Trowa Barton

''This article is about the Gundam pilot. For the man he took his name from, see Trowa Barton (real).''

Trowa Barton (トロワ・バートン Torowa Bāton?, derived from French trois, lit. "three") is one of the five leading characters from the anime Mobile Suit Gundam Wing. His voice in the TV series and the movie was provided by Shigeru Nakahara (JPN) and Kirby Morrow (ENG).

=Personality=

Trowa is a quiet, though determined person. Patient and calm, he will analyze a situation before acting. He tends to prefer to be low-key, although some speculate he does have an unconscious desire to be noticed due to the fact that of all the names he could have chosen for himself, he chose that of an extremely wealthy and high-profile (though deceased) man; it would be difficult to blend in with a name like that. Trowa is often portrayed as an observer who carefully calculates the moves of others before deciding his own course of action. Blessed with unlimited patience, Trowa is able to wait until the opportune moment to come to the aid of his fellow pilots. When on the battlefield, Trowa attacks his enemies with utter ruthlessness and deadly accuracy. He tends to hide his feelings well behind an impassive mask. Despite his emotionlessness, Trowa had developed a friendship with Quatre Raberba Winner. Symbolically, Trowa is often affiliated with masks not only because of his neutrality and his talent for infiltrating enemy ranks, but also because of his side-job as a circus clown --a job where his dress is a costume and painted mask. Trowa is also shown to have a strong connection with animals as when he first joined the circus. He seems passive about misfortune, seeming to have the attitude of "what will be, will be." Due to his long history of combat, he is the most experienced pilot.

Gundam Wing
Trowa Barton is one of the five pilots who participated in Operation Meteor, in which five space colonies each launched a respective pilot and his Gundam to Earth to wage war against the oppressive Earth Sphere Alliance. Trowa pilots the Gundam Heavyarms, and uses its sheer firepower to unleash destruction upon his enemies. In order to remain undercover, he is employed as a circus performer who has a way with acrobatics and animals. Despite a job that requires a joyful disposition, he maintains a very distant persona.

Eventually he joins up with the other Gundam pilots, and even strikes up a friendship with one of them, Quatre Raberba Winner, though he continues to remain distant. After being defeated by Treize Khushrenada, Chang Wufei spends some time with Trowa at the circus, both pilots only speaking when they deem necessary. When the pilot of the Wing Gundam Heero Yuy self-detonated his mobile suit as a sign of defiance, it was Trowa who nursed Heero back to health. During his recovery Heero taught him some of the philosophies that he had learned from his mentor Odin Lowe. When the circus was to perform at an OZ base, Trowa (based on the quote he learned from Heero, "The best way to live your life is to act on your emotions"), decided to self-destruct Heavyarms and sacrifice himself. Trowa was stopped when he opened the cockpit to order his friend Catherine Bloom to flee, who responded by jumping in and punching Trowa, telling him not to throw his life away.

After leaving the circus with Heero, the two of them travelled together as part of Heero's plan to apologize to the family members of the late Earth Alliance leaders. The two were eventually approached by Lucrezia Noin, and went to Antarctica for Heero to continue his duel with Zechs Merquise. Trowa lent Heero the Heavyarms for the duel since Heero did not want any special treatment from Zechs, even after Zechs showed them that he had rebuilt Wing Gundam. Trowa later repaid the favor by borrowing Wing Gundam to deal with OZ's search party that was looking for Zechs. Shortly afterwards Trowa went to outer space, but left Heavyarms behind on Earth.

While in space Trowa chose to infiltrate OZ and based on his piloting record, becomes the pilot of a prototype mobile suit, the Vayeate, which was created by the Gundam scientists. Due to his record, he was seemingly favored by Lady Une. After he helped captured Heero who tried to kill the Gundam scientists, Trowa decided that Heero would pilot the other unit created by the five scientists, the Mercurius, but would have the Mercurius's self-detonation switch placed in the Vayeate. While undercover, he and Heero first faced the Tallgeese piloted by Zechs who had left OZ and resumed his life under his real name of Milliardo Peacecraft to act as a goodwill ambassador for the Sanc Kingdom. The two later confronted a mentally unstable Quatre who had been destroying colonies with the powerful Wing Gundam Zero. Quatre comes to his senses after the Vayeate is destroyed by Wing Zero's buster rifle and Trowa is presumed dead.

