Garou can be seen wearing long-sleeved black shirt and tight black pants he was given to by the Monster Association. He retains a large diagonal scar across his face after being brutalized by Royal Ripper, and his right eye remains severely bloodshot. His clothes are torn and two strands of fabric flow behind him like scarves due to his encounter with Overgrown Rover, and after being defeated by Orochi his entire body is black with soot.
Garou is introduced as an antagonist with a confident, vindictive characterization driven by a deep hatred for heroes. He hates being insulted and will attack anyone who offends him. He thinks highly of himself and uses that assertion to threaten high-ranking personnel such as heroes and Sitch. He will also attack low-ranked heroes and Hero Association staff members if he encounters them.
Garou hates those who are popular, as he believes the popular ones will always win in the end. This is because as a child, he had no friends and the popular children at school enjoyed abusing him both physically and verbally, particularly a boy named Tacchan. They forced him to play Heroes, where Tacchan ("Justice Man") would beat up Garou ("the monster"). Garou noticed how everyone liked Tacchan but hated him. After watching his life repeat over and over again on the basis of the Justice Man TV show, he grew a distaste of heroes in general and believed that in the end, the majority will always want him ("the monster") dead. However, this mentality also leads him to have a soft spot for victims, even his enemies. This is seen when fighting Superalloy Darkshine; when he begins attacking the hero's ears, he recalls moments when he and Tareo were bullied in a similar fashion and stops his attack. Although Garou is a villain and considered evil by most, he possesses a sense of morality; he fights heroes in a way without killing them, but he is okay with others killing heroes. He has a soft spot for children, as shown when he converses with Tareo in the park, or when he stops fighting Metal Bat after Zenko shows up. When Tareo calls him "Mister" after Garou told him not to, he does not get angry at the child. Later, he rescues and protects the boy from the Monster Association, even risking his own life to do so. In some ways, Garou can be considered a foil to Saitama. Both of them have their own strong sense of honor and justice, albeit manifested in different ways. While Saitama wanted to be like a hero from his childhood who fought villains, Garou wants to be a monster who defeats heroes. While Garou is a genius fighter and a prodigious martial artist, Saitama fights through improvisation, with no tactics and a rudimentary fighting technique. Furthermore, Garou can enjoy the feeling of losing in order to improve himself and become stronger in most of his fights, while Saitama desires to find a worthy opponent to get the rush of excitement he once had while he was training. In battle, Garou is very arrogant, often mocking his opponents and calling them "amateurs". He derided Death Gatling and the group of A and B-Class heroes he assembled, calling them all pathetically weak and that despite their smart idea of ganging up on him together, they were still nothing in comparison to S-Class heroes. Despite this, he does give credit to his opponents when it is due, as seen when he commented on Glasses' endurance throughout their battle. He is very observant in and before battle, always preparing himself to combat his opponent and never fighting without prior knowledge. An example of this is when the group of A and B-Class heroes assembled by Death Gatling arrives to take him to the Hero Association. When he sees them, he asks Tareo if he could look through his Hero Association book with all of the heroes' listed powers, weapons, ranks, and abilities. He uses this to make sure he avoids the attacks that would inflict great damage upon him, specifically Shooter's poisonous arrows.
Prior to his hero hunt, Garou was Bang's best disciple and was able to defeat all of his fellow students before being expelled by Bang. Garou's combination of genius martial art intellect and heightened physical attributes allowed him to defeat numerous heroes from the Hero Association as well as many hardened criminals. During the ambush led by Death Gatling, Garou claimed to have defeated nearly a hundred heroes. He was able to defeat the Tank Topper Army single-handedly early in his hero hunt, including the A-Class hero Tanktop Vegetarian and even the S-Class hero Tanktop Master, who was overwhelmed by Garou's superior technique. Garou later challenged and defeated the S-Class hero Metal Bat, comparing him to an amateur fighter but privately admitted to himself that had a single one of Metal Bat's strikes connected, he could have lost. His advanced martial arts, which he learned from his master Bang, grants him an advantage when fighting humans. He can use targeted thrusts at joints and vital spots in order to incapacitate physical functions and return counterattacks after anticipating his opponent's movements. However, as a result of that, his fighting style becomes far less effective against beastly tactics and non-humanoid forms. This is proven when he is easily overwhelmed by Watchdog Man despite previously defeating two other S-Class heroes. Garou's physical strength is superhuman and on the level of an S-Class hero, capable of defeating A-Class heroes with little to no effort. During his training days, he has been seen doing push-ups with only two fingers, on top of having several heavy rocks on his back. Garou is very resilient and durable. He was able to take multiple attacks from Tanktop Master and remain standing, despite coughing up a lot of blood. Garou possesses an extreme amount of speed and reflexes, far surpassing that of average heroes. He was able to effortlessly dodge a fire-based attack from Blue Fire and rip his arm off before the hero could even realize what happened.[48] He also managed to react to and dodge, albeit barely, a point-blank bullet from Golden Ball despite being caught by surprise, as well as being able to quickly dodge a vast amount of the latter's bullets from multiple directions and redirect them into each other at the same time without difficulty after adapting to the dim-light environment Garou is also shown to have high resistance to poisonous and electric attacks.
Water Stream Rock Smashing Fist: A martial art Garou learned from his master, Bang. It is composed of a series of extremely fast and powerful punches that can take out strong enemies. Garou avoids using this style if possible because it reminds him of Bang. The martial art can repel the attacks of his opponents, nullify them, or redirect them with twice the power. Furthermore, if in a crisis, the martial art has his body move on its own. However, this art is incomplete as Bang did not teach Garou how to fight against animal-like fighting styles, such as Watchdog Man's. Initially, Garou's command of the art is far inferior to his master's, as noted by Genos and Superalloy Darkshine.
Awakening Breath: A breathing technique that draws out the body's maximum potential. When used, the user's physical capabilities are temporarily increased.
Whirlwind Water Stream; Cross Fang Dragon Slayer Fist: A combination of the martial arts of Bang and Bomb. This technique is usually only achievable with two users, but Garou manages to reach a degree of mastery that allows him to use the combination without needing a second person. Garou first uses this against Darkshine.
