Why do people hate Kira Yamato?

Short Answer: There may be numerous reasons why people hate Kira Yamato but here are the five prominent characteristics of Kira that people hate him for. Those characteristics are: He is too emotional, he goes with feelings over logic, his plot armor is too strong, he lacks character development, and his “immortality”.

Let’s talk about those Characteristics one by one.

1. He is too emotional

When it comes to being emotional no one does it better in the series than Kira Yamato. In Gundam SEED, Kira Yamato is constantly faced with challenges that a teenage boy should not have to face, challenges such as piloting a mobile suit, enlisting in the military, having to fight and or kill your best friend.

All of these challenges put a toll on Kira’s mental health each time he came back from battle, not to mention all the death that was surrounding him in the early episodes of Gundam SEED when he would actually kill his enemies.

Kira can be seen shaking and crying either in the cockpit of the Strike or in his quarters during or after a battle in the early episodes of Gundam SEED.

During the early episodes, as his days on the Archangel grew more and more, Kira’s mental health grew less and less, even though he could be seen smiling, he became more and more depressed with each passing day. The only one who understood him was Flay Allstar.She was the only person on the Archangel that could soothe Kira’s depression.

With Flay Allstar beside Kira, he becomes a better and better mobile suit pilot as he now has someone who can understand his feelings and keep his mental health stable.

Later on Flay Allstar dies while near a battle and as she dies, Kira Yamato falls into a great shock that leaves him completely unable to continue fighting, forcing Athrun Zala to save him and then have them retreat.

In Gundam SEED Destiny, Kira finds comfort in Lacus Clyne and is once again a stable mobile pilot with a clear goal and determination.

2. He goes with feeling instead of logic

In the early episodes of Gundam SEED and Gundam SEED Destiny, we can see Kira Yamato fighting more for emotional reasons than for logical reasons. In those early episodes, Athrun Zala tries numerous times to reason with Kira Yamato.

Athrun Zala repeatedly asks Kira, why he is fighting with the Earth Forces, why he is fighting against the PLANTs when he himself is a Coordinator. Kira only answers that he is not part of the Earth Forces but just fighting to protect his friends of the Archangel.

“Believe me the last thing I want to do is fight you, but aboard that ship are people I feel obligated to protect. My friends are on that ship!”

Kira Yamato to Athrun Zala

To be fair, Kira’s hand was forced as he was the only mobile suit that the Archangel had during that time but the development of Kira Yamato’s natural friends is also something to talk about.

All of Kira’s friends lived in Heliopolis, a territory of the neutral nation of Orb, because they did not want any involvement in the war, but when Flay Allstar decides to enlist formally in the Earth Alliance Forces, they decide to enlist with her.

They completely abandon their idea of living in neutral. This forces Kira to enlist to continue to protect his friends instead of trying to find a way to persuade them to find another way to disembark the Archangel.

In Gundam SEED Destiny, we can see Kira taking action on emotions rather than logic multiple times.

At the battle of Crete, even though Athrun Zala already told Kira Yamato to stay off the battle field because his presence only brings confusion, Kira still continues to intervene between the battles of ZAFT and the Earth Alliance.

“I know what you’re saying. I know what you’re saying but it doesn’t matter because at this moment, Cagalli is crying her heart out. She’s crying because all of this is exactly what she feared.”

Kira Yamato to Athrun Zala

He even goes to Orb to abduct Cagalli Yula Attha in order to stop her from Marying Yuna Roma Saran and he bases all of his reasoning on what feels right.

At the battle of the Mesiah, Kira attempts to shoot PLANT supreme chairman Gilbert Durandal in order to stop the Destiny Plan from happening. Even though this plan of chairman Durandal made a lot of sense, Kira decides to go against it because he doesn’t think it is right.

“Look! We know what you are saying, but we can learn to understand and we can change! That’s why we want a tomorrow. No matter how much ww suffer, we don’t want a world where nothing changes.”

