Character Profile: Trowa Barton

Trowa Barton is mysterious. His mystic aura becomes stronger when silent, like in deep thought. In the Gundam Wing series, Trowa's past is unknown. Being a clown in a circus as a cover, Trowa always put out a clown appearance in front of an audience. During his life in the circus, he befriended another acrobat girl called Catherine. As the story goes on, Trowa's mystery is slowly revealed, especially in Endless Waltz. His nationality they say is either Latin or unknown and is from the L3 Colony. His occupation is being a clown. His Gundams are Heavyarms, Heavyarms Custom, Heavyarms Kai, and when he was in OZ, the Vayeate.

Trowa's Age

The DVD character profiles specify that Trowa is 15 years old. The back of the action figure box confirms this, and I'm told it's mentioned in the anime as well that Trowa is the same age as the other boys. Also, GundamOfficial.com's Trowa profile lists his age as 15 (though they do put a question mark next to his age).

Now, I was also told that Trowa's profile is shown in one of the episodes and gives his age as 17, but determined this to be untrue. In episode 20: "The Lunar Base Infiltration" while Lady Une is interviewing Trowa, she does have his file open, but the shot uses focus perspective, so the actual dossier is too blurry to read beyond the large letters of the first two lines: the file number and his name (see screenshot below). Another non-screenshot picture of that same scene shows his age to be 15. But is that other picture official, such as from an animation cell? I'm not sure, but it does seem that the bar codes on the two different pictures don't really match up.

He calls himself a nameless soldier. No one knows his name or where he comes from, though he appears to be of Latin descent. For all he can remember, he has always been a soldier: a common grunt in the faceless world of war.

This nameless soldier became involved in Operation: Meteor on the L3 colony when he was helping Doctor S to set up the Gundam that would become Heavyarms. Then, the original Trowa Barton revealed the secret of the operation...and out of concern for the lives on L3, a concerned member of the crew killed him. That was when "No-Name" (as he asked to be called) stepped forward and offered to take the place of the late Trowa Barton. Doctor S agreed...and gave him his new name.

And so it was that "Trowa Barton", with the Gundam Heavyarms, went to Earth. As a cover, he employed himself in a traveling circus, and he quickly established a reputation as the saddest clown in the show, with half of his face hidden behind a partial mask and his perpetual poker face exposed on the other. It was in the circus that he attracted the attention of Catherine Bloom (who is in actuality his sister), a young lady who also worked at the circus and was at once scared and intrigued by this stoic figure. Somehow, the fact that someone cared about him as a person helped Trowa to (slowly) break out of the soldier's mold.

Trowa's reputation has a dark tint to it. He's been known to infiltrate enemy organizations in efforts to sabotage them from within. Posing as a snake, he sometimes plays the snake too well: often engaging in friendly fire. He used a high-powered beam cannon to destroy Duo's Deathscythe, he (with Heero) engaged Quatre in the experimental Vayate, and he physically attacked or fired in the general direction of the other Gundam pilots on several occasions.

The Heavyarms Gundam (called Gundam-03 by the Alliance military) lends well to Trowa's style of combat: full on and at a distance. Aptly named, Heavyarms carries the most firepower of any of the suits: one beam gatling, two gatling guns and two vulcans on its chest, homing missiles, and micro-missiles. When the guns and missiles run empty (which is typical with Trowa), Heavyarms does have a gundanium heat knife that can be used as a fallback weapon. Though Trowa hides Heavyarms on Earth when he journeys into space, resistance fighters eventually get the Gundam to Howard on the Peacemillion, who adds a second beam gatling and modifies it for additional maneuverability in space, turning it into the Heavyarms Kai ("Custom")