flayallstertorturedmind

[flayallstertorturedmind]

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

I've been expecting you....

So- right off the bat I think SEED would 100% be improved by focusing more on Flay and coming from her PoV. Do I think the people who wrote SEED could pull that off? No, that would require actually empathizing with teenage girls. But for the sake of pretend, I'd imagine focus on the upbringing that Flay had and what kind of man her father was (who I do not think was a good person) and how she was brought up to hate. I'd also want to see more scenes of actual substance from her time with ZAFT, seeing her get used to being surrounded by Coordinators and not just getting manipulated by Rau.

Also for as much as I kinda dump on Lacus, I think it's a huge missed opportunity to never have them interact with the roles reversed from when Lacus was rescued by the Archangel. Have Flay interact with Lacus outside the context of Kira.

I also would hope that Flay-focused SEED would do more with her than just fridge her for Kira's sake. She had a lot of room to grow and develop outside of her relationship with Kira and it felt like they really wasted her potential as one of the more interesting characters on the show.

[flayallstertorturedmind]

Okay so thoughts on Gundam SEED-

I want to start by saying I actually really enjoyed it! It was fun- and I kinda live for the trashy melodrama and soap opera writing. But it did take a while for me to get invested, I think around half way through the series it actually started to sink it's claws in me.

See, I really struggled to get invested during the first half of the show when it was just a beat-for-beat retelling of UC. If I wanted to watch Mobile Suit Gundam, I'd watch Mobile Suit Gundam. I understand that this may have been an effort to reintroduce MSG to new, younger audiences, but it felt more like they didn't have enough faith in their original material to let it stand on it's own (and for the record, I think the added framing of spacenoid eugenics is really dumb and really bad). And it's a bit of a shame because I think when the show does stand more on it's original material it's actually much better for it (minus the eugenics)!

Now I don't think SEED is a particularly smart show with a lot to say. I think it's honestly really dumb and has some... vaguely and uncomfortably nationalist undertones to it, but I did find it to be enjoyable. I absolutely live for the drama, I was on board for the romances and all of that. The way I legitimately gasped at the reveal of Rau's identity- it was engaging to me! It was fun! I've grown attached to this cast in a way I didn't think I would. Almost a shame though, because I hear Destiny is a pretty bad time for all of my favs.

Athrun and Cagalli were easily my favorite parts of the show. Imo, they are by far the most interesting characters (Flay too but they did her dirty). Athrun is much more of what I wanted out of a protagonist and I think that's the benefit of being a more original character. Kira always felt like Amuro 2.0 but with nothing really new to say. Athrun on the other hand has a real struggle! He's conflicted and messy and figuring shit out and I understand why he's not the main character but god I wish he was.

[flayallstertorturedmind]

Did Kira ever find out Flay was manipulating him?

I honestly don't think he did. Kira breaks up with Flay EP 29, but it isn't because he thinks she was manipulating him. It was because he was done with the relationship and the stress it brought on. Kira is a volatile, emotional character and he was disassociating with everything around him at that point. We see that he still cares for Flay throughout Gundam SEED, and especially when she dies. Gundam SEED FREEDOM, we apparently can confirm based on Fukuda's comments that Kira has a picture of Flay that inspired Agnes to copy Flay's hair colour in hopes of attracting him. So it is safe to say that Kira continued to believe Flay loved him.

While she was manipulating him in the beginning, I think they both caught feelings early on and the feelings stayed. Kira liked Flay from Episode 1 onward. Flay did think Kira was cute but caught feelings later on. It was right person, wrong time. Very wrong time.

[flayallstertorturedmind]

If you'd like, you can explain why in the comments/reblogs.

[flayallstertorturedmind]

I just can't stop thinking about Flay's Cell DX card:

[flayallstertorturedmind]

CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR GUNDAM SEED. -MISAKI

Keep reading

[flayallstertorturedmind]

Either of them will do.

seed enjoyers should i watch the original or the remaster

[flayallstertorturedmind]

So, just to be clear, Kira never knew he was being manipulated by Flay, right?

