When Xie Wen and the cats followed the doctors to a little church and saw that enormous, familiar figure, he was rather bewildered...
Why was Kuma here? Sure, he seemed to become the king here later, but wasn't Bulldog still ruling the Sorbet Kingdom at this point? Had he just been waiting here all along? What about the Revolutionary Army's affairs?
Compared with the Kuma Xie Wen had seen in the manga, the one before him was somewhat different.
First, he wasn't wearing that white hat with black spots. Also... those bear ears were actually his hair?!
Xie Wen remembered reading a One Piece fanfic before transmigrating where the protagonist had inherited Kuma's bear-ear hat... Still, fanfics getting stabbed in the back by canon was nothing unusual, so it wasn't a big deal.
Second, although he was also wearing a priest's outfit, this Kuma's was much plainer. It lacked the white cross design and was simply plain black. The book he always held on to, which was probably a Bible, was nowhere to be seen either. And unlike in the manga, his glasses weren't constantly reflecting light and obscuring his eyes. Instead, they gave him a somewhat scholarly air.
Finally, and most importantly, compared with the expressionless, rather frightening Kuma in the manga, this Kuma not only had a much more expressive face, but also struck Xie Wen as very... gentle, and even vaguely... easy to push around?
This was fucking bizarre.
His expressive face could be explained by his not having undergone modification yet, but whether judging by his "Tyrant" nickname or his position as a key Revolutionary Army officer, Kuma shouldn't have had this sort of personality, should he?
Yet the colors his Observation Haki picked up didn't lie. This fearsome-looking giant didn't have a trace of violence