The Tortured Mind of Flay Allster

Insights on a troubled character

[gundamseedappreciation]

What if 'Gundam SEED' was told from Flay's point of view? How would they approach it? Would it have been better?

If Gundam SEED was told from Flay's point of view, I think we would've gotten a different feel of the story. As we know, Flay has a negative opinion on Coordinators. The reason a lot of people enjoyed the Coordinator idea for this universe is because of how we see it in action with Kira, the original protagonist of the story. We also get to see another part of the story with cuts to the ZAFT/PLANTs side of things, and there we understand the Coordinators and how they came to be. The change of the protagonist to Flay will change how the viewer sees and understands Coordinators as a whole. If they were to approach this different way of telling the story of SEED with Flay, I think she would have had more likeable qualities. This isn't to say that she is a bad character, but it would help the viewers lean more in her favor with decisions. What I am referring to is how she deals with her father's death and how she approaches Sai with their relationship issue.

When changing the point of view to Flay, they would have to find a new way of giving us more on what is going on with ZAFT. The main reason why we got to see more of what happens on the other side is because of Kira and Athrun's past relationship and their fateful meeting on Heliopolis. Since Flay has no connection to anybody on ZAFT or the fact that she is not a Coordinator, it'd be difficult to approach the other half of the story. SEED didn't show us as much of the ZAFT side as they showed what was happening on the Arch Angel, but they showed enough for it to explain and give us more characters to think about. As those snippets of the Rau Le Creuset team showed us more than just the pilots that stole the Gundams on Heliopolis. I feel that the only way to have Flay as the main character / the story be from her point of view would be to change the roles of characters around. Knowing the creators of GUNDAM, they want to have a story that can reel in the viewers and keep them awaiting more until the story concludes. They want action and to show the action as the main perspective. That is what GUNDAM's focus is. Let's say for ease of an answer, they wanted to change the main character to Flay before SEED released despite them having the original story already written. If they wanted to keep her personality as it was before, they would have to change a few things. That would be changing Kira to be a support, switch her views as she progresses through the story due to her piloting a mobile suit (e.g. how Kira went from killing to trying to keep peace because he finds this killing to not be helpful at all), and remove her death. She could still have that relationship with Sai, still hate Coordinators until she finds out she is one, and also deal with death differently since she would have to do something with a mobile suit. It would be a different feel of the story and would change a whole lot of the plot. This post could be way longer if we went theorizing about possible ways how the writers could go with Flay as the main character, but to keep it short and sweet, it would bring a different view of the war and how people deal with it. Would it be better than the original story of Gundam SEED? As someone who does enjoy the original story a lot, I think it would have to hit a lot of points to give the same feel. It's up in the air if it would be better than SEED, but since I know people who don't necessarily like Flay unlike some other users, it could be a hit or miss depending on how they adjust her character in this version of the story. I hope this helped answer your question and give a different look on Flay and the story in your eyes of if she was the main character / the point of view to this universe.

[fostersffff]

Kinda want to comment on this scene because I've been something of a Flayhead, but I think the quality of her story dropped out almost entirely after Cagalli showed up and feels like it's sealed it in.

Hitting the payoff from the earlier episode where Kira kicks Sai's shit and she starts crying once she's alone because she does still love Sai but needs to be fucking Kira feels lame, because Sai doesn't feel like a real character at this point. I, as the viewer who is privvy to any important character interactions, understand that Flay has slowly started to actually care about Kira (even if she doesn't want to), but Sai shouldn't! When he got his shit kicked he wasn't trying to warn Kira that Flay was using him and it turned into a misunderstanding where Kira assumed he was jealous, he was just pursuing Flay. Even if he did, he shouldn't be like "Of course you love Kira, he's so cool! How could you not!" in this moment, he should be dressing her down for being such a horrific manipulator.

[mandatory-blog-stop-asking]

gundam seed rant send post

so I finished Gundam Seed and I'm trying to figure out my exact problem with it, and I'm doing this because I've been a Gundam fan for a few years now, and I've noticed that Gundam hatedom is very, very performative-- people just know they have to hate on Savior, people just know they have to have on Seed, on IGLOO, on whatever. It's not very honest and it doesn't add much. But I don't really like highly controversial yet extremely successful show Gundam Seed, and I want to talk about why without getting teamed up with the sweatiest weirdos this side of old anime fandom.