[flayallstertorturedmind]

seed enjoyers should i watch the original or the remaster

[flayallstertorturedmind]

So, just to be clear, Kira never knew he was being manipulated by Flay, right?

[flayallstertorturedmind]

How do you think it would have played out if Flay Allster somehow survived in Seed?

I like the Flay Allster questions. I think the biggest difference might have been that Kira wouldn't have spiralled so much and had so much depression and dependency in DESTINY and FREEDOM. Kira's biggest hang up is that the most important parts of his past never had closure. Flay? Dead before he could really have a final conversation with her. Rau? Dead in battle, before he could really understand what Rau meant. Durandal? Dead, before Kira could even find out if he really believed in absolute freedom of choice or if Durandal was right. He ends up being depressed and disclosed in Destiny because of it. The show won't go into detail, because we never see Kira bring up Flay, his childhood friends, or his trauma again... but it is quite obvious that Flay dying did damage to him. Damage that isn't fixed until Freedom, 3 years later. Even then, he has extreme co-dependency on Lacus and panics if she is taken away.

He would have had the chance to say goodbye to Flay, or to stay with her. He would have had the chance to really get closure with his friend group, or part of his past in Heliopolis.

I think if Flay had somehow survived, it would have been either Kira successfully rescuing her, or her never having been in Rau's way. She would have gotten aboard an Earth Forces vessel safely. Or aboard the Archangel. She would have had the chance to work past her issues.

I think in specific I would have liked this scenario:

When Flay is aboard the Dominion, she is released on a safety pod. Instead of being in harms way, Kira rescues the safety pod like he did the other time. It's a perfect call back to when he rescued Flay the first time. And he takes her back to the Archangel, where Flay is able to say her apologies to Sai and Miriallia. It gives her the opportunity to correct her wrongs there. When the battle ends, Kira also boards the Archangel, where he and Flay smile at each other - and the show ends with that.

I really, truly, 100% hope that Flay would have been able to apologize to Kira, and that they would try to build a relationship again. It is fanciful thinking, but she was a character who really pushed Kira's boundaries. In ways that no one else did. I also like to think that under these new circumstances, where she is finally moving on from her hatred of Coordinators, and her issues from earlier, she could connect to new characters. She and Cagalli have one thing in common at this point - both have lost a father who they loved, even if they saw them very little. It would be the perfect way to have Flay become involved in Orb's military, to find a role to suit her. I think even if Kira were to be with Lacus, she would have matured enough after everything she went through at the latter half of Seed.

In Destiny, it could have meant her being able to play a better supporting role.

But such things didn't happen. :(

Thank you for the question! I'm really enjoying these Gundam Seed questions.

[flayallstertorturedmind]

Which Gundam Seed verse character deserves better?

100% without a doubt Flay Allster. She was a character who grew on me with my second, third, etc watch. She was messy, manipulative, naive... She used her feminine charms to protect herself. But she was still a character who moved the show forward. She had agency, and she was the traditional type of female femme fatale that the show lacked afterwards.

Her death was sad and tragic, and even though we never see it, it affected Kira a lot. I almost don't believe he could move on from it quickly.

She deserved to tell him her feelings, and she deserved to be able to move on if it didn't work. They didn't get a chance to talk about their relationship, the bad and the good, and see where it goes. She should have had real closure, not just dying. I understand why they did it - part because they wanted Kira with Lacus, part because killing Flay meant drama. But it would have been a better ending to have Flay really move on if that was the case.

I also really think ALL of Kira's Heliopolis crew got kind of underhanded cards. Sai, Tolle, Miriallia and Kuzzey were Kira's original friends. He never remembers them. It almost feels like they cease existing, especially when Cagalli recruits Sai and Miriallia into Orb but Kira never acknowledges them.

