The Tortured Mind of Flay Allster

The Precocious Child's Understanding of, Reaction to, and Solution for War

(note: I have not done hard research on a lot of what follows here, because ultimately, these posts are vibe-based, so if anything here is flagrantly historically inaccurate, please do feel free to let me know)

At the most basic level, SEED still falls in with other Gundam series to date with the core message of "War Is Bad", but the intent behind it feels different, which I chalk up to generational differences between the respective staffs. Most, if not all, of the development staff on the original Mobile Suit Gundam were born around the end of World War II, and thus spent their entire youth living in the aftermath of that conflict where Japan was occupied by the American military and was in the process of rebuilding. 0079, Zeta, and ZZ, all carry the "War Is Bad" message, but it's from the angle of "because nothing good will ever come of it". Even if a war is being fought for "the right reasons", it will inevitably lead to sadness and ultimately, further conflict. It was a pleasant surprise that the Federation in 0079 was not presented as The Heroes, and instead as The Faction The Protagonists Were Aligned With, which set the stage for Zeta and the Gryps Conflict where the Federation made a pretty natural slide into a fascist dictatorship with the Titans.

The development staff of SEED, in contrast, were on average around 20 years younger, and thus wouldn't have nearly as much (if any) experience with the kinds of conditions the previous generation would've experienced, and more critically, very little direct experience with war and its effects. After all, part of the end of World War II was the demilitarization of Japan, so I don't really think they would've had the opportunity even if they wanted to. War was, as the saying goes, something that happens somewhere else. This is something that comes up to this day, as there were interviews given during the production of The Witch from Mercury where they essentially said war isn't relatable- the (translated) quote is "We felt that a major war between major powers, something like nations pitted against nations, wouldn’t seem that realistic and would be difficult to connect with."

I can't accurately speak to other countries reactions to 9/11, but I would hazard that there was greater cultural awareness of it compared to other terror attacks in the previous decades, if for no other reason than that America made sure it and the subsequent War on Terror was The Biggest Deal. And I imagine if you were not American, the whole thing was kind of... baffling, on both sides. Not at first, of course; a terrorist attack that killed thousands of innocent civilians was going to incur some kind of reprisal, but the speed at which Americans went full tilt into "we need to nuke the entire Middle East into non-existence" was staggering. For example: the header image for this section was taken from the SomethingAwful forums thread that was made on 9/11, and just a few posts after that was this:

Mind you, this was just after someone speculating that this was terrorism, without even alluding the Taliban or al-Qaeda. But "kill 'em all" was a very quickly normalized sentiment across America, and obviously was the intent of The Terrorists. With the benefit of hindsight (and, honestly, probably at the time if you were a rational adult), there is more nuance and historical context for why 9/11 happened, but I think for a culture that was mostly removed from the circumstances and would broadly just know “yeah there’s a lot of fighting going on in the Middle East due to the big terror attack” it wasn't thought about too deeply, especially in the heat of the moment.

With this in mind, the setup of Gundam SEED is actually pretty great on paper! The Earth Alliance is the United States, ZAFT is the Taliban, and Orb is Japan. They wisely decided to make the two sides of the conflict along an imaginary "Naturals versus Coordinators" conflict, rather than any direct analogues to an ethnic/religious/ethnoreligious conflict. Both sides inflict horrific damages on one another, and the conflict quickly spirals into full-tilt genocidal extermination by both sides.

The appeal of Kira Yamato is obvious: he’s from a neutral entity and recognizes at a fundamental level how stupid the war is- there's no good reason for the fighting!- and only engages after he’s unwillingly dragged into it in order to protect the people he cares about, the most understandable and broadly relatable reason to fight in a war. He is eventually (through truly unbelievably contrived circumstances) given the opportunity and means (read: raw fighting strength) to find A Third Way, and with his friends goes out and tries to convince both sides that this is stupid and they should stop fighting because it's bad.

