flayallstertorturedmind

[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!

[flayallstertorturedmind]

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

this has been sitting in my asks for a while, and honestly i kind of forgot about it till recently when i started watching Gundam SEED Destiny. i think it helps thats im like months removed from when this was initially asked and i'm in the middle of Destiny.

the thing is i dont think it would have been better from Flays POV. shes not a strong enough character on her own to carry something like this. its why you need Kira and the other kids from Heliopolis, or at least her ex fiance Sai to bounce between. seriously, whats up with this kids being like 16 and having rearranged marriages. its fucking weird.

shes not Lacus or Cagalli. shes static, but mostly a symbolic character. shes there to show how the "normal" citizens are. shes scared of change which makes her scared of the Coordinators', which makes her see them as something other. so thats why she sexually manipulated Kira, and used him as a weapon for her revenge. Flay's only real "change" is when she gets manipulated herself by Rau Le Creuset to deliver the N-Jammer Canceller data, but it was too late.

anyways, i think im off topic. i dont think it would have been better. i think Flay suited her role well. while i dont like the character, i do think she did her role was great. she was what she was meant to be. its like Misa from Death Note. i hate Misa with a passion. ask anyone who knows me and they'll tell you "tad? yeah he really hates Misa. literally anytime someone brings up Death Note the first words out of his mouth are "FUCK MISA" its really weird. i think he secretly hates women" thats how much i hate Misa. but i also understand her role in the story and i think what she does is great. i just find her character fucking annoying, like Flay. Misa is just better written.

[flayallstertorturedmind]

how Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny misunderstands eugenics (and how 0079, Zeta, and ZZ nailed it)

(note; unless i specify otherwise, i'm using 'Gundam SEED' as a catch-all for the combined 100 episode run of both Cosmic Era shows)

Gundam SEED is built around the idea of genetic modification on steroids, where huge populations of Coordinators (Spacenoid stand-ins, living in the Cosmic Era's equivalent of the Sides, the PLANTs) are genetically modified in-vitro to be immune to disease, to be stronger, smarter, and kind of better at everything than unmodified Naturals (Earthnoid stand-ins who are just normal-ass Earth people). i feel like this core setup, and the way the show handles it, falls into the trap of treating the arguments of eugenicists seriously, when there's absolutely no reason to give them an inch on anything, something that the early UC understood all too well.

for one thing, Gundam SEED fails to actually address any of the really pertinent questions gene therapy raises, especially since SEED doesn't just feature genetic engineering as a plot device like G-Witch and ZZ, it bases an entire faction around its use and makes it the driving force of the show's core conflict. the show does not, for example, broach the extremely thorny topic of how genetic modification will affect the marginalised. many current pushes for genetic modification are pushed by insane eugenics groups, and the show never addresses whether, for example, the PLANTs try to gene edit out autism, or screen for any kind of genetic markers for being gay or trans. it doesn't ask whether there is any validity to the search for genetic explanations for these things, as contemporary eugenics organisations such as Autism Speaks insist. would non-white Coordinator parents be pressured to bump their kid's skin up a couple of shades to reduce the impact of racism and colourism on their lives? we see from the forced-labour camps the Alliance sets up in North Africa during Destiny that the CE is a world where racism is still very much a cultural force, and yet SEED never addresses how that interacts with Coordinators, despite a lot of the roots of modern genetic research (undoubtedly something that has led to a lot of positive medical advances) nonetheless lying in the 'scientific racism' of the early 20th century. an unfavourable reading might even point out that since we never see any of this stuff addressed or treated as a problem (for example, we don't meet any queer or neurodivergent Coordinators), SEED accepts that these are indeed qualities for which there are genetic markers, and it's not worth examining that the PLANTs bin them. that is a slightly unfair reading because the lack of those kinds of characters among Naturals suggest it just wasn't something the writers felt they could include for whatever reason, but then I would argue that if you're not able to address these things then you have no business writing a science fiction story where an entire core culture is built around genetic modification in the first place.

i'm not arguing that any stories about genetic modification are, by definition, eugenicist; G-Witch features it in the form of Suletta herself, and Notrette's patented brand of Tasty Tomatoes. the difference is that the show doesn't feature an entire society built from the ground-up around genetic engineering, which makes the comparisons to fascists less immediate, and even then G-Witch takes the time to address that Suletta herself feels like her only value is as a tool, precisely because she was genetically engineered to fulfil a specific purpose. it comes closer to grappling with the real dark side of these ideas in a 25 episode run than SEED did in 100.

instead, the framing of genetic modification in SEED as creating people who are, unambiguously, better at absolutely everything, and whose main obstacle is jealousy from unmodified people, accepts at face value the premise that to be superior due to your genetics is possible. by doing this, and also ignoring any of the real concerns marginalised people had at the time, and continue to have to this day about the possible uses of genetic modification, the show comes off as validating eugenicists. while SEED hedges on the details, i would argue that by accepting this as a basic premise to begin with, the show has already validated an extremely noxious worldview.