[flayallstertorturedmind]

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

i would fucking KILL for a SEED show which focused on Flay are you kidding me. if SEED was being written by the kind of people who understand that she is in fact one of the most interesting characters they have i think they could have cooked something really cool, even if the rest of the shitty worldbuilding with all its baked-in issues was left intact.

if you take everything that in the original show is basically used to convey "Flay is a horrible two-timing yandere bitch" and treated it seriously with a Flay POV story, for the first half of SEED you'd have a really tragic character narrative about a girl whose grief essentially eats her alive, pushing her to worse and worse depths of moral depravity as she tries to assuage both that grief and the escalating guilt as she keeps making terrible decisions that hurt her and the people around her. like Shinn, she's a character who feels like she walked onto the wrong set on her way to a more grounded and tragic Tomino Gundam show (for better and worse, since the misogynistic elements could absolutely fit there too lol (and like Shinn, Fukuda doesn't know what to do with her and completely fucks it)).

that being said, i don't think you'd actually get much out of just retelling the original story with a greater focus on Flay's perspective, because in the back half of the show she's essentially shoved into a closet before she gets fridged in the finale. her character just sort of loses its momentum, with all the pathos fading into the background before Kira can have his big manly sook over her dying, and there's only so much you can do with such meagre material.

i think the approach for a Flay-centric story is shorter, and is laser-focused on this young woman's unravelling life with the mecha pilot characters acting in a more secondary role, almost like Lelouch for a lot of the early parts of Code Geass. and then you could have the dealer's choice of whether to take it in a bittersweet and tragic direction, or maybe towards something more sunny and happy. tbh my ideal version of this is just a remix of Flay's concept in a different AU free from SEED's plot-and-world baggage, which is not totally inconceivable, since Flay is already a remix of Quess' concept wrapped in Fraw Bow's basic look. would i be really interested in watching that show? yes. do i think Sunrise would greenlight such a show in a million years? good fucking lord no.

anyway this was a long and rambling answer so to answer directly - if it was told from Flay's view that would be much more interesting than what we actually got and there's plenty of character potential there, but the approach would need to involve setting fire to a lot of the rest of SEED because its foundationally shit. it would absolutely have been better if for no other reason than Kira would have less screentime.

anyway ty for sending in the ask!! this was really interesting to think about :3

[flayallstertorturedmind]

Lacus didn't need to be an accord.

I just wanted to do a short thing about Lacus, a character I love immensely, despite the fact that I don't like what was done to her in Freedom.

I can almost separate her as three separate characters between Gundam SEED, Gundam SEED DESTINY, and Gundam SEED FREEDOM. These three different characters serve different functions and can almost come across as three different characters.

Gundam SEED: The version of Lacus we encounter in SEED comes off as an oblivious pop star. Aboard the Archangel, she is charming, pretty and very oblivious to the nature of the people around her. She charms Kira, and the other crewmembers. She doesn't come off as a threat. It isn't until she is handed back to Athrun, and Rau attempts to launch an attack on Kira, that we see that Lacus is well aware of military rules and stops the attack quickly. The shift in change of voice, her curtness and even her expression tell you that the facade she had aboard the Archangel was not the full picture of Lacus. She is full aware of where she is and what she can do.

This continues in SEED. From somehow rescuing Kira, to getting the Freedom from him from what is likely a high security military base (and doing it with the same super oblivious pop-star charm she had aboard the Archangel), to how she manipulates Athrun into realizing he needs to leave ZAFT. This Lacus that we see is cunning, capable and knowledgeable in ways that we couldn't imagine. She changes the tide of the war and her influence on others is awe inspiring. Even Cagalli, for all of her piloting abilities, can't amass the same reactions that Lacus does. She knows the military, she knows the political climate, and she can influence people. She is the most powerful character in SEED, and they didn't make her pilot to do it.

In Gundam SEED DESTINY: Lacus takes a step back and wants the normal life with Kira. It's understandable - she is a young woman in love, who wants to spend her life happily with Kira. But it isn't the same politically savvy young lady we see in SEED. She doesn't want to use her influence, even if the world is struggling. It comes to a point where she can't even stop others from using her influence.