I'm leaning toward my disappointment with it being the fact that it's barely got a point to make, and the ones that it makes aren't really well-made? Like, it doesn't know the difference between a race war and a Star Trek Eugenics war. It doesn't know how to build up tension between its actual characters. It doesn't know how to escalate conflict by following the story it's telling, instead of just twisting it at the end so we can have a space fight. But if its themes still reached a satisfying conclusion, that would matter a lot less.

And the themes are... not there, they're nothing. No character really embodies any idea or ideal, and no character has much of an opinion aside from the literal meme that War is Bad. A sentence which the translators for my subs really had to work overtime to try to figure out ways to say over and over again in different words, because that's essentially all Cagalli and Athrun say when you get them talking for long enough.

And it really feels like a weird turbo version of Gundam Wing, where the priorities of each characters are wrong and don't further their own stories. I was kinda shocked when the big Le Creuset reveal had nothing to do with the story so far, I was even more shocked when the fucking final fight was between him and Kira, two characters who do care about each other nor know each other very well. Athrun should have taken that fight, and Kira should have taken the bomb run; what the fuck? Why are we doing this like this?

Lacus just becoming the captain of a ship is so fucking wild considering how much they made Natalie Badgirl go through in order to become captain of her own, it's so funny, she is the absence of characterization. She just does whatever the show needs her to do at any point, and it doesn't matter what she has already accomplished because she can just do whatever she needs to accomplish next. Why would she be captain? Am I losing my mind? What the fuck?

The only characters I really appreciated for any period of time were Flay and La Flaga, the former because I thought the idea that someone in this team completely cracked right away and started fucking the main character to emotionally manipulate him into killing his own people fucking ruled, what a million dollars conflict. And the latter because La Flaga is the only character I don't mind, I think he's charming and I think he's cool.

And then not only did Flay do a 180 masquerading as character development and became just another kinda pure-coded Gundam Lady, complete with the fucking Newtype Space Ghost death scene where all her sins are forgiven and she comes up naked to the protagonist telling him it's daijobou and she'll mamoru him, but then they also didn't give La Flaga a fucking Gundam until the end of the show! At which point they had to invent a reason for him to have a rival, because Athrun was now part of the crew!

it just feels like nothing happens for 50 episodes, because the events that do happen barely feel like they connect to each other. Like, yeah, they literally have a cause and effect relationship, but... it really feels like nothing before the Freedom pops up matters, at the end of the day. It really feels like most characters don't have a thesis behind them, it really feels like the conflict is extremely artificial. At some point we're asked to care that Kira is a testtube baby and I just, why, man, who cares, I certainly don't, it would be 2003 when this came out, be so for real.

I also... this is more of a me thing, but this is the first Gundam show with like, modern fansevice, I would say. Turn-A still had some light nudity, and I think literally every Gundam show before it also did-- usually just showing the girls' breasts every once in a while, like anime used to. But it wasn't... it was oogly, but it didn't make me feel kinda grossed out.

Meanwhile I felt that scene with Lacus stripping to get in the space suit on episode 1, with the back shot of her panties hit me like a fucking truck, because I grew up with that exact style of fanservice, and I fucking hate it; I despise it, I cannot stand it, I need it to perish and I'm glad it more or less died outside of actual ecchi. It sucks and it happens every once in a while, and it just makes the whole thing so off, moments that I'm supposed to take seriously have these fucking shots of the girls' tits bouncing like balloons, and they're shots they repeat all the time.

Specifically the Flay death scene really suffers, because they do the Lala ghost thing, but she's posing naked for the camera as she tries to convince Kira that it was a good creative decision to make her actually start to have feelings for him. It's incredibly distracting and it doesn't help that I think all of these character designs low-key suck. These faces look like they're melting and I'm not attracted to them. They only look good when they're making really ugly, angry faces, like when Miria tries to stab Dearka.

