First there is the fact that a planet’s glow/shimmer/hue is reflective of its life.

Genome: A planet's shimmer is its breath, a sign of life-activity caused by the cycling of souls.

Terra is red and Gaia is blue.

Genome: A planet's color indicated its shape... Gaia is blue, Terra red.

Some theorize that this is because Gaia is healthy and Terra is dying.
But I don’t think so, going on these quotes from Mikoto and Garland.

Girl: When the time is right, the light of this planet will change from blue to red, and Gaia will become Terra.

Garland: The light remains Gaia's, for now, but when the blue changes to crimson, all will belong to Terra, and its restoration will be complete.

Now why would Terra, with a brand new influx of pure souls still be red if red is indicative of a dying or weak planet?

I have no real theories on top of that except perhaps color reflects age of the souls as well. Terra is vastly older than Gaia as we’ll learn by going on.



Now let’s get into the actual history of Terra and Gaia.. It’s way confusing to me.

At Gaia’s birth, Terra was at the “peak of its prosperity”



Zidane: Geez... That's one big fireball.

Steiner: Could it be a moon...?

Voice of Garland: This is the birth of Gaia.

Zidane; That's Gaia...?


Voice of Garland: Over 5,000 years ago...

Voice of Garland: Terra reached the peak of its prosperity at this time. The people believed that their future was secure. .

Now we’ll discover a confliction between the “true people of Terra”’s records and what their creation, Garland, said.

I think, this is just me, that Garland and the records of the Terran people in Deilvert conflict.

Face: The seeds' decline was not our fault..

Voice of Garland: Ultimately, that very hubris led to Terra's demise. Thus, I was created to deal with our plights...

So, it seems to me that the people are denying that the decline was their fault and Garland is accusing them of it being their fault. Of course, the two could be talking about something completely different.

Now, both Garland and the faces speak of eternal prosperity and decline...


Voice of Garland: That is a picture of Gaia being assimilated by Terra. Five thousand years ago, Terra, already an old planet, sought to
assimilate Gaia. Terra needed to merge with a younger planet to survive.

Voice of Garland: Life on Terra was coming to an end... We had no choice but to proceed with the fusion, which tragically destroyed Terra's native civilizations. Terra was too old to assimilate everything. Thus, I created the Iifa Tree to regulate the flow of souls back to Terra.

Now the faces:

Face: After four tremendous sacrifices, eternal prosperity seemed within reach...
Flora and fauna were revived, but...is still in stasis.
Final results...are still pending...


Face: This is the record of our civilization...
Another face. The seeds' decline was not our fault...
All vegetation and...vessels..died out...
The decay of our Terra... triggered it all...


Thus, if the declines they were talking about are the same and the eternal prosperities are different, we can make a very vague timeline.

-Over 5000 years ago, Terra was doing great.
-5000 years ago, Terra is in fast decline. A premature merge with Gaia is cataclysmic.
-Right now, they are on the brink of eternal prosperity again with Gaia’s assimilation being the final necessary piece.

Of course, they could all be different things. What are the “four tremendous sacrifices”? I thought it may be planets Terra absorbed before merging with Gaia but seems unlikely considering how Garland describes Terra at the time it went to fuse with Gaia. So, perhaps the faces are out of date and the “pending” is not referring to the imminent assimilation of Gaia? But that wouldn’t make sense because we are shown everywhere the merging of Gaia and Terra. But we’re also told of the construction of the Invincible which is very old. So...who knows?

It’s all so damn cryptic and disconnected to me

Insight be helfpul.