces. He himself does not know what is going on, and says "Ciao" to Kazumi one last time, before vanishing and leaving a pair of broken Grief Seeds behind. Kyubey, watching from afar, comments that "your 'Jubey' was incomplete".

As her Gem is also beginning to break open, Umika's magic begins to fail. A huge magic circle of hers, floating over the city, shatters, and Kyubey appears just as she and Kaoru shout for him to reveal himself.

It is revealed that, as the Pleiades were creating the Freezer and planning to revive Michiru, Niko created an artifical Incubator with her magic. Having studied the mechanics of Grief Seeds, she incorporated their purification capabilities into this Incubator, as well as making it obey the Pleiades. She dubbed it a "Dependent-Version Incubator", and nicknamed it "Jubey". Umika then cast a wide-scale spell over all of Asunaro City as part of their plan. This spell made it impossible for anyone there to perceive regular Kyubey-type Incubators, edited their existing memories of them to include Jubey instead, and suppressed their memories of how to purify Soul Gems without using Jubey.

Powers, Weapons & Abilities

This section may contain major spoilers for the anime!

Please refrain from reading if you haven't watched Episode 8 yet.

As an Incubator, he wields the power to grant wishes through contracts and, by removing one's soul and giving it a physical form as a Soul Gem, give a magical girl their powers. He also disposes of Grief Seeds by eating them. It is assumed he possesses other powers displayed by his "cousin", Kyubey, such as possessing multiple bodies and being able to show memories inside other's minds.

He has, however, shown an ability of his own, unseen before: the power to clean a magical girl's Soul Gem on his own, without requiring the use of a Grief Seed.

Chapter 12 shows that, despite prior assumptions, Jubey's ability to make new contracts was removed by Umika. However, in Chapter 18, he is able to make a contract with Kanna Hijiri after this supposedly happened.

Chapter 21 reveals that Jubey never actually had the ability to make contracts, as he was created by Niko Kanna. All instances of him in flashbacks are either outright fabrications or instances of regular Incubators obscured by Umika's magic. Additionally, a flaw in Niko's program made it so that he could not actually purify Soul Gems by himself, but simply made the outer surface look clean. It is implied that the purification worked while he had Grief Seeds stored, however.

Trivia

• Unlike Kyubey, who merely drops Grief Seeds onto a hatch in his back, Jubey literally eats them: the circle in his forehead can be seen clenching just as one's mouth does while eating, and munching sounds can be heard.
• The original series proposal for Madoka Magica referred to the contract-making creature as a fairy. Jubey being called a fairy may be a reference to that.
• As another contrast to Kyubey, he speaks in a colloquial and overtly masculine tone with the Pleiades, which appears to be a trait he adopted after his brainwashing. However, he still speaks in the same tone when he appears later on in Kanna Hijiri's flashback.
• It is revealed in Chapter 21 that his name, "Jubey", is short for "Dependent Incubator" ("Juuzoku suru inkyubeetaa" in Japanese).
• Jubey is an artificial man-made created Soul Gem cleanser. It was created by the Pleiades Saints from the carcass of a dead Kyubey.
• Despite being a creation by Niko, he doesn't vanish until well after Niko becomes a witch. It is possible that Kanna was using her own magic to keep him alive, and that he vanished when she no longer needed him.

Speculation

Munch munch.