Who, speaking of which-- these are the worst enemies by far in any Gundam show, specifically they are the most incompetent fucking people in the franchise. Not because they're not Char or anything, but the fuckboy brigade Athrun leads at the beginning of the show just feels like they never win, and then the three stooges that replace them actually never win. It's honestly really funny that they tried to fix the problem the show had, and gave more people Gundams, only for the fucking new guys to lose even harder.

It's just so vapid and so superficial in all the ways that it shouldn't be, and it got me kind of sad, because I was not having fun at the beginning at all, and then by the latter half I thought oh, this ORB arc is heating up, I'm enjoying some of these developments, I think the show might be good now, only for every single plot thread and revelation to disappoint me.

No villains have actual relationships to the heroes (WHICH IS WILD BECAUSE ONE OF THEM IS THE DUDE'S FATHER). The Coordinators' superiority is only informed to us, in practice they're basically the exact same. The moment everyone gets their nukes back, we get great fights and a killer Final Weapon in the form of the Genesis, but then it just goes the way Gundam always goes when someone pulls out the Final Weapon. The show stops pretending Coordinators aren't just Newtypes and weird psychic shit starts happening. At some point cloning is introduced but it only matters for one character. it's nuts!

If I was a kid I would be all over it, though. If I had never seen other Gundam shows, or just shows in general, I'm sure I would ride or die this shit til the end of my days. It has excellent mecha designs, cool fights, stellar music (except that last opening), and it's very well-acted... for the most part. But... fuck, if you want anything out of your stories, it's just not here.

Anyway, justice for Cagalli, she was a real character for like 2 episodes there and then they put her on a dress. Fuck me. Onward to IGLO-- wait what do you mean "Gundam Seed Astray"? It's 2 5 minutes OVAs? hang on a second.

....

OH MY GOD THAT'S SO MUCH FUCKING COOLER WHAT THE HELL

[deirdreariaicefrog]

What if Flay was in GSD?

Just a note: if you wish to use this in your fanfiction, feel free to! This is just a fun speculation post, nothing too serious.

Let’s pretend that Flay survived past SEED and went on to witness events from Destiny. What would she do?

Probability 1: She’d become a background character or completely sidelined in some way.

Destiny had a huge cast of characters; so many that even I had a hard time keeping track of everyone at times. A huge problem with having a large cast list is that some characters won’t get the screen time they deserve. 

Flay likely would’ve had the same fate as Miriallia or Cagalli: we might get to see her have something resembling a career, and then quickly get reduced to only having a few lines. It would get to a point where she can be seen, but not heard. 

Probability 2: Her prior views would be reframed; she doesn’t hate coordinators, but she finds the creation to be medically unethical.

In this one, she becomes a medical practitioner and a staunch advocate for banning the practice of Biological CPU, due to the amount of patients being admitted to her hospital that need long term care. This would make her a huge target.

Doubly so if she started leaking papers about CPUs to Chairman Durandal himself. A move likely motivated by the Atlantic Federation brushing off the hospital data (which checks out for Lord Djibril being in power and throwing all ethics out the window). 

Of course, Durandal would’ve used this data for his own nefarious purposes; in this timeline, Flay hastened the chairman revealing his true colors sooner (unintentionally). 

Probability 3: She is just chilling out at a colony after receiving adequate mental health support and is living out her best life.

I’d love that for her. 

[fostersffff]

Thinking about how for decades I had come to associate Kira Yamato with the term "wangst", and again, there is a lot of the Cosmic Era left for me to watch, but I'm beginning to wonder if maybe people just watched Wing and went "anyone who's more emotional than Heero Yuy is a Fucking Pussy" without ever putting any thought into why Heero Yuy was like that.

[deirdreariaicefrog]

One of my favorite mini rabbit holes on r/Gundam is the Lacus Mastermind theory. r/Flay still has some of the best posts from u/send-it-psychadelic

I got sad when I learned that send-it-psychedelic got banned. I hope they’re doing well, wherever they are. As a Flay fan, these posts helped me out of a depressive rut.

[fostersffff]

IT WAS INTENTIONAL!!!