Despite being reductive, I think this is a pretty admirable sentiment, especially for 2002. Feeling helpless while wondering if you're the only person who recognizes how insane this all is relatable, as someone who was all of 10 years old on 9/11. But not only does it not have anything more interesting to say than "wouldn't it be cool to be strong enough to force both sides to knock it off", it also fumbles the narrative badly. Like, really fucking badly.

To the extent that it kind of invalidates most of what I've written up there.

THE STUFF I LIKED:

I think my most controversial opinion about SEED is that I actually like Kira Yamato. I alluded to this several times throughout my liveblogging, but I think he's remarkably consistent for the entire series, even factoring in the Jesus Yamato stuff. He's built from the same parts as nearly every previous main character, and I actually really like his simple naïvety juxtaposed with him being exceptionally technically skilled. Like, it is really good characterization that when he gets jumped by Blue Cosmos early in the series, he opts to throw the gun he picks up instead of shooting it, and then all the way at the end of the series after he has become The Chosen One, Mu has to tell him "hey Chosen One, release the safety" when they're in the facility with Le Creuset, and then his ultimate move during that fight is chucking a piece of debris anyway. Critically, his character isn't really negatively affected by getting to spend the back third on Pacifist God Mode: in the first fight where he comes back in the Justice, he hangs back to save that one ZAFT soldier, only for him to ultimately succumb to his wounds, and during one encounter where he effortlessly disarms like five guys simultaneously, it cuts to Mu in the Strike blowing up an enemy and going "WOW, COOL!". It doesn't change him as much as it allows him to act more in accordance with who he's always been, and it's not any guarantee of success.

I really cannot stress enough how the early chunk of the series with Flay's trick felt like lightning in a bottle. I was so sure I was overthinking it and creating a better series in my mind, only for it to literally 100% be what was happening. Flay deserved a better series, because I think if the development staff hadn't completely lost interest in doing anything with her, she would be standing next to my beloved Katejina Loos as an all-timer. Even then, I like the throughline that all of Kira's greatest failures involve Flay. More on her later, unfortunately.

I was really happy with how much stuff The Adults had to do on the Archangel. Bright Noa has always been one of my favorites from the Universal Century, so the chemistry between Ramius, La Flaga, and Badgirl was really enticing, especially as tensions started bubbling between Ramius and Badgirl, and Ramius and La Flaga had a convincing slow burn romance. La Flaga himself was pretty enjoyable from the jump, especially in the heretofore never achieved Gundam role of "experienced pilot/mentor to the protagonist", and he shocked me by living right until the very end when I expected him to die by like, episode 30 at the absolute latest.

The scene where Kira goes sicko mode for the first really did feel like the last 20+ years of media for young boys being cracked open. Going sicko mode is a time honored tradition for protagonists of media for young boys, from obvious examples like going Super Saiyan to even Amuro in 0079, but the specific visual language here of achieving an inner serenity and effortlessly disassembling your foes is like... well, to circle back to the Super Saiyan mention, Dragon Ball Super would eventually introduce the Ultra Instinct form, where Goku achieves an inner serenity and effortlessly disassembles his foes.

The third opening, "Believe", is a certified all-timer OP. The other three come in at a "fine" but this one can hang with "Rhythm Emotion". And the music video is peak 2002!

This series also has some great background music! Kind of a bummer to hear it was replaced in the HD version, because I imagine a lot of the music that sounds like it was ripped right from an of-the-era RPG was replaced with less interesting stuff, like "Athrun no Yuutsu", which is pretty funky for a song that translates to "Athrun's Melancholy".

Also: not related directly to SEED, but someone needs to invent a way to ID background songs easier; I assumed "Athrun no Yuutsu was Azrael's theme because it's prominently featured in The Fucking Scene with Azrael. Speaking of, let's move on to...

