Afterword
Though there have been many Gundam side-stories, ASTRAY is the first to be published simultaneously with the main story, SEED. And, despite being a side-story, it was published in four different magazines with two protagonists. Those magazines are as follows:
- The Sneaker (Kadokawa Shoten, published bi-monthly), Gai’s Novel. (This book).
- Dengeki Hobby Magazine (Mediaworks, published monthly), more of Gai’s story unfolds in a photo-novel using plastic models.
- Gundam Ace (Kadokawa Shoten, published monthly), comic centered about Lowe, the boy from the Junk Guild. Gai also appears as a supporting character.
- Shonen Ace (Kadokawa Shoten, published monthly), Comic about Lowe and the Junk Guild.
Each of these works are stand-alone and can be enjoyed by themselves, but we tried to make them more interesting when read as a whole.
Gundam works are created by forming a setting with lots of details and concepts. Some of which only appear on screen for a moment, many of which end up never being fully explored. At first glance, it might seem like things are left unexplained, but when the first priority is to tell the story, full explanations aren’t necessary.
With this work, I was given the opportunity to fully incorporate everything.
The main reason: It would be a waste not to.
Each time I met with Sunrise, I’d be surprised, I’d say “Oh, really!?” I was shaken by how many details were left hidden (or should I say ‘buried’? Since they weren’t hidden intentionally?).
“I wanna share all of these exciting things with the other SEED fans!” With this in mind, my work is full of richer setting descriptions than was necessary. No, seriously, you should all be shocked.
I’m truly indebted to many people for their help in writing this work, the staff of the anime, of course, as well as the artists for the other ASTRAY works. They all helped me a lot. But this time around, I’d like to thank the following two people in particular.
My wife and the wife of the manga artist Tokita Kouichi. I’m greatly indebted to them for their help with Kazahana’s parts. Without the two of them, I never would’ve been able to write a story about a six-year-old girl (I, a 30 year old man, am unlike Kazahana in every sense of the word).
And Tokita-sensei’s wife also gave me advice on friendly relationships between men. Oh, no! I don’t mean it like that, even if it could be read that way.
-Tomohiro Chiba
Commentary
I’ll begin with a personal anecdote. I have a text file timestamped May 1st 2002, bluntly titled “Setting Memo 1.” This little file was the first idea written for the Mobile Suit Gundam SEED side-story. It reads as follows:
- Two (or more) Mobile Suits that were being developed by Orb on Heliopolis using unauthorized access to Earth Alliance data. They do not have the Phase Shift Armor.
- During the destruction of Heliopolis, they were lost without being noticed.
- They were recovered by a team of junk dealers after the destruction of Heliopolis.
- One is owned by that junk guild team, the other is sold to a mercenary unit.
This was my list of character origins and ideas, which I wrote down as I thought of them. Of course, I had no idea of the story itself. The fact that this has become a novel is like my baby caterpillar returning home as a beautiful butterfly.
ASTRAY was developed as a multimedia project. There’s Gai, the mercenary who pilots the Blue Frame, and Lowe, the junk dealer who pilots the Red Frame, who appears several times in this book. The two of them are the center of a novel, two comics in Shounen Ace and Gundam Ace, as well as a diorama story in Dengeki Hobby Magazine. On top of that, ASTRAY’s structure allows it to complement the TV version of SEED. In this respect, this novel is different from the usual novelization. The author’s skill in combining all of these elements into a single story is nothing short of extraordinary! He even did the writing for the two comics and the diorama story all by himself!
Still, the date on the file makes it feel like so long ago, even though it was only a little over a year ago. When I wrote this memo I was thinking of having the Mobile Suit, which would end up being called the ASTRAY, be a prototype of the Strike, the lead robot of the Gundam SEED TV anime… we’ve really come a long way. By the time this book is published, the Gundam SEED TV anime will have reached its climax, but the adventures of Gai and his friends and the story of ASTRAY will continue. In other words, our jobs aren’t over yet, and the end of the journey for our staff can still be seen, far off in the distance. Chiba-san, let’s both work hard until we burn out!
-Morita Shigeru (Special Settings)
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Translated by TrafalgarLog
Editing by celico, ciel (nonbinarysunset), and Watt
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