Gundam Wing tried to break pretty much every tradition that existed back then with shounen anime. The “heroes” are terrorists, the bad guys aren’t all that evil, the women are badass, the guys are all pretty boys and a whole slew of other birthday invitation-ripping choices that differentiated it from the rest.
Those apparently include making the lead guy shorter than the lead girl.
Look at them. Heero is almost half a head shorter than Relena here. Like, how comical is that? To have your killer look up to you? *snicker*
As you see, the previous pic is not an animation goof. Relena is consistently drawn to be quite a bit taller than Heero in the beginning. What I love about the above pic by the way is the correct anatomy. Heero may be shorter, but he is still male, so his hands are larger than Relena’s.
(Ballroom e Youkoso has greatly sensitized me to this sort of stuff.)
But does this height difference even make sense or did the creators just want to mess with norms?
Thing is, it does. Zechs is one of the tallest guys in the series, barring giants like Rashid or Gwinter Septem. Look at how he dwarfs Noin:
The dude is seriously tall. So it makes sense that his little sister, who shares his genes, would grow to be pretty tall herself. Plus, they’re from a country that is supposedly located somewhere in Denmark. Have you ever met people from there? Most people end up looking like Noin when they speak to them.
But wait. Heero doesn’t stay that short, some of you will say. He grows taller.
And he does. If we look at the end of the series, Heero has gained some height.
He is not so blatantly shorter than Relena anymore. But if you look closely, he still is a tiny bit shorter. Due to his spiky hair he may look taller, but the height of their chins and eyes betray their actual height difference.
Personally, I’m all over this. I love that the creators let the Scandinavian character be tall, even if she is a girl and the hero’s love interest. Because in all the shoujo and shounen anime I’ve seen so far, the dudes are at least a full head taller than their girl. And I’m always wondering why they all dig neck pain.
I’m also tired of the whole tall, dominant guy/short, meek girl dynamic.
This is where Heero and Relena break another tradition. Heero never controlled Relena, aside from that one scene in episode 47 which leaves a bad taste in my mouth. She is her own character and actually influences Heero a lot. But they never force the other to do what they want.
And this is remarkable because they are both insanely strong-willed/stubborn, yet have vastly different approaches to things. She is a pacifist, he is a soldier and the whole time it’s a question between two sides of a concept between them, be it war and peace or ruthlessness and compassion. Never mind the whole symbolism with Earth and space.
The show spends a lot of time painting them as the two sides of a coin and like those two sides, Heero and Relena, too, are equal. And that their height difference, in which Heero grows to literally see eye to eye with her, further reflects that, is a beautiful and oh so subtle addition to the concept.
Now, I know that pretty much all of fan art featuring Heero and Relena have Heero be taller than her. So don’t take the following as me knocking the artists. I’m not.
But stuff like the lovely pic in Blind Target?
So traditional. The creators tend to be more for this:
Exact same height. And I can see why.
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