that being said, the Coordinators do experience significant problems with fertility, with birthrates collapsing in the third generation and requiring interbreeding with Naturals to sustain their population. the show does not assert that genetic modification makes the Coordinators into flawless ubermensch, and clumsily attempts to argue for a middle ground between fascistic genetic purity and a degree of equality between Naturals and Coordinators. imo the issues the PLANTs end up having is because SEED isn't like, actively trying to write a treatise on why eugenics is good, instead, the writers chose a hot-button issue to address and then badly fumbled it, in the process treating seriously and partially validating ideas that are in the real world just a flimsy cover for racial hatred and other bigotries. to my mind, it's saying that eugenics works to a point and then starts to break down, but i think the idea that it can work up to any kind of point is giving it a lot more credit than it really deserves.

my core frustrations with that are a) that SEED is actually pretty good when it shunts that stuff into the background, e.g. in the first half of Destiny, and it's frustrating watching the show fall back into being about this shit and neglecting the stronger elements like the solid character work with Shinn and Athrun, and b) previous Gundam shows already staked out a strong position that what SEED takes as a given is actually total horseshit. the show's themes would be frustrating enough if they didn't exist as part of a franchise which has previously gotten this issue more or less right, with the highly combat-effective Coordinators being an obvious stand-in for the UC's Newtypes. the Zabis hijack the idea of Newtypes from Zeon Deikun and treat being a Newtype as a matter of genetics because it made their fascist spacenoid supremacy sound semi-legitimate and scientific. meanwhile, the text of 0079, Zeta, and ZZ insists that to be a Newtype is something almost impossible to define quantifiably. characters who are stated in-universe to be Oldtypes nonetheless experience Newtype visions, and the defining factor in developing Newtype abilities is nothing to do with being a pure-blooded Spacenoid, but about the simple fact of existing in space and allowing that to change the way you interact with the world. to my mind, the early UC's position is that while capable of providing miracles like the Sides, science is also too often invoked as a rhetorical device to retroactively justify existing dehumanisation and hatred by making it sound objective and logical, leading to Zeon seeing Earthnoids as so inhuman that killing billions of them in Operation British was acceptable to them. SEED doesn't just lack an interesting take on this core element of the UC (like Iron-Blooded Orphans' focus on how this creates avenues for labour exploitation through the stigmatisation of the Alaya-Vinjana system), it fails to understand it by accepting such a retroactive justification as part of its core premise, something that sticks out really badly because the CE shows are so interested in being a modern update of 0079 and Zeta.

my animosity towards the character of Kira in particular is that he's emblematic of these thematic and worldbuilding fuckups, cut as he is from the eugenic cloth. SEED Destiny's best moments were early on when Athrun seriously questioned Kira on his beliefs for the first time, after Kira insisted that Athrun betray ZAFT over nothing more than a hunch. and yet, Kira is vindicated, and his worldview of peace at all costs, while initially challenged by Shinn and Athrun in Destiny, is treated seriously by the show's end. Destiny's conclusion is that Kira, due to his superior genetics, simply knows better, and that we should sit down, shut the fuck up, and let our families be vaporised by nuclear murderbeams if that's what our genetically pure overlords think is best, even if the best evidence Kira has to support his worldview is little more than a hunch, wisdom granted by his superior genes. again, i don't think SEED understands that this is what it's saying; Kira talks the talk about equality between Naturals and Coordinators, it's just that the text of the show is so muddled and poorly written that it ends up saying the opposite. taken along with all of the other ways in which his character ends up screwing with the elements of SEED that i find legitimately compelling and interesting, it's difficult not to really hate him, and to find SEED as a whole deeply frustrating and disappointing.

SEED Freedom does so little to develop any of these ideas that it's honestly barely worth mentioning. having spent 100 episodes ceding ground to the eugenics shit, Freedom mostly just plays in the space that was created for it. it's much more concerned with bullshit comphet and assassinating the blackened, charred remains of Shinn's character than it is with grappling with the fact that "hey the show kept saying eugenics works do we maybe want to examine that a little in our legacy sequel". bad movie for a variety of reasons, but mostly unconnected from what im on about here.

[flayallstertorturedmind]

i still think its funny how in Gundam SEED they were like, "hey we found space whale bones on mars" and its not even a big deal then it was NEVER brought it up ever again.

they didn't even show it in Destiny but it has a blink and you miss it moment in the Freedom movie.

[flayallstertorturedmind]

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

i think it would’ve been better but idk seed is kind of just impossible to make good.

