Yzak x Flay

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, imminent 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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Flay Allster is a complex and tragic character. She was young, misguided, treated unfairly, and never given a proper redemption arc. Yet she was also, arguably, one of the kindest and most empathetic characters in SEED. She was a girl who felt everything too intensely—someone who made mistakes but kept learning, who consistently corrected herself or apologized whenever she realized she had hurt Kira, whether intentionally or not. Even at her lowest moments, her compassion kept slipping through.

I still remember the scene where Kira doesn’t meet his parents in Orb, and Flay goes on a rant about how he shouldn’t pity her when he’s the one suffering. And this was while she was in the middle of manipulating him. (Like, girl, what are you doing? Why are you wavering? If you’re going to manipulate the boy, see it through—don’t empathize with him!)

Even after being isolated for most of the show and enduring so much—losing her father, losing her innocence, losing her friends, being forced to grow up too fast, being kidnapped, and being tossed from ship to ship (Archangel to Vesalius to Dominion) and from person to person (Kira to Sai to dangerous figures like Le Creuset and Azrael)—she was never able to form a genuine, safe bond with anyone. At one point, she was even thrown into space alone in a small lifepod in the middle of a battlefield.

And after all that chaos, fear, and trauma, she learned not to hate Coordinators, and all she wanted was to apologize properly to Kira and their friends.

Flay carried a quiet, understated strength. Yes, she acted with cruel intent toward Kira, but it’s important to note that he already had feelings for her. Kira made his own choices—he retained autonomy over his actions. He was given discharge papers, and even his friends encouraged him to leave. He himself chose to reenter the war and continue fighting. With or without Flay’s influence, he would have stayed and fought because he wanted to protect his friends. At most, Flay reminded Kira of his own failure and applied additional pressure to an already stressed and guilt-ridden Kira to fight harder.

The Unfair Narrative

Narrative Framing, Power, Expendability, and Story Progression: [Evil/Wrong] Naturals (EA/AF) → (ORB) → Coordinators (PLANTs) → Ultimate Coordinator (Kira) [Good/Right]

The problem with Gundam SEED, and what ultimately failed Flay, is the show’s narrative. The war was never truly balanced to begin with. Although SEED verbally insists on understanding and coexistence, there is a very clear bias favoring Coordinators over Naturals. Coordinators—especially Kira—are framed as victims, sympathetic, yet also cooler and superior at every turn.

The show protects Kira’s perspective at the expense of other characters and realism. Since Kira is the protagonist, the narrative bends to justify his actions. Even when harm is committed, the narrative glosses over it or redirects the blame. This is part of why dissenting viewpoints vanish. A good example is how the impact of Kira killing Nicol was softened in the remastered version.

An obvious example of this narrative bias is that all the key Natural characters positioned to represent the Atlantic Federation—like Mu, Natarle, and Flay—were killed off by the end of the show, leaving no one to properly represent the faction by the time of Destiny. (Murrue and the others abandoned on JOSH-A don’t truly represent the Atlantic Federation or the perspective of Earth’s Naturals.)

Another example is how the show began with most characters portrayed as neutral. Understandably, Kira and his friends were civilians from Orb and studying in a neutral nation. But soldiers like Murrue, Natarle, Mu (especially), Murdoch, and the rest of the Archangel crew were also depicted as superficially neutral, even though they were supposed to represent the Earth Alliance and the anti-Coordinator faction.

Anti-Coordinator sentiment is an Earth problem, not just a Blue Cosmos problem. Coordinators all over the world wouldn’t be fleeing to space if this were an isolated case. Extremist like Blue Cosmos exists because it reflects what much of Earth’s population actually believed. And yet on the ship, Flay is the only one shown with anti-Coordinator sentiment, even though ZAFT had just attacked Heliopolis.

Granted, not everyone in the Earth Alliance may be prejudiced, but the show’s focus on Flay—a 15-year-old girl and the only teenage civilian from the Atlantic Federation, made to carry the hostility of the world—made the portrayal feel unfair. When her father, her only family, was killed by Coordinators, it was only natural that this cemented her fear and hatred.

The show should have included more citizens, pilots, or otherwise cooler, likable characters who resented Coordinators outside of Flay and the villainous members of Blue Cosmos/Logos to balance the scale. Imagine if Mu La Flaga had been clearly anti-Coordinator and still acted as a decent, professional mentor to Kira because their survival demanded it of him— it would have shown that anti-Coordinator prejudice was broader and socially embedded, and relieved some of the narrative pressure placed solely on Flay.