THE STUFF I LIKED LESS:

The casual, almost off-handed reveal that the Bloody Valentine was, in fact, a totally unprovoked nuclear strike on a civilian colony carried out by terrorists and all but endorsed by the Earth Alliance means that the Earth Alliance were, unquestionably, The Bad Guys™, which is what really cuts the legs out from the entire point it seems they're trying to make at the very end, for no payoff. The writers didn't seem to understand the ramifications of having that random, faceless politician say that Azrael was the one who masterminded that attack without providing literally any further detail. For the entire series, they really seemed intent on building up that this whole conflict started with a horrible tragedy that led to war, and over the course of the fighting, both sides fell prey to fascist ideologies, leading to both sides arriving at genocidal extremism. That actually does play out on the ZAFT side, with the citizens of ZAFT electing Zala over Clyne because he's more gung-ho about waging the war. For the Earth Alliance side, the impression I got from the first conversation about Blue Cosmos between Flay and Kuzzey was that Blue Cosmos was a fringe group, and that they were rapidly gaining traction within the Earth Alliance because of the war, as evidenced by the court martial the Archangel crew had to go through, and the reason that Azrael doesn't show up until the back third is because he only just became a member of the (poorly defined) government structure due to escalation, similar to the way Zala was elected. But no, apparently he had been there basically the whole time while also being the Grand Wizard of the KKK, and during that time he coordinated a terrorist attack and everyone shrugged, which means that the Earth Alliance was starting from genocidal extremism. Having a story where it seems like you have two sides gradually succumbing to fascist ideology in the face of a prolonged conflict and then reveal that the one side has been totally rotten since well before the conflict started would've been great, but that's a reveal you would have to do more than three episodes from the end! If they had revealed this even as late as when the Earth Alliance uses the Cyclops System, all of this would've been fine. All the stuff with ZAFT and the Third Way Gang could've been kept exactly the same! The ending could've been kept exactly the same! Why did they do this!?

Another entry in the "completely brutalizing your narrative" is the total unwillingness to examine what's up with Coordinator society. I feel like I spent most of the series wondering "when are they going to reveal The Problem With ZAFT™", and really thought they were intending to build up to something about how they have an in-built severe prejudice against women. Stuff like Zala having to deal with reports that Coordinator birth rates are plummeting, and the next time it comes up we see a team of scientists growing Coordinator babies in tubes, the fact that the almost all of ZAFT's armed forces are male versus the face of the Earth Alliance military (for the viewer) being Ramius and Badgirl, and (seemingly) making a point of having Orb's Astray team be all girls, even Dearka's reaction to Miri, suggesting he's unaccustomed to seeing women in the military. Hell, one of the last major reveals is "perfect eugenics Coordinator society is actually being held back by women and their horrible wombs". But then I began to remember that the ZAFT council had some women on it, and there was Waltfield's girlfriend/wife/copilot, and naturally there's Lacus as well, so the ultimate conclusion is just, again, they didn't really think about it all that much, and I guess Coordinator society is fine, actually, and the only problem was that Zala was too into war.

It would've actually probably helped Lacus a lot if this were intentional; she would be a spectacle not just because she's an incredible singer, but because she's a Female Coordinator, and everything she does in the back half would go down easier because she's been made more resilient by what she's had to endure as a woman in a society that believes that their existence is literally holding society back. This would also help frame her father as a more progressive Coordinator- because he didn't feel compelled to "optimize" every aspect of Lacus's biology- and Zala would feel even more contemptuous of her because she is (in his vision) an imperfect Coordinator, but her celebrity status would be useful politically if she married his son, and even Blue Cosmos could've been given more intent than just fundamentalist extremists. Maybe they were initially protesting the use of gene therapy for perfectly reasonable reasons, like the flashbacks we are literally shown of women being blamed for imperfect children, and over time they grew more extreme.

Although, all this fanfiction doesn't really get at the heart of the problem with the Naturals vs. Coordinators conceit, which is the eugenics of it all. Again, if this were handled with any intent I think they probably could've done something more elegant, but the confrontation with Le Creuset just goes "yeah so George Glenn's Big Beautiful Speech about how cool genetic enhancements are did just lead to people doing Designer Eugenics, and some people got so mad about it they became terrorists", and that's all there ever was to it, I guess.