• It appears that he absorbs the grief from the Soul Gems onto his skin, which is appropriately pitch black. On the other hand, he is seen making a gulping noise and licking his lips afterwards, suggesting some sort of consumption.
• In the anime, magical girls worked alone or in small groups because the Grief Seeds they needed to clean their Soul Gems were a limited resource. Magical girls could easily clash over territory and were just as likely to compete than cooperate. When the Pleiades Saints were revealed to be a seven-member magical girl team, a number of readers wondered how that could be possible in this context. It was considered unlikely that there were enough witches in Asunaro City to support seven magical girls. Chapter 4 explained that Jubey, the fairy they contracted with, can clean their Soul Gems, meaning they don't need to compete for Grief Seeds.
  • What was left unexplained was why this was done. Kyubey has never demonstrated the ability to clean Soul Gems in the anime. In fact, he actively sought to have the girls corrupt their Soul Gems and turn into witches. One probable explanation is that from what we've seen, the Pleiades had fairly minor wishes and were therefore weaker magical girls. Being weak magical girls, they wouldn't become powerful witches, and thus they wouldn't produce a lot of energy when they transformed. It is then more efficient for Jubey to let them hunt Grief Seeds for him than to try and convert them into witches.
    In purely mathematical terms, a team of weak magical girls capturing a more powerful witch than themselves, using team tactics to level the field, is extremely efficient when it comes to energy output.
  • Considering Chapter 8 and Chapter 15, where Niko's spare and Satomi became Witches, respectively, one could compare Jubey's method of purifying Soul Gems to recharging an electronic device. For instance, charging a device constantly may reduce it's battery lifetime, to the point where it may display its battery as fully charged at one moment and the next moment show it as "low battery" and turn off. When one considers that they both had no signs of corruption in their Soul Gems until the moment before they turned into Witches, it's not an implausible train of thought.
    • But that wouldn't explain how Michiru, who supposedly purified her Soul Gem via Jubey and had her Soul Gem pitch-black as she turned into a Witch, as shown in Chapter 14
      • After his identity as a fake is revealed, fans are wondering if his cleaning act was a mere optical trick to fool the Saints, or if he simply ran out of power to purify their Soul Gems as time passed.
        • In Chapter 21, Kyubey explains why Jubey failed to purify their or any Soul Gems. He explains that Incubators exist solely to harvest energy from despair, they are not capable of cleansing Soul Gems without Grief Seeds. All Jubey did was just polishing the surface of the Soul Gem while still accumulating despair. What it was doing was masking their despair, not purifying the Soul Gem.
• It was mentioned in the anime that it was possible for an Incubator to have emotions, but they would be considered mentally ill. Juubey might be one of those Incubators.
  • Jubey claims that he doesn't know the reason why a magical girl would transform into a Witch and that it only happens "sometimes". It is unknown if he honestly doesn't know or if he is lying.
    • Chapter 10 reveals that he actually knew the reason why a magical girl transforms into a Witch. However, it is still not clear the nature or the reasoning behind hiding this fact from Kazumi. The Pleiades Saints, on the other hand, knew the truth all along.
      • In Chapter 21, Kyubey "wanted" to communicate with Jubey, even if it was man-made, as it wanted to connect with another of his kind. It is unknown if Kyubey's reasons were because it wanted to learn more about Jubey or if it was "feeling lonely".
  • It was revealed in chapter 12 that he was brainwashed. It may be possible that the process may have changed his personality and altered or affected the area of the brain that causes emotions. It apparently also made him able to outright lie and feel pain.
• In chapter 19, Jubey disintegrates and fails to cleanse some Soul Gems, according with Kyubey, this was because Jubey was "incomplete".
  • One possible interpretation is that because Jubey's memories were altered, as well as its function, its magic or form was becoming and growing unstable each time it cleansed the Pleiades Saints' Soul Gems.
    • Chapter 21 reveals that Jubey was man-made by the Pleiades Saints as a Soul Gem cleanser. According with Kyubey it was an interesting experiment, but Jubey was flawed as it couldn't really cleanse their Soul Gems. All it did was clean what was in the surface of their gems, while their despair was still accumulating deep within.

Gallery

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  Jubey standing alongside Kyubey. Together known as The Legion Of Doom.

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  Maybe not such a good fairy.

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  Just a snack.

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  An "imitation" Grief Seed, a.k.a an Evil Nut. Do not feed them to your Incubator, especially after midnight.

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  One of the ear-like appendages around Jubey's neck resembles a hand in this panel.

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Fanart

This section contains fanart images

Everything in the following fan gallery is created, or the comments accompanying them are created, for entertainment value and should not be confused with actual canon events of the Puella Magi franchise.

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  Jubey with his partner in "crime", Kyubey.

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