[scarletlotus182]

I don't like how Rau Creset is talking to Flay

[scarletlotus182]

I knew this was coming and I'm still mad about it

[sakurakirathrun]

flay and kira might have actually been meant to be because why do they have the same insane belt fashion sense

what are you two thinking,,,,,,,, what is this,,,

[lulurimi]

what if kira saw flay buying things with belts so he started buying things with belts and then it slowly just became his typical fashion sense

[hydrangeasandroses]

Here’s another over analysis from me. If you guys want, I’ll do the same for “Anna Issho Datta no Ni”, “Distance” and “River”. Just let me know!

I’m going to start with a potentially spicy take: I’m of the opinion that “Find the Way” by Mika Nakashima is the quintessential Flay x Kira song in the entire soundtrack.

Before we go on, BIG FAT DISCLAIMER:

This entire analysis is, at the end of the day, my opinion. Just because I call it an “analysis”, it doesn’t mean it is immune to my own biases. I also want to make it clear that while I do ship Kira with Flay, I also ship him with Lacus. Cause, why not both? I am fully aware of how unhealthy Kira and Flay were with each other. Yet, I ship it because I still their relationship fascinating twenty years later.

Without further ado, let us proceed:

“Why do you try to carry all these wounds on your back?

It isn't for any one person's sake, please don't lose sight of that

Why am I, while hesitating,

Unable to escape?

What I hope for is the sun, the sun to light the way...

Though in this glowing cosmos our hands can't quite reach

We depend only on our resounding love

Because at the end of the path we've traveled we'll find the light

You'll find the way

It was a very sad dream,

But what I saw wasn't one bit clouded..." I said, "It's okay to cry,

Because I’ll stay by your side no matter what”

What I wish for is a hand, a hand to reach up to me...

Even without words, even without wings to fly on

As long as we stand our ground in the wind

Even if we're the first ones afflicted with this pain...

Though in this glowing cosmos our hands can't quite reach

We depend on only our resounding love

Because at the end of the path we've traveled we'll find the light

Find the way

Even without words, even without wings to fly on

As long as we stand our ground in the wind

At the end of the path we've traveled we finally saw the light...

You'll find the way”

source: https://www.animesonglyrics.com/gundam-seed/find-the-way

First thing’s first, since “boku wa” appears in the Japanese version of the lyrics, it can be safely assumed that the song is meant to be from Kira’s point of view. 

“Why do you try to carry all these wounds on your back?

It isn't for any one person's sake, please don't lose sight of that”

If you recall, Kira and Flay are easily the most traumatized pair on the archangel who didn’t really have an outlet for it aside from each other. The entirety of their unhealthy relationship was essentially a trauma bond.

Flay was especially consumed by her bereavement, which isn’t too unlike how homicidally bereaved people may react. She had a lot of anger towards the series of circumstances which led to her father’s untimely death.

“Why am I, while hesitating,

Unable to escape?”

As we all know, Kira felt guilty for failing Flay not once, not twice but three times. He’s trapped in this sense of guilt that persists well into Destiny.

“What I hope for is the sun, the sun to light the way...”

This seems self explanatory to me: Seeking an end to the war.

“Though in this glowing cosmos our hands can't quite reach

We depend on only our resounding love

Because at the end of the path we've traveled we'll find the light

You'll find the way”

From episode 35 onwards, Kira and Flay are permanently separated. It stings because they wanted to have a talk after his fight with Athrun… a conversation that will never be realized. 

Both he and Flay desperately wanted to be reunited, so that they both could apologize to each other. She especially had quite a bit to atone for, and it was her hope of speaking with him once more that kept her going.

While Kira may have romantically moved on from Flay, he still harbored love for her. On the contrary, she had accepted that she had feelings for him and wanted to do right by him. 

Anyways onto the next stanza because I love it so much:

“It was a very sad dream,

But what I saw wasn't one bit clouded..."

I said, "It's okay to cry,

Because I'll stay by your side no matter what."

What I wish for is a hand, a hand to reach up to me...”

I feel that this is what Kira wanted to tell Flay at some point; that she had a right to feel everything as intensely as she did. Or, at least something along those lines.

As for the “hand” part; I see it as a want for someone who truly understood his pain.

Granted; this stanza could easily apply to Kira x Lacus at the same time (for Lacus was incredibly empathetic and understood that he still had feelings for Flay by this point in the series).

