Is Garou actually evil?

Question

So, Garou apparently doesn't kill his opponents.

Later in the manga, he

saves a kid from monsters.

And in the webcomic, Saitama says what Garou actually wanted to be is

a hero.

Is Garou actually supposed to be evil?

Answer 1

Well it sort of depends on how you define "evil".

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Fair warning: everything after this point is a spoiler if you haven't already read the Garou arc in the webcomic.

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Garou romanticizes and idealizes "monsters". He sees them as hardworking individualists who pull themselves up by the bootstraps, only to get trodden over by conformist heroic ideologues. As a child he was always disappointed that the monsters invariably lost, no matter how cool, or strong, or hardworking they were.

Moreover, the people attach themselves to the concept of heroes and become dependent upon their inevitable victory. The people do not work as hard to prevent wars, catastrophes, and monsters in general because they have the safety net of heroes. So, somewhat paradoxically, the efforts of heroes to end suffering and calamities actually ends up making these into a pandemic. Garou sees this as a pox upon humankind, and sets himself the goal of rectifying it by becoming the ultimate monster who triumphs over all heroes and justice, and forces the world as a whole to achieve unity and peace in their opposition to him. Everyone, not just the heroes, must be part of the hard work to achieve peace and avert calamities. A classic "world peace via worldwide fear" solution.

So if that sounds like evil to you—terrorizing the world in order to unify it against you—then sure, he's evil by your definition. In a literary sense he would probably be classed more as an anti-hero: his goals broadly coincide with those of heroes (world peace), but his methods are more like those of villains (brutish and callous). Put another way, he's Machiavellian: the ends justify the means. The point of his existence within the work is more to deconstruct the concept of heroes and challenge its value and goodness to a society, than it is to be "evil".

Now one of the major features of Garou's arc is his lack of self-awareness about all of this. He professes to have abandoned all of his humanity and goodness, and that he is a true monster. But his actual behaviors belie a gentle nature: he constantly goes out of his way to protect children, and while he does severely injure and hospitalize several heroes he doesn't actually end up killing any of them (though possibly some would have if they had not received medical attention quickly). In a way he finds the insistence of other monsters that he must kill things to reek of the sort of conformist ideology he wishes to rebel against, and seems to subconsciously resolve himself to ignore them and do as he pleases. A wanton killer, be he hero or monster, is a slave to impulse, not a free being.

At the end of the Garou arc, it is Saitama and Bang that end up berating Garou over his good nature, and how all this monster business of his has been misguided and childish. That he wanted attention and praise and to achieve something great; not to be evil and destructive. Saitama even says that Garou became weaker as he became more monstrous, and was at his greatest power as a human. So he was also being counterproductive.

Answer 2

Garou (ガロウ, Garō; Viz: Garo) is a former disciple of Bang, but was kicked out from his dojo for going on a rampage. Because of his fascination of monsters and his hatred of heroes, he is commonly called the Human Monster and the Hero Hunter. Sitch of the Hero Association views him as a grave threat to the organization despite being only a human.

Source: One Punch Man Wikia - Garou

Maybe he's evil but its early to say that because Garou is still a human