Despite talking about how I like Kira Yamato and how I don't think the Jesus Yamato stuff hurts him as a character, the whole Jesus Yamato thing is, like... irredeemably stupid to have done. I still cannot believe "he survives being blown up for no reason" was an accurate description of the text and not an exaggeration of not liking the reason he survived. They genuinely thought "oh the priest found him" was sufficient for the Aegis strapping itself to the Strike and self-destructing while Kira was trapped in the cockpit. And then it just keeps leading itself to more questions that are not sufficiently answered, all to get Kira into Pacifist God Mode, which again, doesn't hurt his character but does nothing for the narrative besides allowing the Third Way Gang to form, because...

Credit where credit is due to the team for getting me even sort of interested in the ZAFT Chud Tri-Stars by the end: having Dearka pull his head out of his ass and in turn getting Yzak to try doing the same thing (although I'm glad that didn't go anywhere, on account of him murdering all those civilians and suffering no consequences). However, the Alliance Chud Tri-Stars fucking sucked, and their only purpose was to occupy Kira and Athrun for like 12 episodes because they wrote themselves into a corner by making those two too powerful. And then when it was time to wrap up they all died in hilariously simple ways, my favorite (read: least favorite) example being after like 10 skirmishes where someone fires a beam at the... Forbidden Gundam, and it bounces off the armor (reusing the same shot each time), the way they ultimately defeat it is the Buster Gundam uses physical munitions to break the armor instead of a beam weapon, which allows Yzak (of all people!) to fly in and cut it in half.

Also, just so he doesn't feel left out: the stuff here with Athrun was also Very Stupid. This is another check in the "they were trying to make a point about a slide into facism" column, because if the story were doing that right, Lacus's dressing down of Athrun here would be perfect: Athrun has lost sight of what he's fighting for and has been dazzled by his accolades, and Lacus snaps him back to reality. But Athrun's motivation was always that his mother was killed in an unprovoked nuclear strike on a civilian colony, and though the show would go on to confirm that is literally what happened, he is constantly shown harboring doubts about ZAFT, basically from the point where Le Creuset tells him to put on a show about Lacus for the sake of propaganda. At this point in the story his most recent action was having a tandem meltdown with Cagalli over having (presumably) killed Kira. Hey, speaking of...

Cagalli is such a bummer, man. I think she was doomed from the moment she revealed she was Another Princess, and further doomed once she was revealed to be Kira's sister, in a plot twist that didn't go anywhere and seemingly exists only to ensure that the proper breeding pairs would be set up. Maybe she's got something to do in Destiny, but, uh, I think I may have been a bit spoiled by the rant up at the top. So, not optimistic.

Ok, with all the story stuff out of the way: this show is ugly. I wanted to avoid even going into detail on this because it feels like beating the stump of a chopped-down tree grown from the buried ashes of a long dead horse, but every time I saw an especially rough shot or noticed when they were reusing a shot for the xth time that didn't seem to justify the reuse, two thoughts would come to mind: "this is the follow up to Turn A Gundam" and "this was airing at the same time as Overman King Gainer, from the same studio". Sunrise was a production studio of contrasts.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS:

I couldn't bring myself to put this under "like" or "dislike" because I'm still stunned thinking about this, to the point that it was literally jaw-dropping for me. Le Creuset decides to shoot at the shuttle Flay is on instead of firing on Kira while he's distracted because that's just how battle is conducted in the Cosmic Era. Kira deflects the shot just in the nick of time so he and Flay can look each other in the eyes- spiritually, at least, since he’s in the cockpit- only for one of Le Creuset's funnels to pop on screen for 10 frames and blow up the ship anyway, and then Le Creuset goes "nice" and flies away (again, instead of actually firing on Kira). Then they try to do a fuckin' Lalah Sune thing where she's like "Hey baby boy, I'm so sorry about the manipulation and prejudice. I'm in touch with the cosmos now so I know that was bad. Wanna do a half-assed Waverider Crash?". I cannot think of any more unintentionally funny scene across everything I've watched to date, it is so unbelievable I had to post the entire scene.

