User blog:DancePowderer/A Crack in Its Utopian Armor

With the release of chapter 717, we finally see what we thought Dressrosa was formerly lacking, imperfection. Doflamingo's malefic nature is not just limited to his economic activities, but his political affairs as well. We now know how toys came to be. Doflamingo is responsible for bringing that to the island as well. I wasn't expecting to the people to know about Doflamingo's activities as Joker, but I was hoping the buck stopped there as far as ignorance on the part of the people. There are a few things that vex me on this topic.

The first issue is why people were made into toys in the first place. We know how, by Doflamingo's friend, but why this guy and not that guy? Why the plumber and not the baker? I doubt it's random, done at the whim of some demented craftsman. My guess is the toys are people who have gone against Doflamingo, aka people who are guilty of treason. Doflamingo can't have people be suspicious about him, so instead of making people disappear mysteriously like the Soviets did, he turns them into toys. What the toy soldier said earlier about how he has friends waiting to take down the factory would support this slightly. The wrench in this mechanism is what we've already seen. We've seen toy children. The ones we've seen are too young to know any better. Two possible explanations is that people who are turned into toys can be turned into toy children. That's what I hope happens. The other, more sickening possibility is that the children of those who went against Doflamingo were turned into toys so that Doflamingo could have something to hold over them.

We have Violet to thank for the explanation as to why toys and humans can't enter the others' houses. At least one house is home to Doflamingo's SAD factory. If there are multiple toy houses, this is a strategic move on Doflamingo's part. If each house is a factory, then Doflamingo isn't ruined if one factory is taken out of commission. It's also the perfect way of imprisoning those who oppose him, by forcing them to work in the very thing they tried to to take down. It's a blow to their pride and a great source of free labor.

This whole setup has one wild card in it, Kanjuro. Him being in the toy house violates Doflamingo's second law. The only way around this is if he's already a toy. That being said, there's just one thing I can't understand. How can peoples' memories of the people who became toys just get wiped like that. There are too many potential relationships whose memories of the now toys would have to be erased. It seems that toys either lose their memories upon being turned into toys but can regain them in some way, either through a memory shock stimulus or some other means. Propaganda has dubbed this memory recovery "human disease." Perhaps what sickens me most about this is that those with human disease are simply thrown away, quite literally.

As someone who actually studies this kind of thing, Dressrosa is one of the strangest places I've ever seen, even for One Piece. Rebecca's words make even more sense now. For order to be restored, Doflamingo must go down and stay down. He is a psychotic sociopath hiding behind a smile and his sphere of influence is heavier than previously thought. The veil may have been lifted for the reader, so I can only hope the same will happen to the people in the story.