Trowa later reappears as an amnesiac, found wandering in a colony by Catherine, who developed a protective attitude towards Trowa when he was in the circus, and during his amnesia appoints herself as his "big sister". She was determined to see that he was no longer harmed, especially when Quatre attempted to bring him back with them to join the other Gundam pilots. Trowa ultimately choose to join them, despite his continuing amnesia. Only after he borrowed Wing Zero to defend a colony where Catherine and the members of his circus troupe were threatened by OZ did he fully recover his memory, resultant from exposure to the ZERO system of Wing Zero.

Using the newly modified Heavyarms equipped for space combat that was brought from Earth by Sally Po, Trowa survived the Eve Wars between the White Fang (an extreme group of colonists attempting to destroy Earth) and the Earth Alliance under Treize. He returned to the circus, the only true home he had ever found.

Endless Waltz and Episode Zero
Trowa Barton is actually a pseudonym, and like Heero, who was code-named after the martyred pacifist leader of the colonies, Trowa did not pick up his name at random.

During the course of Endless Waltz, it is discovered the real Trowa Barton is the son of Dekim Barton, the ambitious and bloodthirsty head of the Barton Foundation, and is dedicated to conquering the Earth Sphere in the name of the Barton family. Doktor S, the engineer who created Heavyarms, and one of his assistants end up shooting the real Trowa out of the fear that he would execute the original objective of Operation Meteor. A nameless mechanic that the real Trowa had been rather friendly with, offers Doktor S and the assistant to take Heavyarms and sabotage Operation Meteor on the condition that he is allowed to use Trowa's name.

Since then, the enigmatic and silent young man who chose to take the Gundam Heavyarms has been known as Trowa Barton. Trowa's true identity is a mystery even to Trowa himself. From the prequel manga, Trowa is implied to be Triton Bloom, the supposedly dead younger brother of Catherine Bloom.

In Episode Zero it was revealed that before he joined the Barton group, No-Name (Nanashi) (which is what Trowa called himself before he took on the name of the real Trowa Barton) was part of a rebel outfit as a mobile suit pilot. In the year After Colony 190, during this time he was there he met a girl named Middie Une (she has no relation to OZ's Lady Une). However one day during a failed Operation, the Alliance was tipped off about the operation and some of the rebels betrayed the group to join the Alliance. Although No-Name was able to save the life of his commander, the commander knew that the traitors wouldn't have tipped the Alliance off about the operation. However during an Alliance bombing, only No-Name and Middie survived and after escaping No-Name revealed that Middie was the traitor as he had noticed that her handheld game was actually a transmitter and that the crucifix she gave to No-Name was also a transmitter. Middie revealed that she only aided the Alliance to support her brothers and sick father. Middie admitted that she truly had loved him, but also hated him as he was an empty person who had nothing to hold him back. However, No-Name responded by leaving her quoting that she had it better off than him since she had a family to go back to. It was only after he left that she realized her true feelings for him, but couldn't stop him from leaving.

During the Mariemaia uprising in Endless Waltz Trowa went undercover as a member of the Mariemaia Group and was able to discover that their true plan was the original Operation Meteor. When Duo Maxwell was invading the colony, Trowa piloted one of the new Serpent mobile suits and attacked Duo, making the Gundam pilot believe Trowa had turned against him, but he was proven wrong when Trowa actually created an exit for Duo. With Heero and Duo's help, Trowa was able to stop the colony drop. Trowa then piloted the Heavyarms one last time and disabled as many Serpents as he could until the Heavyarms ran out of ammo. After Duo self-destructed the Heavyarms along with his Deathscythe Hell and the Sandrock Gundam, Quatre and Duo convinced Trowa to keep his current name as Trowa Barton. Afterwards, Trowa returned to the circus.

=Trivia= Heero is the first person to make Trowa laugh in the series, when he warns Trowa that following his example of self-detonating his Gundam "hurts like hell".

His "mask" persona often transferred to his mobile suit, Heavyarms. The Gundam was seen with a huge version of Trowa's circus mask (which fell off in Endless Waltz). The Model Kit for the Endless Waltz version of Heavyarms came with optional mask. In Super Robot Wars W, the large mask is shown being worn right before an all-out attack.

A running gag throughout the series is Trowa's tendency to run out of ammunition before the battle he is engaged in has ended.

Trowa's sweater, normally dark blue, sometimes appears to be forest green.

Quotes
Quote:Trowa Barton
 * "Those who have laid eyes on a Gundam shall not live to tell about it. Those are the orders I have been given."
 * "Beasts only bare their fangs at enemies. They are true to their feelings."
 * "I have no name, but if you must call me something, call me Trowa."
 * "And now for my self-detonation show."
 * "Take better care, of your body, I mean."
 * "I will correct the mistakes made by your weakness."
 * "Why is it that people must go on fighting like this?"
 * "That was fast, suprise suprise."