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Comments

[doitrockapella]

...Okay, I've legit been dying to know this for a long time, so.

What the hell does Isaac see in Kimblee, anyway?

[glaciates]

Excellent question! There's going to be a lot of headcanon tl;dr here, so I apologize in advance.

I've mentioned it on plurk quite a few times and it should be obvious just from interacting with Isaac, but he's a major social fail. He has difficulty understanding sarcasm, why people would lie, and reading simple social cues, such a lulls in conversation. He needs people to lead him in basic conversation, so he's... kind of the biggest failure ever on the social front. There isn't any reason behind this - he's just had difficulty with this sort of thing forever. (I could TL;DR about where I got all this from, but we'll skip that.)

Kimblee and Isaac both participated in the Ishval War as State Alchemists. There is a flashback scene in Brotherhood which shows Kimblee talking to Roy and Riza about genocide (and how he doesn't understand why people are getting so worked up over it) and Isaac is shown in the background. Considering everything they say in the episode, it implies Isaac knew Kimblee in Ishval, but didn't understand his motivations - which goes along well with the social fail in my opinion. There's a lot of subtext in that minute and a half interaction between them in the episode, okay.

Obviously this required some fleshing out - Isaac refused to trust anyone but Kimblee and comes to him in Central Prison, putting Isaac at risk of being captured. He's there because he's sure Kimblee will help; he's in prison and Isaac is offering him a way to escape, so why wouldn't he? Besides, they got along pretty well in Ishval (headcanonly), so why wouldn't he want to help? He blew up his superior officers because he was upset with their orders, right? (Ahahaha.) This was the last interaction Isaac had with Kimblee before coming to Route, and it obviously didn't end well. I'll get back to this in a moment though, let me TL;DR about Ishval first.

Ishval was the first conflict for the majority of the cast. Isaac wasn't any exception to that. Kimblee (in Dal's headcanon) had seen conflict before Ishval and basically took on a leadership role among the soldiers; partially because he was experienced in combat and partially because he was such a good little soldier and the superiors adored him. Kimblee interacted with all the State Alchemists and took it on himself to mentor all of them. Isaac was fine with the conflict for... maybe a few weeks. He basically just avoided thinking about the orders and what he was doing on the battlefield, but eventually he did break down in a bad way. Kimblee was the one to help him through that - he gave Isaac some excellent advice (which boils down to "you're following orders; who you are on the battlefield doesn't define you as a person"). Isaac was internalizing his complaints and looking at what he was doing and how it was reflecting on himself instead of blaming the superior officers and acting like he had no choice in the matter (like Roy and Riza were doing later when Kimblee bitched them out). So Kimblee calmed him down and with those words alone managed to get Isaac through the rest of the war. That wasn't the only interaction they had though; Isaac was severely injured later on (well, he wasn't injured too badly to start with, but he figured out how to use his blood as a weapon and that resulted in more injury) and Kimblee visited him in the makeshift hospital. Needless to say, with Isaac's social failure and Kimblee having been so helpful already, he was quite pleased with that. They also probably fought together at least once or twice before Kimblee was transferred to the Kanda district and given the Philosopher's Stone - which resulted in him killing his superior officers at the war's end.

That's ultimately the huge difference here: Kimblee was a (slightly) different person before the Philosopher's Stone. Yes, he was still a bad person, but he wasn't as openly crazy or willing to ignore social norms for violence's sake. Dal can explain the differences better than I can, but that's an important reason why Isaac likes Kimblee. He hasn't realized that there is a shift in Kimblee's personality, because he didn't know Kimblee very well to begin with.

So! Kimblee was incredibly helpful during Ishval and showed some compassion (????) that Isaac wasn't exactly used to. So he ended up seeing Kimblee as some sort of mentor figure and went on to follow his advice and left the military. (Which was a way too literal interpretation of what Kimblee was saying, but that's not the point.) Seven years later he tried to recruit Kimblee to take out Bradley and was laughed out of Central Prison. Then he died and ended up in Johto. Yeaaaah, Isaac wasn't too pleased about that. He still has issues with that - he just completely ignores them!

As far as what's happened in Johto, Kimblee has been nothing but good to Isaac. Or at least, he's been talking with Isaac and supporting him (and giving him way too many gifts) which is totally the same thing. Again, social fail. Someone showing kindness to him is pretty much grounds for them to be bffs, especially if they don't get frustrated with his social failure. Most of Isaac's attraction to Kimblee is based on what happened in Ishval though; what happened in Ishval is something Isaac still regrets and wants to make up for in some way, but at the same time he's learned that it doesn't define him as a person and he did get to meet Kimblee there...

...And then there's the fact that Kimblee is quite pretty okay. Isaac seems to have copied quite a few things from Kimblee - they both keep their hair long when it would be easier to fight with short hair, they both have the stupid antennae going on, they both wear eyeliner, and Isaac seems to have picked up on Kimblee's expressions. Quite a few of them are ridiculously unique to Kimblee in the manga (he doesn't make some of those faces in Brotherhood, unfortunately) and Isaac makes the same faces.

TL;DR Isaac cares about Kimblee because of things that happened years ago, and all things considered, Kimblee's been pretty good to him here in Johto. If by "pretty good" you mean "hasn't stabbed Isaac in the back yet."