[flayallstertorturedmind]

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

Before I answer this ask, first things first:

If you've put in an ask into the box, please do not ask it again. Different questions take different amounts of thought and effort to answer, and just because I don't answer it today doesn't mean it's not something I'm not thinking about or putting together a good answer for, that's not immediately harsh or dismissive.

I also have a Day Job that I spend 40 hours/5 days a week at, and that takes priority above all else - the Day Job brings in money, blogging on Tumblr does not, and it is, quite frankly, a hobby and is not my main priority by a long shot.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, back to the question.

Personally, if they'd told Seed from Flay's POV, we'd have the rough equivalent of Meer's story in Destiny but perspective flipped to Earth Alliance. Like Meer, Flay is a non-combatant who shows no real initiative towards learning to fight (the Archangel had the simulator for the Skygrasper, and imho if Tolle could manage it there's no reason Flay couldn't given sufficient time on it). And it was also pretty obvious that the Earth Alliance higher ups knew Flay could be a useful propaganda tool when she made her Impassioned Speech when she decided to enlist for real.

That said, had Flay actually made it out of Alaska to (most likely) Washington DC (since her father has ties to Blue Cosmos in the Atlantic Federation), I could see her becoming "successful" Meer-like figure but for the Earth Alliance, that is to say, she'd have someone else (read: someone from Logos/Blue Cosmos) shoving speeches into her hands for her to give. And from there, I could reasonably see her as becoming the Atlantic Federation/Earth Alliance equivalent of Lacus or Cagalli, albeit with less initiative and more "handling" (in that she's never really given free reign to make or influence policy the way Lacus or Cagalli have) until quite possibly post-Seed Freedom, after the fall of Logos and the death of Colonel Michael leaving very little for Blue Cosmos to rally around. Or even be the one to lead Blue Cosmos after Seed Destiny as one of the last surviving members of an influential Natural families.

Which I guess is kind of interesting, but not really something that would've drawn me into Seed - Flay herself is a realistic character for the setting, but for a number of personal reasons (that I will not delve into here), not one I'm hugely fond of.

[flayallstertorturedmind]

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

Would it have been better?

Nah it won't. I rather not have anything from Flay's POV 😃

Having Seed being told in Flay's POV felt like what Geats would happen if told from Michinaga's POV... and I rather not see that.

Aah.... suddenly thinking about Flay made me compare the scene of Flay's death with that stupid scene of Michi in Ace's arms 😬

i dare you to make me explain further than this; either as Seed in Flay's POV or Geats in Michi's POV cos both of them barely interact with the main characters or get involved in matters outside of the stuff that relates to them so I'll HATE to have to sit down watching the events unfolding through their eyes

[flayallstertorturedmind]

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

I wrote a lot and its spoilery so just in case I'll put this answer under a cut. the tl;dr is that I don't think it would be better.

I think I need to start this off by saying I do not like Flay. She's well written, but its because of that that I dislike her. She used Kira because of her hatred towards coordinators, and only ever thought of herself, even when she finally had real feelings for him she spent a long time curled up before eventually trying to move on. Her fear of death brought out what kind of person she really was, and how she wasn't afraid to manipulate the person she saw as the strongest to protect her, despite how much she also hated him for what he was. It's a really believable response in that kind of situation.

What Gundam SEED does well is show both sides of the fight. How both sides are in the wrong in one way or another due to how its mostly told through the eyes of Kira and Athrun. They spend most of the series on opposite sides, both wondering which side is actually right, this would result in both ultimately agreeing that the answer is neither.

With that in mind, if the series was only in Flay's point of view, it would be heavily one sided. To have the narrative just from her point of view, I suppose the approach would be for us to hear her thoughts on things more. We'd lose a lot of sight on events like what happens with other characters like say Athrun and Cagalli when they first meet on that island, and the crew of the Archangel when shes not around them anymore, like right at the end when she's on the Dominion. She also spends half the series hiding in a bedroom, so her view would be a bit cut off. Flay might make us hate the coordinators too. If we had only her narrative throughout the whole story, we'd be only hearing the bad things the Coordinators do and how the Naturals are just trying to defend their home. With the way Flay is, she would also twist you into thinking the problems with the Earth Forces are somehow really positive. We'd even be forced to see Kira in a different light due to her thoughts, despite the fact that hes doing everything to try and help his friends, including her even though she'd already ripped into him for being a Coordinator. She pins the death of her father on him, perhaps we too would see that as his fault despite it really being something he simply couldnt control. We'd also get a closer look at their relationship, how she would use his own feelings of self doubt against him, essentially begging him to protect her, with the hope he might die in battle doing so.

We would also get a better look at her growth. She does eventually start to really care about Kira despite the fact that she had been using him all that time. His death did mess her up, she hid with Birdy and didn't want to be with the rest of the crew, devastated that she lost him. And at that point I don't think even Flay could think of the events that took place at Orb as a positive one. The intense bloodshed caused by the Earth Forces there was seen as horrific by most. Maybe the Flay at the start of the series would have seen it as a necesary choice, but at that point she had grown to realize that Coordinators really were just people like her.