Once I realized that these scenes implied that these teens were fucking, I thought to myself "woah, I didn't think they could get away with something this risqué for what is ostensibly children's television!" It turns out there was actually a controversy about this, and the response was the production company going "oopsie-doodle!" and then adding explicit sex scenes in the compilation movie.

SEED gets a resounding "meh" for its mobile suit designs. So much of it is just borrowing from UC imagery that I can't do much but shrug, although I can at least say it doesn't actively annoy me the way Wing's does. The Gundams are Earth Alliance designs, and naturally once ZAFT captures 4 of them, they design new suits that look like Gundams and not like their not-Zeonic mobile suits. As for the suits themselves, I could probably identify a few of them if challenges, but the Strike and Freedom are the most "we made Gundams... for the NEW MILLENNIUM" things I ever seen. Completely unremarkable save for the fact that they look more "modern". Functionally the same thing as modern cape comics adding textures to superhero costumes.

But! At least we have the BuCUEs.

I believe I have mentioned at least once before that I had the good fortune to be able to purchase every RightStuf blu-ray release of Gundam before Crunchyroll decided they didn't give a shit about that anymore. And, since I wanted to specifically watch the original SD version, my only option was the Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny Ultra Edition blu-ray collections, which come with the HD Remaster versions, original SD home video versions (on SD blu-ray, a format every company should be using), compilation movies, and a smattering of extras, like Stargazer CE, for roughly $300. With the way things have panned out in terms of availability, I'm still happy I bought these, but I was really hoping to come away from this more positively on account of the money spent.

I feel like I cannibalized a lot of things I could bring up in my liveblogging, but I feel like I'm going to continue doing it going forward, especially since I think it crystalizes little observations better than the big post. If you're so inclined, you can just comb the Tom In The Cosmic Era tag.

IN CONCLUSION:

Despite everything, I don't hate SEED. At the very least, I don't feel as negatively about it as I thought I would based on most other people who do hate SEED. Like I said at the top, I think its heart is in the right place, but it makes enough bad decisions that I can't realistically even give it credit for trying. Still, if you put a gun to my head, I do think I'd rather give this another watch than having to watch anything in any tier below it, despite being considerably longer.

I can't tell you what kind of petty joy it would've brought me to put this ahead of Wing. Alas.

Next up: The first direct sequel Gundam series since ZZ, SEED Destiny! I have some ideas about what's going to happen since it turns out that when people talk about SEED, they're usually talking about both SEED and SEED Destiny, and judging by the fact that none of the rehashed UC mobile suits showed up in SEED...

When I brought up the double standards in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and mentioned that Flay is written as Athrun's counterpart on a community app, fans were quick to downvote and shoot down the idea. Some were quick to defend Athrun and point out that Flay was an awful person, that she was manipulative and wanted genocide, and “How dare you compare Flay to Athrun!”, as though being associated with Flay was the biggest insult imaginable.

So basically, what I learned is that that place is not the best place for minority opinion and discussion. But I stand my ground.

The comparison is not meant to demean Athrun (though you are free to take it however you wish). It is intended to understand the characters, especially Flay Allster and her polarizing behavior. Obviously, Athrun does not need defending.

Double standards are real. Flay is still criticized even today, even though she was literally written as a sacrificial, disposable character, yet still functions as Athrun's counterpart in a story that is ultimately centered on Kira's morality.

Their journeys share striking parallels. Though they come from opposing sides of the war (OMNI and ZAFT), both previously lived in neutral colonies (Copernicus and Heliopolis), both lost a beloved parent to the opposing side (Lenore and George), and both became radicalized enough to volunteer for military service.

