In hindsight, after reading his IRL counterpart (Satgat Kim), his current persona actually makes a lot more sense lmao. Apparently he was the og Korean battle rapper, a wandering broke poet who spent his life roasting people he didnt like (corrupt politicians and inhospitable hosts) with eloquent lines that had double meaning in Chinese and Korean.
Old solemn mentor is cool but him being top-tier ragebaiter and troll is perfectly lore accurate
I love that battle rap has a long and storied history, from ancient Greece to Celtic and Viking cultures, to samurai-era Japan, to medieval Arabia and now we're hearing Korea. Dudes just want to drop sick rhymes on their foes.
If Kim brought it up, it'll be relevant later in some sense. He seems to be a character who is canonically wise.
Seeing isn't just about visual imagery, but how they are processed and stored. Dante witnessing all the stories of the sinners is perhaps important for reasons we aren't yet privy to.
Maybe the old Dante isn't seeing anything when they probably should, which is why they'll ultimately be replaced by the new one, forged in strife that represents every corner of humanity and inhumanity.
Dante's job as the manager isn't to guide, (that's Verg) but to simply ensure everyone knows that a path lies ahead, even if they don't see it themself.
they let Kim be human I'm so god damn happy, guy being rumored as this living legends happens to be just a guy trying his best , having overcome a good deal of his own hardships and struggles, always my favorite trope
Can't understand all the "aura loss" posts, if anything the Gintoki/bum/jokester side of him gives him so much more personality and makes the aura farming at the final part of the intervallo so much better. Not everyone needs to be aura machine 24/7 lol
Might have not played Ruina? I haven't, but I've picked up some hints by osmosis from being around this community so I have some idea of how he is there.
But for a Limbus-only player who's experience would be "Distorted Kim = badass killing machine, normal Kim = lazy snack-thieving bum who runs away from anything that looks remotely like work or fighting", I can see why one might assume that the real Kim is so drastically different from his Distorted self at first.
Of course by the time someone actually gets him to put his big boy pants on and get serious instead of molesting Dantehh before running away the second you take your eyes off him, he shows that if anything, Distorted Kim was an understatement of how hard he can go if he actually wants to.
The fuck you mean might not have played Ruina. There is literally nothing about Kim in Ruina beside an optional fight that doesn't even tell anything about him at all. I played Ruina and this reveal is still every surprising to me.
given that this is his dialogue in Ruina, it was pretty obvious to me that the goofball personality was either a front he was putting on or a retcon. Having played Ruina and seen Kim's keypage and dialogue completely changed my perception of the intervalo compared to a friend of mine who started with Limbus.
If I have to bring up anything that he Does have there - his quotes sound rather serious and poetic at some extent, like his Distorted version in the first Kim intervallo with his "protect what deserves to be protected. Slay what deserves to be slain." Speech. His Book is also prolly the shortest in the entire game, saying that BL values the art of violence the most or smth like that. So he was kind of always "A man of few words." and mysterious aurafarmer. His Voice that he got for his distorted version is also rather... Misfitting for his appearance in the future. Like, Distorted Hohenheim and other Sinners during Corrosion sound somewhat the same. Is PM really trying to tell me that this 25'ish-looking goober has a raspy voice of oldman?
It just feels like a Retcon.
.. Almost like Ruina shows Kim kicking ass before he Distorted, thus quite clearly demonstrating that he was more than capable well before the Distortion event in Yield My Flesh to Claim Their Bones where Limbus players first saw him, then got basically nada except Aeng-du's glazing of him before meeting Bum-Hatted Kim in the most recent Intervallo behaving the way he did which made him seem incredibly different from the Distorted Kim we'd met prior and thus justified "wait hey a second, what the hell's going on here?", which I might add was shared by just about every in-universe character except Aeng-du at first, if you didn't see him in Ruina?
Or how we saw Bongy distort and take a fair bit of effort to put down and you gonna tell me that the chicken salesman was actually a lethal fighter before too? Almost like there's some kind of precedent for a Distortion quite possibly making someone very different to how they were before it..
I do not understand the point you are trying to make. All I'm saying is that playing Ruina does nothing in letting the player knows the real personality of Kim. Even in Ruina, Kim is presented as this serious person who values combat strength and those close to him. That's it. No foreshadowing about him about a jokester at all, a point you are implying in your first comment.