Misplaced, Mistreated, and then Discarded

Kira had three “special ladies” or “princesses” in his life, and each represented a faction in the war: Lacus for the PLANTs, Cagalli for Orb, and Flay for the Earth Alliance/Atlantic Federation.

The show makes it blatantly obvious that Lacus is a major figure within the PLANTs, and Cagalli is visibly shown to be a big deal in ORB, but Flay’s role is less obvious—since her father dies so early in the story, most of what we see of her is her trauma. Yet all three share a clear parallel as symbols of their respective factions. Their fathers were all high-ranking politicians; all three were daddy’s girls, all lost their fathers during the war, and all turned to Kira for comfort when it happened—each in different ways. (I was originally rooting for Kira × Cagalli… but we all know how that ship turned out.)

Kira was able to safely return Lacus to the PLANTs and Cagalli to Orb. The only difference between the girls was that Flay never got “home.” She had lost her safety net—because where was home supposed to be after her father died? Soon after, she was kidnapped. In a way, Kira failing to keep his promise to protect her father could be seen as his first failed mission—and it cost him, setting off lasting consequences for both of them. This was Kira’s harsh wake-up call, the one that made him realize he needed to take his responsibilities more seriously (and stop being distracted by his friendship with Athrun or fighting half-heartedly.)

(Because Kira is the protagonist—and for the same reason he took responsibility for piloting the Strike—the moment he took aboard the civilian shuttle carrying Flay, he assumed an obligation toward the lives of all the passengers, including Flay herself. If Flay had not been on the Archangel, her father would have had no reason to be on the Montgomery.)

Flay was mentally fragile, but she was not useless. The Atlantic Federation clearly wanted to extract her from JOSH-A—she was one of only three people considered important enough to save. While Mu and Natarle were valuable on the frontline, Flay had a role on the backline—they had a use for her because she was who she was. Flay wasn’t just some random soldier. The Federation even briefly mentioned that her speech and decision to volunteer were moving and inspiring; from their standpoint, it was nationalism, hinting at her capacity to influence and suggesting there was more going on behind the scenes—though most viewers miss this, due to the narrative framing that scene negatively as part of “Kira’s manipulation.”

(Even so, her actions ultimately helped save Kira and the others, since the shuttle they were boarding would have been shot down. Then, by sinking her claws into Kira, she was benefiting her faction through him. The method may be questionable, but the outcome is the same. Kira gains comfort while sharpening his battle prowess in the process.)

And let’s be honest, it’s hard to feel compassion because Flay had been terribly outspoken and not very poised at this point. The girl wears her heart on her sleeve. Plus, the Earth Alliance were basic villains—morally compromised, and they didn’t have any cool mobile suit pilots. (We’re encouraged not to sympathize with the Earth forces.)

Flay Allster was misplaced. She was perceptive, charismatic, and emotionally intelligent—so much so that she could even call out Lacus’ ‘naive ditzy’ persona. Her soft skills weren’t very useful in a mecha warzone, but they would have made her invaluable as an advocate or propagandist. Instead, these abilities were largely channeled into manipulating Kira and his friends.

(One of the original drafts were to have Flay pilot the Strike Rouge for propaganda purposes, hence it was pink, but we all know what ultimately happened to that machine.)

Flay eventually came out of the Vesalius significantly more subdued and clear-headed. We could only speculate what had happened—she had probably ended up empathizing with Le Creuset and Yzak.

(My take is that Le Creuset reminded Flay of her father—not just because he sounded like him, but especially because he spoke of the same ideals, repeatedly expressing that he wanted nothing more than to bring an end to the meaningless war.)

And she was never given a proper redemption arc and was ultimately tragically killed, seemingly all to give Kira a reason to awaken Newtype powers and to push the Kira × Lacus narrative. (A naked ghost is hardly a proper redemption. It serves more to further Kira’s arc than to provide her with one of her own.) Had she survived, she wouldn’t necessarily have ended up with Kira and could have become a wonderful politician, spokesperson, or peace advocate. Her unique position could have made her a bridge between Naturals and Coordinators.

(A potential problem, I suppose, is that giving her a redemption arc would likely have taken the spotlight away from the main pairings.)

