Kyubey

Kyubey recruits magical girls. It offers a girl one wish, granted without limit, in exchange for a contract that turns her into a fighter of witches. It answers every question honestly, volunteers nothing whatsoever, and appears genuinely puzzled when that combination turns out to be a problem. Its face never moves, and Shaft frames it so that the fixed expression grows steadily less cute across twelve episodes.

Nothing in the offer is a lie. That is the horror of it, and it explains why Puella Magi Madoka Magica hit as hard as it did in 2011. A genre that had spent decades on talking mascots handing out transformation trinkets suddenly had one running a procurement operation, patiently, with a straight face and full disclosure available on request to anyone who thought to ask.

Gen Urobuchi wrote the script and Ume Aoki designed the characters so the show would look like the sweetest thing on television, and the pairing is the whole trick. Even the name is slightly off before it opens its mouth: the Japanese spells it with a small kana that produces a stretched sound no ordinary word uses.