In DESTINY, Durandal tries to use Lacus's power as a figure to manipulate others. He can use the music side of her, but he has trouble understanding what she was really like. Lacus was not the oblivious, cheerful pop-star that Durandal portrays Meer as. She was cunning. She knew the military. She knew how to use her words in a way that would force others to consider her perspective. Meer can't replicate that because they simply don't know how intricate Lacus is.

Given that Lacus relies on Kira as a sword, I don't even think Kira understands that depth of Lacus. She is not simply a figurehead. She is experienced. We don't see the SEED Lacus who charmed her way out of a dangerous enemy ship, or charmed her way into getting the Freedom, because she just becomes the worried, scared girlfriend. She speaks up in a speech against Meer when she finally has to, but that speech shows none of the tact that Lacus had in SEED.

In Gundam SEED FREEDOM: They reduce everything that SEED Lacus accomplished by making her an Accord. She was intelligent, knowledgeable about the military, apprised of world affairs, and knew how to use the gaze focused on her and direct it to others. She was powerful without needing to be an ultimate coordinator. Being an accord and simply attributing all of this to her ability to read minds and influence others as something generated in a laboratory, destroys just how compelling Lacus truly was. It is so disappointing. It is tragic that it really hurts her character development. Instead of putting her on the forefront of the battle with the same charm she had, she is reduced to simply waiting for Kira to rescue her, piloting the Mighty Defender pack to Kira, and then piloting for him? It's such a strange twist when Lacus could barely move the Infinite Justice in DESTINY. It reduces her from being a powerhouse character to just being another genetically enhanced character who didn't work for what she had.

The Lacus in SEED, who showed tact, charm, cunning, was an amazing character. She wasn't stupid in the slightest. in FREEDOM, she doesn't even try to charm her way out of Orphee. She doesn't try anything except claiming she's resisting. It isn't the same character, and I'd argue this hurt her more than anything.

I would have preferred the story simply leave her as an endearing, powerful political figure, and for Aura to want her to join them because Durandal told her about how powerful Lacus is. Maybe throw in that she knew Lacus's mom and had been promised Lacus to be with Orphee. The Accord bits were never necessary.

Nail in the coffin for me was when Cagalli was shafted, but still given all of the power that Lacus could have had. She spoke up against Orphee, showed political tact by letting the Millenium escape, prepared for the Accords powers with remote control AND the remade DESTINY era gundams, and was shown to be a much better political leader.

Lacus could have been that and more. She didn't need the piloting. She didn't need mind reading. She only needed to be Lacus, full on Lacus, let loose. She was such a compelling character, who broke the mold of the oblivious, pink character that she should have been in just in SEED. I hope they don't touch her character more and make it even worse lol.

It literally is three different characters if you separate the three Lacus. She is not even remotely as intelligent or capable as the version in SEED.

[flayallstertorturedmind]

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

I am not certain it would meaningfully make SEED a better show, because we do get Flay's perspective frequently. The things that are interesting about Flay is that she is an incendiary agent within Archangel that has traded caring for the future over her short term revenge, and the pain of her losing her father in front of her. Her nonstandard methods of revenge, and how they help and hamper the Archangel's efforts are the crux of what makes a lot of episodes of SEED interesting (to me at least) even if it does play into the reductive stances SEED takes on womanhood and femininity. Below the read more is kind of a meandering train of thought about what feels like SEED's storytelling goals, a superficial comparison to the Early and Late UC, and some thoughts about Flay as a main character and what SEED would look like with her as the main character.

Perhaps, if rotating Kira out of the protagonist seat meant other important characters might get screen time and chances to explore their intentions and ideologies, characters like Lacus or Cagali who could be a foil to Flay, it might increase the quality of the show, if only because Athrun and Kira are very stationary characters. Its been like 5 years since I watched SEED, so I don't feel confident providing specifics - that being said -

Going on mouthfeel alone -

The Universal Century and Tomino gundam shows had a lot of often contradictory rhetoric on the place of Women in war and arguably society - contradictory enough that if one tried they could likely find an argument during early UC to support whatever way you felt.

