Viral

Only a handful of traits betray Viral's Beastman origins: slitted feline eyes, rows of shark teeth, and broad clawed paws where hands should be. Otherwise he could nearly pass for human. Through the Beastmen War he dresses in a fur-collared brown jacket with shoulder pads over matching trousers, bandages wrapping his shins above simple pointed black shoes, his platinum blond hair falling to his chin in front and brushing his shoulders behind. A butcher-style cleaver rarely leaves his side.

When he resurfaces after the timeskip, ragged brown cloth covers his now-tattered old uniform, cinched with two red belts, and his hair has grown well past his shoulder blades. Joining Team Dai-Gurren earns him a blue full-body uniform banded in gold at the waist and arms, worn with a brown scarf that doubles as a cloak and hides the old knife. Twenty years later his immortal body remains unchanged, though he trims his hair back to its original length.

Arrogance and honor coexist in Viral. He sneers at humanity, deriding people as naked apes, yet he refuses to cut down a defenseless opponent or stoop to hostage-taking, a code that repeatedly sets him against his own superiors. Battle is his joy, and Kamina earns his lasting respect as the one human who ever fought him evenly; taking up Gurren's controls later in life is, in its way, an act of tribute.

His contempt for mankind erodes as the story goes on. Once inducted into Team Dai-Gurren he matches their bombast speech for speech, cheerfully admitting he cannot follow their logic but believes in it anyway. The Anti-Spiral's dream trap exposes his softest secret: a wife and a daughter, the family his engineered, sterile body can never produce. He waves the vision off as a sappy dream, but it clearly cuts deep.

Viral debuts commanding the far-eastern theater of the Beastmen's human extermination forces under General Thymilph. A chance encounter while hunting pits his cleaver against Kamina's sword, and the feud escalates through repeated clashes between his personal Gunman Enki and the newly combined Gurren Lagann, which cost Enki its helmet and Viral his pride. Fighting beside Thymilph in the upgraded Enkidu, he helps deliver the blow that mortally wounds Kamina, only to be batted aside by the hijacked Dai-Gunzan moments later.

Passed to Adiane's command and blamed for Thymilph's death, he shields her from the Dai-Gurren's descending foot during one battle and later helms the sea fortress Dai-Gunkai against the heroes, surviving alone when Gurren Lagann's drills tear the flagship apart. Serving under Cytomander, he finally learns that Kamina is dead and that a child has been defeating him ever since, but when the general seizes Yoko as a hostage and orders him to finish the immobilized Gurren Lagann, Viral refuses; no honor could be reclaimed that way. Condemned for treason, he asks Lordgenome for the truth about humanity rather than for mercy. The Spiral King shows him hordes of Beastmen held in stasis, explains his reasons for caging mankind underground, and grants Viral an undying body, not as a weapon but as an eternal witness meant to recount humanity's failure. After one last defeat in the throne room aboard the Enkidudu, he disappears in Teppelin's fall and is presumed dead.

Seven years on, Viral resurfaces to defend an underground settlement that refused relocation, is brought down by the Grapearl pilots Gimmy and Darry, and lands in Rikane Prison, where a brawl reunites him with the deposed Simon. Freed at Simon's request during Yoko's jailbreak, he accepts a place in the reborn Team Dai-Gurren as Gurren's official pilot, a title nobody contests. He fights the entire Anti-Spiral campaign from Gurren Lagann's second seat, and escaping the illusion of family life leaves him holding a Core Drill of his own, Spiral Power blooming in a being supposedly incapable of it. In the final battle he manifests twin blades from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann to duel the Granzeboma, then hurls Lagann so Simon can strike the killing blow. Two decades later, unaged, he captains the Super Galaxy Dai-Gurren as Earth's representative to the coming Spiral Peace Conference.