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| “ | Xuppu, Showtime! | „ |
| ~ Kim during his transformation into King Monkey. |
Lê Chiến Kim is a major character from Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir. In season 3, he receives the Monkey Miraculous from Master Fu, which, when inhabited by the kwami Xuppu, can transform him into King Monkey (Roi Singe in the French version), a monkey-themed superhero.
He is voiced by Grant George in the English dub and Alexandre Nguyen in the original French version.
Appearance
Kim is muscular and taller than the average student at his school; he has olive skin and grey eyes. He styles his hair, which is black with the ends dyed gold, into a sharp quiff. Kim also dons a red, short-sleeved hoodie jacket with big front pocket and hoodie and some white outlines at certain places. On the front of the jacket, there is a white logo, which is a downward-pointing pentagon outline outside of a smaller, filled-in pentagon with a red corner and a star. He pairs his top with navy blue track sweatpants, and red, white, and black sports shoes.
Personality
Kim has an arrogant demeanor, at times. He enjoys making dares, much to the exasperation of his classmates, and he is also very confident in himself and his athleticism, thus most of his dares involve using the person's body. Over-confident and proud, Kim sometimes boasts about his abilities and doesn't always take facts into consideration, believing he can beat a panther in a race in "Animan." He isn't afraid to tease others, either, as he gives Ivan a note telling him that he isn't brave enough to act on his romantic feelings. Behind his bravado are a few insecurities, like his fear of being humiliated and rejected. While hot-headed and rude sometimes, Kim is generally kind, appreciating Marinette's encouragement to confess his love to his crush in "Dark Cupid" — although Marinette isn't aware that his crush is Chloé. In "Syren", Kim admires Ladybug and Cat Noir so much that he wants to be a hero himself and is curious on how to become one.
As Dark Cupid, he is greatly bitter at love and seeks to avenge his broken heart by destroying all the love in Paris with his arrows. He is still very prideful but has no issues teaming up with one of his victims, like Cat Noir, to succeed.
As Dark Humor,
As King Monkey, most of Kim's personality traits remain the same. However, as seen in "Party Crasher", Kim is a little goofier and silly while he goes one-on-one with the titular villain, albeit everyone else had been defeated. He is also heroic and it can be assumed he is loyal as after Party Crasher is defeated, he is seen without the Miraculous which means he must have returned it to Ladybug or back in the place he found it for Master Fu to take it back.
Powers and abilities
As a civilian
Kim is a very fast runner and a good swimmer.
As King Monkey
King Monkey has enchanted abilities like speed and strength, and most notably agility, being able to jump much higher than either Ladybug or Cat Noir. His weapon is his ruyi jingu bang. His special ability is called Uproar, allows him to throw a banana at a person that will mess up their superpowers. However, using Uproar triggers his Miraculous' failsafe to revert him back to Kim after about five minutes. If he can overcome this failsafe through sheer willpower, as Ladybug and Cat Noir demonstrated in "Revolution", he can remain transformed as King Monkey and use Uproar repeatedly without needing to revert back to recuperate.
Biography
Season 1
In "Dark Cupid", he is corrupted by Hawk Moth into the titular supervillain capable of causing extreme hate in his victims.
Season 2
Miraculous Shanghai
Season 3
In "Party Crasher", Master Fu lends Kim the Monkey Miraculous to help defeat the titular akumatized villain, after which he presumably return it to Fu.
Miraculous New York
Season 4
Season 5
In "Jubilation", King Monkey is among the superheroes attending Ladybug and Cat Noir's wedding in the dream caused by Gift/Jubilation when they are fighting Darker Owl in reality.
In "Determination", to try and help restore morale to Paris because of losing King Monkey and the other heroes, Grevin Museum curator Veronique has a wax figurine of King Monkey made, alongside those of the rest of the team, in hopes of helping to boost hope. When Mayor Bourgeois, under Chloe's influence again, refuses to let the figures be displayed, Veronique is Akumatized by Monarch into Manipula, bringing the wax figures of King Monkey and the others to life to try and make Manipula look like a hero by bringing the team back.