Late UC shows continue with this rhetoric, and I feel like place a clearer, more distinct value on womanhood that becomes moralistic in favor of placing women on very specifically carved pedestals - like Kihel Heim and Dianna Soriel who are raised to be leaders, and their roles as the queens of the Moonrace being far reaching and near divine within the culture of the Moonrace. SEED, in its treatment of women, continuing into SEED Destiny often denies that women necessarily have a place on the battlefield, denies that they exist outside of an inherently feminine container, and longs to see them supplicate to their arguably less interesting male counterparts. Lacus at the end of SEED is seemingly spared this fate, by breaking away from her place and forging out on her own with a distinct military purpose toward ending the war but still ultimate ends up in a support position to Kira. To SEEDs detriment. It's all very boring. It's kind of regressive. I wouldn't suggest that Gundam under Tomino didn't have its moments of sexism, but it also had those contradictions that give the UC shows part of their character and charm.

So then, if Flay was the main character, couldn't the creators take a more progressive stance about women, one might ask and I don't think that's really in the cards. Establishing a gender quo for Gundam without Tomino feels maybe as important to SEED as absolving Japan in universe of the criticisms of Imperial Japan present in the Universal Century. A show following Flay would be one mired in her day to day suffering, her intense xenophobia? Racism? I'm not sure how to classify her hatred for Coordinators, and the moments in which he dehumanizes herself and Kira in order to attain he aimless revenge. It would be a grim, frustrating, and upsetting story that ultimately would end in her death, and her last minute repentance that I think would upset more people than not. My personal enjoyment of Flay is because she forces her agency in such a cruel and haphazard way throughout the show, to almost everyone's detriment around her, in a very melodramatic fashion. If one asked me if I thought she deserved better, I could say yes, certainly, because in fiction she is a teenage girl who suffers great tragedy and in turn creates great tragedy but as a fictional character, I appreciate the role she plays and rather than change her, if was making changes, I would change the roles of others to reach her level of agency rather than alter her specifically.

[flayallstertorturedmind]

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

An interesting idea. If you wanted to completely wipe out Kira and Athrun’s POV you’d probably want to force Flay out of Kira’s room or wherever she hides for the different battles. Then use her perspective to emphasize the sheer size and destructive powers the mobile suits really have, something that’s much harder to appreciate when you’re watching like a floating camera in space.

Outside of battles you could use the idea to really hammer home how Flay’s attempts at manipulating Kira ends up hurting herself more than it does him by slowly revealing just how much her behavior has caused her to isolate and estrange herself from the rest of the Archangel’s crew and her friends.

After Kira’s “death,” the part of the show where Flay’s captured by Le Creuset would most likely be cut short. Show a few battles from the perspective of a non pilot on the Zaft side of things for comparison, but don’t linger too long in case battles like this get stale.

After all that in the final battles it would probably remain mostly the same as far as perspective goes just with the same changes as were in the first part of the show, using Flay’s lack of information on what’s happened to ratchet up the tension.

If I were to change it and try and make it more exciting, I’d start hinting at Flay possibly being a Newtype towards the end of her captivity and throughout the final battle. Have Flay learn things before just slightly before Natarle and Azrael, and have that advantage steal her resolve to attempt to disobey Azrael and try and get information to the Archangel, which would flow into Natarle standing up to Azrael and Flay trying to lead the fleeing crew to the archangel. When Le Creuset shoots down her shuttle we then see her final exchange with Kira connecting in the way Newtypes do mostly the same, only afterwards instead of just Kira piloting the Freedom, you can see the ghostly image of Flay briefly adding to his perception and reaction time, demonstrating that Kira isn’t the better pilot because he’s some “super coordinator,” but from the strength gained through true, if messy, human connection.

I stand by SEED being a fantastic show, and Flay already being a fantastic character. She’s already pretty close to being a third MC as far as how often her perspective is the one being shown and how important she is to the show’s character drama on the Archangel. Something like this is a very fun idea, but I don’t think I’d ever think of it as a way of making SEED “better,” rather as a means of expanding on something that’s already great.

I hope you found this interesting. I certainly had fun thinking it up!