The doll is laying back in a chair like the nameless boy during its first appearance.
The person with the blindfold also first appears in a chair. The all-white lighting of this scene and the way they struggle forward are also reminiscent of when Fushi first used the nameless boy's body and struggled to move in it.
And then the poses in these panels also mirror each other. Just a guess, but this person is probably the reason the doll is so determined to become human, just like the nameless boy was for Fushi.
I'm never going to shut up about how Fushi spent the last two arcs feeling like they weren't allowed to be happy unless they were constantly helping others and now no one can be happy unless the people around them decide that they've helped enough to earn a good rating. Everything is so much worse now. With all my love to Mizuha and Yuuki, they fucked up big time.
I really like that we're looking at what lies outside of the star system along with the people inside it. The star system is presented like it's fair because it gives everyone an even chance. You don't get human rights unless you have stars, and how much of a human you are is dictated by how many stars you have, nothing else. Every human gets an equal opportunity to earn stars once they turn eight. But then characters like the doll and Kanitarou don't have a hope in high heaven of being human, because they were never part of the system.
Just spinning my gears here, this is all hypothetical but if human beings are being mass produced and tailored to each customer's specifications like we saw in Chapter 166.1, then they're no more "real" than Kanitarou and the doll are. Toys are made up of wires, not flesh and blood, but human society only functions with the chips inside each person's body. Both rely on technology to live. People can even end up looking less and less human as well, if they get a low rating. They might eventually end up looking like a toy, given that the ramen store owner and others assumed the doll was just a person who had one star. The qualifications for being human are very specific and very arbitrary, aren't they.
On a side tangent, it struck me that the powers ordinary humans possess are more like the Beholder's than like Fushi's. The ability to make things that weren't already preexisting, the ability to give vessels life, the ability to replicate tiny details like grains of sand and such, even the ability to stretch lifespans indefinitely. Together, humans and knockers have reached a new height where anything is possible, and it's terrible. It's true that if Fushi had taken on the Beholder's abilities, they might have been able to present this from happening, but it's because they were unwilling to exert control over others like Kaibara Cybernetics does that they decided not to. You can't be a good person while holding onto that kind of power. For Fushi, they wouldn't have been able to be a person at all.
Which begs the question, what kind of state are the five star people working at Kaibara Cybernetics in? Just food for thought.
Kanitarou and the doll have the start of an interesting character dynamic. Kanitarou is polite and logical where the doll is brutish and intuitive, but by the end of the chapter it's apparent that he's just as hard-headed as it is. I think it's interesting that he insists becoming human is a pipe dream but despite that, still has a strong sense of justice for toys and wants them all to be treated well. A little sad how he basically repeats what the boy who was torturing him said, that he and the doll are just programs. It's not any less hurtful if he says it nicely.
Overall, he seems very kind, and his attentiveness to the doll seems to bring out her kindness as well. They're goofy, I hope they become friends and stick together.