“Even without words, even without wings to fly on

As long as we stand our ground in the wind

Even if we're the first ones afflicted with this pain..”

Both of them held on to hope until the very end; hope that they'd be able to have that conversation that would never come to fruition. Hope that she'd be able to apologize to him, which kept her going (even as she cried). He kept going in hopes of being able to save her.

The lyrics kind of just repeat themselves. I've analyzed enough of this song.

To me, anytime I hear the song, my thoughts will always drift towards this tragic ship. 💔

Anyways, I found this picture kind of cute out of context:

[fostersffff]

First Gundam produced after 9/11, eh?

[fostersffff]

This scene and episode is still buzzing in my head because there are now two paths:

Flay, having already been presented as spoiled and coming apart at the seams in the wake of her father’s death (various cuts to her thinking about how she wants to use Kira to Kill ‘Em All, squeezing the little girl’s hand too hard), is using familiar post-9/11 rhetoric to guilt trip her boyfriend and his friends into staying with the military instead of taking the clean slate honorable discharges, which in turn will almost guarantee Kira stays with the military.

It’s just sincere post-9/11 “freedom isn’t free” rhetoric that the narrative takes for granted.

Obviously, Japan probably didn’t care (broadly) about 9/11 in the same way America and American media did, but if you’re writing a military drama in 2002, surely it would’ve been impossible to avoid thinking about it.

[fostersffff]

First Gundam produced after 9/11, eh?

[fostersffff]

Gold star for Episode 08 of Gundam SEED!

Athrun burying down whatever feelings he may have about Lacus being missing so he can be a Good Soldier™ to be explicitly told the propaganda of it all is way more important than whatever shit he thought he was going to be doing is good!

Having the prejudice against Coordinators flare up more explicitly now that there's another one on the ship is real good, as is Flay's "well you're one of the good ones" while frothing at the mouth moments later when Lacus tries to shake her hand.

I don't think this is ultimately going anywhere, but I do like this little scene with Ramius and Badgiruel where Badgiruel is like "you cannot be doing this 'poor little civvie' thing in front of the poor little civvies you did this to (also she's literally the President's Daughter and Taylor Swift)".

Don't know exactly what Blue Cosmos is yet but I'm very excited for the problems Flay going "listen I just think the fourteen words make a lot of sense!" is going to cause.

And an implication that Lacus knows exactly what she's doing.

Good stuff!

[mandatory-blog-stop-asking]

flay is probably the only character in seed that I'm enjoying following but I have to admit that it's halfway through the show and they've refused to establish her actually doing her duties, so it just comes off as her job being having sex with Kira to emotionally manipulate him. and that's just a really funny thing to add to the docket in my head.

go her honestly. get that military healthcare and retirement plan. fucking cordies am I right.

[turboghast]

Now that I've finished Gundam SEED Destiny, I want to express the opinion on it which I've come to.

It's a show about how the pressure cooker of war breeds hypocrisy that doesn't realize that's it's a show about hypocrisy. Lead characters violate their stated principles left and right, yet the only hypocrisy to get serious remark is Durandal preaching peace as he sends assassins to solidify his power base by assassinating Lacus (and even that's primarily just foreshadowing his latter villainy). Nobody properly confronts Kira for killing Stella just as Shinn began to talk her down or notes that Cagali's words about sticking to ORB's principles just before the final battle are empty because they're striking preemptively enough to make them not really apply.

Because the show doesn't realize that it's about hypocrisy, the ending ends up thematically unfulfilling. The intended message about the necessity of the future fails to land because the show has cannot answer what all the hypocrisy means in the grand scheme of things, but of course there's no answer to be found, the writers didn't know they needed one.

[necronominomnom]

Why Most People Accept Tyranny (And the Few Who Break It) — From WWII to Gundam SEED & Code Geass (Lesson 8)

Stand out.Someone has to. It is easy to follow along. It can feel strange to door say something different. But without that unease, there is nofreedom. Remember Rosa Parks. The moment you set an example,the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow. Most people don’t support tyranny because they believe in it—they support it because they don’t stand against it. What Timothy…