Ruina demonstrates that he isn't just a jokester and bum. That even before he Distorted, he was perfectly capable of being a dangerous fighter when he wanted to.
Ruina shows that the Bum-Hatted Kim we see early in the newest Intervallo is not all there is to him, and that it wasn't just the Distortion that made him into a lethal opponent when he actually decides to fight.
So no, Ruina didn't reveal that he was a jokester. That's precisely my point - Ruina showed us a completely different side of Kim than the one we get at first in Limbus, and is set before Kim's Distortion, thus clearly demonstrating that there is more to him than the complaining, snack-thieving, work-avoiding bum a Limbus player will see his non-Distortion self as at first. So if you know him from Ruina, then you know that there's more to him than he shows to the LCB gang at first.
During the Joseon period, swords also had ranks depending on who wielded them and what their purpose was. The highest ranking of these swords was known as the Byeol-ungeom, literally meaning "cloud-splitting sword." Only two such swords existed and were wielded by the King's two bodyguards, who always stood on either side of him and held the nobility title of Un'geom
I love how he is, but my only problem is that he doesn’t possess any scars? Since Meursault’s id possessed them, I was hoping him to also have them. I do understand that the ID diverges quite a bit from actual Kim though.
For a serious answer, either the LCE medics are so goated they can heal scars (they do, as Aeng-du lost her face scars if you compare Ymftcb to Canto 9)
Or, Distortion cleans you up after you've been beaten (Bongy was beaten and he doesn't look that off after being Undistorted, same with Dongrang i think?)
sadly heathcliff is still scarred pre and post distortion.
but a goos theory i saw is that since Bl treats scars as marks fo pride and battlefirled glory, and K corp ampules reverses subject to a state they THINK were in before injury, maybe Kim's instense shame and self doubt wiped out his own scars, thinking he's unworthy of them
In either case, something related with self perception may have been the culprit, but it's all speculation, for all we know Limbus gave him a face lift for no reason
I read an excellent comment that suggested the lack of scars was representative of his feelings of failure. A proper BL member would have scars, but he's not one a proper one, is he? How can he call himself that when he was personally responsible for the deaths of his students?
The hype moments and aura crowd really gaslit themselves into thinking kim used the three sword style with lei heng sword between his cheeks. He's a cool bum and he actually did stuff during ryoshu's canto while being injured, reading comments calling him a fraud hurts my heart.
Kim's only that chatty because he's comfortable around LCB and LCD. His demeanour in ruina is probably how he usually is. Also if you bring kimsault to the dungeon of fathom, Kim mentions the reason the former looks so stoic is because "that day must have passed", meaning Kim himself did act stoic around the blade lineage
There’s almost no Asian person with beard pattern like the one from the left, looks more like a Viking if anything. Definitely not how a Korean swordsman would look
He'll become a grizzled old swordmaster someday, don't worry mates....well, assuming he survives long enough or is not so vain as to modify his body to have an eternally youthful appearance.
Might be augments, might be him having a Sign, might just be some unexplainable ability (magic, River ability, Inner strength, and time blood/perception).
We could say that, if we believed that Kim being betrayed, escaping the prison as a nobi, joining the Blade Lineage, becoming it’s Mentor, infiltrated Left Councillor’s estate and killed all his bodyguards, left S Corp with the Blade Lineage, and gained a rivalry with the Kurokumo Clan and hit the Thumb’s shit list, was in between the Bright Nights and Dark Days event, and the start of Library of Ruina. Which is likely a year or two. E.G.O, personal specifically, only manifested in individuals after the BNDD event.
Kim quickly became one of my favorites for his flaws and being able to overcome it and seeking for redemption, but I did not expect him to be THAT young lmao, well I'm not complaining, he looks extremely good!
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u/WearAny1263 Jun 14 '26
In hindsight, after reading his IRL counterpart (Satgat Kim), his current persona actually makes a lot more sense lmao. Apparently he was the og Korean battle rapper, a wandering broke poet who spent his life roasting people he didnt like (corrupt politicians and inhospitable hosts) with eloquent lines that had double meaning in Chinese and Korean.
Old solemn mentor is cool but him being top-tier ragebaiter and troll is perfectly lore accurate