someone on the reddit surgested that since almost all the clowns are around amons age prehaps donato raised them at the orphanage what do you think?

hysyartmaskstudio:

ishida-why:

Oh wow that’s really a theory I never saw/heard before. We know Uta had been the leader of the 4th ward in his early years, but we never saw his “childhood years”. But this would mean there’s a chance that Amon and Uta know each other. 

Right now I don’t see any hints for this because we still don’t know a lot about Uta, but if somebody wrote a solid theory about it then I would certainly read it! 

The idea of Donato taking in little orphan ghouls and raising them amidst the little orphan humans he’s butchering and eating, and then sharing the humans with his ghoul charges so none of them have to hunt and they can all otherwise avoid CCG detection turns him into a much more morally ambiguous character. Because yeah, he’s still butchering orphans, but suddenly it’s no longer just out of selfishness. Those human children he took in might have found another place to live, and certainly a place that would have been better in the long term for them, but if the human orphanage was really a cover for a ghoul orphanage, then Donato was doing a much, much needed service. We’ve seen ghoul children getting orphaned constantly, and living in terrible conditions.

Yomo and Nishiki were lucky enough to have their older sisters. Touka managed to get Ayato to the safety of Yoshimura. But Nuts wasn’t so lucky. Who knows what Naki’s childhood was like. So if Donato really was running an orphanage for ghouls and using the humans as a cover, he becomes a very different person than the one we’ve known.

There is also the possibility that we’ve been getting the timeline of Donato’s capture wrong. Donato is said to have killed a lot of investigators, so it’s possible that after Amon revealed his secret, instead of being taken in right away, he fled, which was when he lived his life as Crown/Clown and met the Clowns we know and love.

As for the ages, Uta and Itori seem to be about Amon’s age, maybe a year or two older, Nico seems to be older than them, though it’s kind of vague – we really have no context for his age, and Roma claims to be Touka’s age while she works at Anteiku. If all of the Clowns were in the orphanage, Roma would have been really tiny, like a toddler at most, unless she was lying about her age, which, I mean, is totally possible. 

Of course, if Uta’s kakugan are always active (either in one or both eyes) he probably wouldn’t have been able to hang around with the human kids… 

That said, because it does change so much about Donato, I don’t know how I feel about the theory. It also really changes his relationship with Amon, because while there is still something special about Amon as the one human child he forms a bond with, there would suddenly be a bunch of ghoul kids as well.

I suppose I’m more fond of the idea that Donato’s relationship with the Clowns is separate from his role as the head of the orphanage, but who knows.

These are the Clowns we’re talking about. There are endless possibilities and very little to back up any theory.

And I’m totally here for the AU where little Uta has to stay in the back room because of his Kakugan and only the other ghoul kids know he’s there but he developed a close relationship with Donato and Itori because of this and… Gosh… actually a good guy Donato AU…