Kristoph is often seen as a heartless, cold-blooded killer and an abusive jerk, however it’s not the whole truth behind his character.
While it’s true the former attorney was a manipulative jerk towards most of the characters, there’s still this one character with which he had a genuine relationship and this person was Apollo. We don’t have a single evidence pointing at him being abusive towards Apollo. Instead, we got evidence for Kristoph and Apollo having a bond built on trust what is showed early in the game:
You can’t forget that Apollo has an ability that allows him to perceive when someone may be not honest with him what already is a proof itself about the bond between them. Apollo could even to not go to Kristoph in the first place if he had a suspicious aura. It lets us assume that Kristoph’s intentions to guide Apollo were genuine and it could be the only pure bond he built with anyone.
There’s also this scene. I do understand you may read it (and you probably do) as Kristoph potentially trying to manipulate Apollo, but it doesn’t need to be the case. It was later revealed that Klavier was bringing Kristoph information – probably about how Apollo was doing in the court (Kristoph wasn’t aware of the jurist system being implemented, so him being interested only in Apollo totally can be the case). Klavier’s sudden appearance in the country could be all Kristoph’s doing, so he knows if Apollo can stand on his own behind the defense’s bench. Remember that Apollo didn’t turn against him himself, but it was Phoenix manipulating him into it, so Kristoph had no motive to be unpleasant to his former mentee.
But, Nagito, Kristoph was mad!
“Ace Attorney 4” explicitly depicts Kristoph when he’s the most stressed. He’s living his worst days in his life. Do you really believe that someone who breaks after being hardly pressed is “showing their real self”? Don’t make me laugh.
And, again, no: I’m not telling you that Kristoph was an “uwu pure cinnamon roll”. He absolutely did commit those crimes, however talking just about him being the killer is barely scratching the surface of a very complicated, morally grey character – he’s not purely evil. His relationship with Apollo is changing his position on the scale from black to dark grey.
You got the evidence from me that he wasn’t entirely bad. If you choose to believe that he was, I have nothing more to tell you. I wrote this post with people who would like to understand Kristoph’s character better on my mind, but also to put the pieces of information together.
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