Kira Yamato to Chairman Gilbert Durandal

We understand living in a world where you have no idea that you have no freedom is failure of a world, but in that world everyone is happy, so if you really think about it, chairman Gilbert Durandal did nothing wrong. He just wanted to stop the cycle of war by going on a path that would end all wars.

3. His plot armour is too strong.

Being just a college student of Orb, Kira Yamato has never had military training, but when ZAFT invaded Heliopolis, Kira managed defeat a ZAFT GINN, while completing the OS of the Strike at the same time.

He also manages to stand his ground against the renowned Le Creuset team, composed of 4 red uniform mobile suit pilots. In ZAFT, those who wear the red uniform are the elite pilots of ZAFT and are respected for their skills in battle.

His plot armor is so great that the only time Kira loses to a battle is when he fights Shinn Asuka during operation Angel Down. Click here -> Best Gundam SEED Mobile Suit pilots/Best Gundam SEED Destiny Mobile Suit pilots to learn who are the best Mobile Suits pilots in Gundam SEED and Gundam SEED Destiny.

Even though Kira Yamato is the ultimate Coordinator, it cannot compensate for the fact that Kira has not received any military training. How he fights so well against the Le Creuset team is a plot hole in itself.

4. He does not show any further development

After Gundam SEED finished, Kira doesn’t show any further character development. This is probably to let the viewers focus more on the development of the new characters like Shinn Asuka and Ray Za Burrel.

Being that as it may, a lot of people have found him to be quite boring because of this.

Because of the fact that in the first half of Gundam SEED Destiny he is no longer the main focus, he is still a relevant character making him stand out more than other side characters, and so fans noticed his lack of character development.

5. The Immortality of Kira Yamato.

This is probably the greatest source of hate for Kira Yamato. Also known as Gundam Jesus, Kira has faced death twice and lost, well he was supposed to lose, but somehow, beyond any rational reasoning, Kira manages to survive and tell the tale.

Let’s talk about the two times Kira Yamato, aka Gundam Jesus, has miraculously cheated death.

…The battle at the Marshall Islands

During his battle with Athrun, Athrun, transformed the Aegis into mobile armor mode and managed to slash open the cockpit of the Strike. He then grabbed the Strike with the remaining limbs of the Aegis as he charged up his Scylla, the main cannon of the GAT-X303 Aegis with the intent to shoot the Strike at point blank range.

As Athrun is doing this, the charge fails and a critical power alert is shown. Athrun then decides to blow up the Aegis at point blank range to the Strike. As Athrun activates the self-destruct timer, we can see that the time until detonation is only around ten seconds.

Taking into account the time it took Athrun to leave the cockpit of the Aegis and fly away, Kira most likely has five seconds or less before the Aegis would blow up. All of that plus the cockpit of the Strike was now open; Kira was now visible from the outside.

How Kira managed to survive this point blank explosion has given Kira Yamato the title of Gundam Jesus.

…Operation Angel Down

But wait, there’s more, Kira does it again a second time. This time he is up against Shin Asuka who is piloting the Impulse holding an anti-ship sword.

True enough the cockpit of the Freedom is located at the chest area, but when Shinn stabbed the torso of the Freedom. It set off a nuclear explosion that completely destroyed the Freedom.

The explosion of the Freedom is different from all the explosions of all the other mobile suits, therefore it must have had something to do with the fact the Freedom is nuclear powered.

Let’s compare the Freedom’s explosion with the explosion of Commander Waltfeld’s LaGOWE.

How Kira survived his fight with Shinn was revealed as him having turn off the nuclear core reactor just in time but we can see the nuclear explosion.

Interesting Fact: The Impulse survived a nuclear blast at point blank range. How it managed to do so is still up for debate.

With the explanation and the animation not coinciding, this led to more hate for Kira and Gundam SEED as a whole.

If you enjoyed this article, be sure to check out our articles about the plot holes in Gundam SEED and Gundam SEED Destiny!

Our Final Thoughts

All in all, Kira Yamato is a decent character that is still beloved by many fans across the world but you cannot deny that he has a lot of huge plot holes with him.

Thank you for reading!

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