In "Derision", it was revealed that Marinette originally had tried going steady with him as boyfriend and girlfriend, but Chloe used her affection for Kim to her advantage and had Kim pull a mean prank on Marinette with giving her a box full of spiders, scaring her and causing her to fall in the swimming pool, humiliating her. Socqualine prevented Chloe from uploading the footage to the Internet by destroying the cellphone the video was on to protect Marinette, but the incident led to Marinette becoming the girl she was now with being more cautious before trying to go steady with another boy, such as Adrien. When Kim remained oblivious to the trauma he had inadvertently caused Marinette, Ondine told him off for it. This allowed Kim to be Akumatized into Dark Humor by Monarch, but after he was restored to normal by Ladybug and Cat Noir, being scolded by Ondine caused Kim to have an epiphany, and he apologized to Marinette for the prank. She forgave him, while Adrien confronted Chloe over what happened and tried to have her do the same, but when Chloe derisively refuses, seeing Marinette to be below her in the social ladder and thus giving her reason to bully her as she had done for the last several years, Adrien angrily renounces his friendship with Chloe, seeing she is beyond redemption now.
Having been forgiven by Marinette for the prank that ruined her relationship with him and made her how she was now, Kim is among the students in "Confrontation" who have their career forms forged by Sabrina under Chloe and Lila's latest plan to have Marinette's reputation ruined and her expelled from school. However, realizing that was going way too far, Sabrina works behind their backs with Marinette to expose the plan and prove to everyone, even Kim, that Marinette had been telling them the truth about Lila the whole time and they didn't believe her because of Lila's lies. Once the truth is exposed, Alya speaks for Kim and everyone else with apologizing to Marinette for being deceived, Miss Bustier also apologizes, and a furious Principal Damocles expels Chloe and Lila. Unfortunately, Chloe calls her father, Mayor Andre Bourgeois, and encouraged by his wife and Chloe's mom Audrey, Andre threatens to fire Damocles if he does not readmit Chloe and allow the forged career forms to be processed. Rather than submit to the Mayor's orders, encouraged by his students, Damocles essentially tells Mayor Bourgeois off and resigns, fed up with being the mayor's stooge so Chloe gets her way, and allows Kim and the other students to redo their career forms as his final act before leaving the school. Kim and the other students wish Damocles good luck, showing they still support him and enjoyed having him as their principal.
In the season finale, "The Final Day", Kim is part of the Resistance as they fight against the Miraculized as part of Monarch's Operation Perfect Alliance, joined by Grandmaster Su-Han and the Guardians, the United Heroez, and Ladydragon, but it is a losing fight as the Miraculized keep coming. It is only, as shown in "Miraculous World London", when Ladybug uses her Miraculous Ladybug to undo all the damage, that Kim and everyone else are saved as the Miraculized are returned to normal. He later learns that Gabriel Agreste sacrificed himself to end the threat of Monarch for good. After Marinette restores the Miraculous to their original forms, she entrusts Xuppu to Kim permanently, allowing Kim to become King Monkey again and join the rest of the restored French Miraculous Superhero Team to prepare for whatever threats come from the new Hawk Moth in Lila Rossi/Cerise Bianca.
Season 6
At the start of "Revelator", King Monkey is with the rest of the team as, under Cat Noir and Ladybug's guidance, they attempt to unlock their adult Miraculous powers through sheer willpower. While some fail and need to recharge their Kwamis and transform again before resuming, everyone manages to successfully unlock their adult Miraculous powers and enable their ability to stay transformed indefinitely before manually reverting back by saying their power down catchphrase. To celebrate their accomplishment, Ladybug dubs the team, "The Miraculers", which they all agree on.
Trivia
- His English voice actor is best known for voicing Rikuo Nura (Night/Yokai form) from Nura Rise of Yokai Clan, Gen Shishio from Kekkaishi, Suigetsu Hōzuki from Naruto Shippuden/Boruto, Izuru Kira from Bleach and Shinjiro Aragaki from Persona 3.
- He was formerly in love with Chloé Bourgeois, and is currently in love with Ondine.
- Lê Chiến Kim is the fourth person to become a Miraculous holder who was also an akumatized villain, following Nino Lahiffe in "The Bubbler" and Alya Césaire in "Lady Wifi", Max Kanté in "Gamer", and Chloé Bourgeois in "Antibug", but excluding Gabriel Agreste/Hawk Moth, who akumatized himself in "The Collector" into the titular villain.
- King Monkey is based on the Monkey King (or just Monkey) from the 16th century Ming Dynasty novel 'Journey to the West' (Xī Yóu Jí) by Wu Cheng'en, inspired by an ancient Chinese legend. The novel has been adapted for both television and film on numerous occasions, most notably in the 1979 Japanese tv show 'Monkey' (sometimes referred to as 'Monkey Magic'). The Monkey King was also a character in the 2008 film 'The Forbidden Kingdom' in which he was played by Jet Li.
 Heroes
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