I still recall the scene where Le Creuset held out the key that could end the war if it reached the Earth forces. The focus was split between the Disk and Flay, suggesting that the “key” could have been either of them. Le Creuset speaks of “this final gamble” and asks Flay to assist him. When Flay boarded the Dominion (finally returned to the Federation), Azrael recognized the Allster name but—like Patrick Zala—chose extermination.

Flay was someone who loved deeply—cared too much, felt too much, and gave too much. Yet time after time, she was left shattered by those who couldn’t or wouldn’t hold space for her, or who only sought to use her.

All in all, Flay was sacrificed—essentially fridged repeatedly—and became the embodiment of Kira’s moral and emotional shortcomings. In many ways, Kira was her ruin. Every time she placed even a little faith or trust in him, he failed her.

He failed her three times: first, by failing to protect her father; second, by failing to take emotional accountability in their relationship and breakup; and third, by failing to protect her in space. She bore and paid the price for his failures and his growth, while he gave nothing in return. Kira never truly suffers a loss of comparable weight, nor was he made to hold himself accountable or repay that debt in any meaningful way beyond crying and feeling guilty. And yet, she was still capable of forgiving him.

George Allster

About George Allster and Flay continuing his (her father’s) work. In the show, we never really learn what George Allster’s stance in the war was, since he’s killed so early. (Later game material mentions he was affiliated with Blue Cosmos, but the show itself never hints or clarifies this.)

Flay’s anti-Coordinator sentiment doesn’t automatically make George a Blue Cosmos supporter. As mentioned, racism was a widespread problem on Earth. Flay could have picked up that sentiment from many sources. It’s possible her father held similar views, but who doesn’t have a bit of prejudice? Narratively, George being a Blue Cosmos member doesn’t really make sense.

As Vice Foreign Minister, George Allster was primarily responsible for managing foreign affairs (a diplomatic role, responsible for negotiating and mediating). Siegel Clyne and Uzumi Nara Attha were clear advocates for peace, and if we continue the parallel between Lacus, Cagalli, and Flay, it makes sense to consider that George Allster was likely pro-peace as well. Tragically, all three spokespeople were lost to the ravages of war. (Then came genocide.)

Nothing in the show explicitly reveals George Allster’s position, but he comes across primarily as a doting father, personally wanting to escort his daughter home— and that’s information we can trust about him.

George Allster and Flay were both Atlantic Federation citizens. If George had been strongly anti-Coordinator, wouldn’t it have made more sense to send Flay to a school in Earth territory? Why, then, was she enrolled in a school in Heliopolis—an Orb territory, and exposed to a mixed-race student body? Why go to such lengths if his goal was to shield her from Coordinators?

And why was Flay engaged to Sai, an Orb citizen? Naturals had no trouble with falling birthrate issues like the PLANTs did. If anti-Coordinator prejudice were the driving factor, it would have made more sense for her to be paired with another “like-minded” prejudiced Natural or family. And Sai clearly isn’t “that”—he is genuinely an upstanding guy, a model citizen of Orb. 

From the start, Sai had been acting as something of a guardian to Flay, gently moderating her behavior and reactions, and guiding her toward more “Orb-like” values, which ended after George Allster’s death.

(Crucially, by the time he refused to take her back, his decision was less about their love triangle drama and more about the symbolic rejection of what she had become — and of the side she now fully represents. Miriallia, a peer, another Orb citizen, then rejects Flay on similar grounds, despite Flay responding from a place of genuine understanding of her grief.)

Flay even mentions to Kira that she has a house in Orb, reinforcing that her life was integrated across faction lines.

All of this points to George Allster’s wish for Flay to marry and eventually settle quietly in Orb, because he believed in peace and coexistence, and trusted Orb’s firm neutrality to keep them out of the war.

The politics of the Atlantic Federation and the Earth Alliance were far more complex than those of Orb or the PLANTs. It was a larger-scale conflict with deep historical roots. George Allster was likely aware of the corruption and extremism within Blue Cosmos, and he knew the Atlantic Federation was bracing for a long war (EA vs. PLANTs, and later Atlantic vs. Eurasia), yet—like Siegel and Uzumi—he was powerless to truly stop it. ZAFT killed an Earth high-ranking peace-oriented politician; Kira failed to protect him. Radicalized, Flay volunteers, fueling and strengthening war propaganda. (The Blue Cosmos affiliation later twists this, portraying him as a villain to justify his death.)

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