Garou: One-Punch Man Season 2 Villain, Explained

CBR

By Sam Stone

Published Apr 2, 2019

Season 2 of One-Punch Man features a terrifying new villain in the mysterious Garou. Here's a quick primer on the infamous anime villain.

WARNING: The following contains potential spoilers for Season 2 of One-Punch Man, out on Hulu on April 9.

True to its eponymous character's superhero alter ego, One Punch Man's Saitama has been able to easily dispatch all the monsters and aliens opposing him across the first season with a single blow. However, Season 2 of the popular anime will introduce a new figure that may just become Saitama's greatest foe yet.

Named Garou, the mysterious villain has developed both a fascination in monsters and a deep-seated hatred of the heroes that oppose them. As such, he hunts down the heroes, directly putting him on a collision course with both Saitama and the cyborg hero Genos. Here's a quick introduction of the Season 2 antagonist.

Garou is a Fallen Hero

As a child, Garou had no friends and was bullied constantly growing up, often being forced to play the role of a monster while his peers would pretend to be heroes and beat him up. This led to an early contempt for heroes and a deep sympathy for the monsters they regularly confronted. Garou eventually trains under the martial arts master and S-class hero, Bang, and becomes his greatest student, though he is ultimately expelled for crippling other pupils. Later, Garou begins to hunt other heroes while maintaining his own twisted code of honor.

Garou's Powers and Abilities

As a top martial artist and tactical genius, Garou is able to fight S-class heroes on equal or greater footing with his superhuman strength, speed and senses. Additionally, Garou possesses an immense level of endurance, able to withstand mighty blows, heat, energy projection and poison relatively unfazed, aided by an accelerated healing factor.

Most notably, Garou can constantly adapt and evolve, increasing his strength and abilities drastically as he undergoes a monstrous transformation. This evolution allows Garou to defeat opponents that had outclassed him only moments before, making him especially deadly.

Is Garou Saitama's Greatest Foe?

As a villain who methodically studies and hunts down heroes to defeat them while constantly mutating to even more powerful forms, Garou is perhaps the gravest, most personal threat the Heroes Association has ever encountered. When he is first introduced, Garou has already defeated scores of heroes and, while his own code of honor stops him from going out of his way to kill his opponents, he does not actively restrain himself from using lethal force either.

More than a match for most S-class heroes and Dragon-level monsters, Garou's tragic upbringing and training under Bang have shaped him to become an unrepentant threat. And as Saitama continues to search for a worthy opponent, capable of putting up a decent fight, he may have just found an enemy in Garou to more than give the hero what he has wished for.

One Punch Man is produced by J.C. Staff. The subtitled version of Season 2 is set to premiere in the United States on Hulu on April 9.