Perhaps due to that horrible-starting relationship with Kira, Flay would end up really wanting the war to end (its hard to say whether she was pro-war at the start or not, but she did seem to align with Blue Cosmos so perhaps?) thus when she was given that disc by Creuset she was instantly interested, not giving it even a second thought as to why someone who should be an enemy would do any of this. She trusted that. And then gave it to someone who would naturally use that information to cause more bloodshed via nukes. She was sadly not the smartest cookie. Did she really believe the disc would somehow contain a way to end a race war naturally? I want to hear these thoughts.

To further her growth, Flay was really disturbed by Azrael's comments and hatred for the Coordinators. This was a massive change to the Flay we see at the start of the series, screaming at Kira for being a Coordinator. And again, that would be interesting to hear her thoughts on.

Of course we did get to hear her true feelings for Kira right at the end, but sadly it was a little late...

All in all, I don't think it would be better. But I do think it would be interesting to have such a selfish main character giving her thoughts and opinions and getting to see how her mindset changes through the events that she goes through. Maybe it'd be a cool 12 episode spin off.

[flayallstertorturedmind]

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

woulda been a lot shorter, that’s for sure!

flay is interesting in that she’s a much more flawed character than any of our protags, but that does not a good main character make. at least, not in and of itself. she’s a good foil to lacus, but that’s it—a foil. meer was probably made to fill a similar role as her as a more human counterpart to our almost overly-perfect heroine (as rie tanaka described lacus).

i think people would hate seed even more than they already do if she was the face of the series, bc she’s a manipulative female character who doesn’t do much in the way of action.

hold on i’m gonna consult the biggest seed fan i know—

he says,

it would shorter than WFM but more memorable than RiG

[flayallstertorturedmind]

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

...as someone who likes Kira and dislikes Flay (though I do think a majority of people who watch SEED are not fans of Flay) I'm kind of like... why. LMAOOO.

I actually talked to my boyfriend about this because he is 1) far better at thinking critically about media than I am, 2) is actually into gundam as a franchise and 3) likes flay more than me.

We're both of the agreement that changes would have to be made in order to make Flay the protagonist. You'd have to make her more sympathetic toward Coordinators, I think so you'd have to toss her racism out the door from the get go or have her realize that those views are wrong earlier on than when she does in the series. But, I think that's straying from the question that you asked.

I think telling Gundam SEED from Flay's point of view would detract from SEED's narrative because it would be viewing the Bloody Valentine War from a fairly biased position since unlike the rest of the Heliopolis crew she is not from Orb, her father was part of the Atlantic Federation, and she sympathized with some of the views of Blue Cosmos. I think from the get-go her perspective would have painted Coordinators as inherently bad until Flay threatens Lacus' life when she is on the Archangel despite the fact that like Flay, Lacus is also a civilian (albeit with military ties) who has been nothing but amicable toward Flay despite Flay's attitude toward her and then emotionally manipulates Kira. I think that at that point audiences would realize that... maybe Naturals can be just as bad as Coordinators.

Someone would probably burn me at the stake for saying this, but I think that she would be viewed a bit similarly to Shinji Ikari in that people would probably be upset with her for acting the way that she does when she is, in reality, a traumatized teen with big daddy issues being thrown into a situation beyond her control except 1) she volunteered and 2) she never actually got into the robot.

I mean... I don't know if it would be better, it's still the same story, but, viewing it from just Flay's point of view would make things really skewed I think. I do think it could be interesting. Maybe Death Note like except I don't think that Flay has the same amount of cunning and emotional manipulation skills as Light Yagami.

Jokingly, I think that if you want to know what it would be like just watch Gundam SEED Destiny and pretend Shinn is Flay. I'm sorry Shinn lmaooo.

[flayallstertorturedmind]

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

Supposedly, a canned storyline had her being turned into a human bomb by Rau. Sounds like epic SRW bad end scenario to do with Zambot 3.

SEED's problem is the writing flip flopping on what it wanted to do. Andy's reconnect death is the most blatant example of going back on what they were building towards.

If they wanted to do idealistic show from the start, I wouldn't hold it against it. AGE has flaws of its own, but I don't hold against it that it wanted to be idealistic. It was consistent with it.

But SEED wanted to do teenage sex manipulation, build up towards dangerous berserk status, and then had a conclusion filled with elements that did not fit with it.

It is similar with Cross Ange, which was made by the same director. Grimdark like hell, until the main mech is activated and the series changes completely.

SEED has an identity problem. A lack of consistent vision problem. If you decide on a particular identity and vision and run with it to the end, you should already do better. Regardless if you make Flay MC or whoever else.