From there, each becomes emotionally entangled with Kira, resulting in mutual harm (both outward and inward) and collateral damage to his Orb friends (Tolle and Sai), ultimately forcing them to reevaluate their beliefs. Both also lose a fiancé or fiancée (Sai and Lacus) as a consequence of Kira and their own radical ideals.

Eventually, they return to a figurative father figure they once trusted (Patrick and Rau), only to discover that they have been misled or betrayed. Both are literally shot by those figures before carrying out an act of redemption.

Why Athrun Is the correct comparison

Fans jumping in to defend Athrun and saying it is “not proper” to compare him to Flay is exactly where the double standards appear. Athrun is precisely the correct point of comparison because they were written for essentially the same narrative purpose, except Flay was burdened with far more negative symbolism due to the show's underrepresentation of the Earth side.

Someone mentioned that half a dozen characters in the series have several surface-level similarities, and I agree. Similarities and recurring patterns exist throughout the cast because every character serves a specific narrative function. However, no one else in the show shares the same combination of narrative beats and character arc that Athrun and Flay do.

The argument that “Flay is a bad person” overlooks several things. On top of being a disposable character and a plot device used to move the story forward, she is given very little agency. She is not given a mobile suit, does not have an army behind her or allies to support her, gets kidnapped, is thrown into shuttles, and is framed as a villainous Atlantic Federation citizen. She is also the only character close to Kira's circle who is openly prejudiced—likely because the show avoids portraying characters like Mu or Natarle as overtly prejudiced while still keeping them as “good” characters, as that would humanize the Atlantic Federation side.

This results in Flay's characterization being shaped in a way that allows other characters to appear more morally upright while still giving Kira personal motivation.

She acts out of fear and trauma, yet is reduced to the role of a “crazy, disposable ex” before the “true love” arrives. Flay was intentionally written to be hated and then discarded, not because she was a “bad person.” In nearly every scene she appears in, other characters are reacting negatively to her actions, guiding the audience toward condemning her and sympathizing with Kira’s moral perspective rather than allowing viewers to form that judgment independently.

The Atlantic Federation and anti-Coordinator sentiment are portrayed as evil and wrong largely because Kira himself is a Coordinator, plain and simple. But has the majority stopped to ask why they are depicted and behave like cartoonish villains? Probably not, because the narrative is structured to present Coordinators and the PLANT side more favorably.

Athrun was not an asshole

Another argument was that the parallel doesn’t really work because, ultimately, their motivations, arcs, and methods are too dissimilar. Athrun didn’t cheat on Lacus like Flay did with Sai (she clearly broke things off with him). At his worst, Athrun wanted Kira specifically to die (so, like Flay?), as opposed to wanting to manipulate a third party into explicit genocide (yet Kira did not take the discharge papers; he signed up for war and was going to go out there regardless, which raises the question of how this is meaningfully dissimilar to Athrun’s primary objective?).

Athrun’s decision to volunteer for the army meant he was willing to take any number of lives if it would achieve ZAFT's goal (also genocide). What stood in his way was Kira.

The key here is timing.

When we first see Athrun at Heliopolis, he is already partway through his character arc, so we never get to experience the ugliest effects of war through him; Athrun’s worst version is intentionally never fully displayed, while Flay’s arc is just about to begin.

Kira functions as a destabilizing force for both characters, influencing their emotional and ideological trajectories.

Athrun's friendship with Kira changes how the audience perceives his actions, framing them as "the tragedy of friends fighting each other." As a result, this friendship narrative softens the audience’s perception of his participation in military operations, his repeated attacks on the Archangel, his attempts to destroy it along with its crew, and his contribution to ZAFT’s wartime objectives.

Had the radicalized Athrun not encountered Kira at Heliopolis, Murrue would be dead, and he might have become an unstoppable killing machine.

Setting aside the show's obvious bias, despite being on opposite sides of the war, both started in neutral territory, became radicalized, were drawn toward violence, and eventually moved away from that mindset. The point is that Flay, like Athrun, is inherently a "good person."

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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.

....