Viral Hit Ending Explained: Who Wins Between Shimura and Kuwata?

The Japanese martial arts series ‘Viral Hit’ charts the story of three outcasts who inadvertently stumble into the ludicrous opportunities that can be found in amateur fighting. Kota Shimura is a socially reserved high school student who has to deal with relentless bullies and his mother’s declining health. Even though he had always just taken the punches one fateful night, the teen decides to fight back. Fatefully, an accidental stream of his fight with Kaneko ends up going viral on the internet. As a result, Shimura realizes that there’s potential for plenty of money to be made by uploading videos, casting himself as the perpetual underdog. However, as the channel grows, so do the stakes, turning Shimura’s opponents from run-of-the-mill delinquents to something much more terrifying. SPOILERS AHEAD!

Viral Hit Recap

Kota Shimura has been dealing with the bullies in his high school for a long time. He’s used to being used as fodder for Hamake and Rumi’s streaming content and later receiving beatings for seemingly no reason. However, this isn’t the biggest problem in his life. His mother, diagnosed with cancer, is mostly living out her days in the hospital. The mother-son duo’s downtrodden finances also mean piling bills and a thankless minimum wage job for the high schooler. On top of that, Kaneko, Hamake’s sidekick, has started crashing at his place, using his mother’s ID to facilitate the fiscal aspect of their streaming gig. One night, while Kaneko is terrorizing him as per usual, a fight breaks out between the two. After the other boy insults the latter’s mother, Shimura does something he has never done before: he fights back.

Unbeknownst to the duo, their fight gets recorded on Kaneko’s system and uploaded to the internet. The next day, they become the talk of the town, and Hamake throws his sidekick out of his group, deeming his loss against his patented prey too humiliating. In the aftermath, Kaneko becomes fed up with the school’s hierarchy and his newfound low-rung position in it. Therefore, he convinces Shimura that they can expose the bully’s truth to his online audience and livestream the confrontation on their own channel to rake in some cash. The meeker boy who needs money for his mother’s treatment agrees. Although they manage to expose Hamake, the fight is so brief that it’s impossible to monetize on the streaming platform. On the other hand, it’s enough to go viral, bringing more online attention to Kaneko’s channel.

Thus, Kaneko comes up with an idea to start making fighting videos and streams to take their channel to the next level. Once Kato shakes on it, he begins looking up fighting techniques and stumbles across a mysterious tutorial with zero views where a man in a chicken mask, Tou-Kei, shares fighting pointers and lessons. When Hamake corners him for a fight the other day, Shimura puts the learned techniques to action and realizes he can at least hold his own to last in a fight against the bully. Afterward, Aki, a new student who is a perpetual loner, offers her own expertise as an editor. This leads to the official creation of Viral Hit, the streaming channel. Simultaneously, Shimura strikes up a tentative romance with Asamiya, his new co-worker. Yet, his foray into being a streamer isn’t always easy.

After Shimura defeats Hamake in a fight, which isn’t an easy ordeal, he’s faced with many more opponents. These include a pair of influencers who are sent after him in an agency’s attempt to subdue their channel. Additionally, he also faces off against Shinjo Reo, a taekwondo champion and a delinquent who is rumored to have killed someone. As their channel continues to grow and garner more fans, it draws the unwanted attention of Bad Fellows, a high-profile streaming channel that pits amateur MMA fighters. The owner, Kuwata, sees the teen trio’s channel as a threat and is willing to do whatever it takes to neutralize them. When things come to a head, Shimura offers him a challenge to end their feud once and for all. A fight between him and Kuwata, where the public can donate to either of their corners. If the teen wins, he gets to walk away with the money; if he loses, he’ll forfeit his channel.

Viral Hit Ending: Who Wins: Shimura or Kuwata?

Shimura’s fight against Kuwata remains a risky challenge from the very beginning. The former is a high school teenager who didn’t know how to throw a punch until a handful of months ago. On the other hand, the latter is an MMA fighter and a champion who has years of experience under his belt. Still, as proven by his fight against Shinjio Reo, Shimura has proven that he has grit and the perseverance has the potential to make up for his sore lack of training and expertise. Furthermore, this particular fight has a lot riding on it. First off, it’s the Viral Hit team’s one and only way to ensure that they can keep their channel. Kuwatat’s company has partnered up with Buzz Live, the streaming platform that hosts Shimura’s videos.

Therefore, Kuwata is able to simply suspend Viral Hit’s channel to erase them from the board. Additionally, there’s also the monetary factor. From the beginning, Shimura’s motivations in engaging in these fights at least partially stem from his desperate need for money. His ability to get medical treatments for his mother to give her a fighting chance relies on his ability to monetize this newfound talent. Lastly, even outside of money and fame, Shimura’s fight represents something bigger. From the very first video, Shimura’s fights have been about one clear thing: standing up as a David to the Goliaths of the world.

It’s only when he’s fighting that Shimura stands up for himself after a lifetime of passivity. Where he previously let people walk all over him, he now fights for himself and doesn’t allow bullies to get away with their antics. This is partly what compels the fans, and even the fighter’s friends, to root for him. In his fight against Kuwata, the situation remains similar. The latter thinks he can use his money and his power to steal something meaningful from a bunch of teenagers. Shimura wants to prove him wrong. Yet, the fact remains that the older man is much more skillful than the teenager. This means there’s only one way he can defeat the MMA fighter: by bending the rules and playing dirty. Since the game is inherently rigged, Shimura bites, headbutts, and groin kicks his way to victory in the end.

Does Shimura Earn Enough Donations For His Mother’s Treatment?

Even though money isn’t the only driving force behind Shimura’s foray into streaming his fights, it remains a crucial aspect of it. While his mother doesn’t want him to worry about her hospital bills, her son is all that the older woman has. She wants to forgo any treatments, robbing herself of even the slightest chance of beating her disease. Shimura, who loves his mother dearly, cannot let the same pass. Therefore, collecting enough money to pay for the experimental treatments that could potentially save his mother’s life remains at the top of his priority list from the very beginning. Since he’s the one doing the fighting, he takes a 90% cut from the donations and profits that the streams and the videos make.

Nonetheless, once their account gets suspended, a lot of that money goes away, perpetually inaccessible. This is why the fight against Kuwata is partially so important to the teenage boy. He proposes the fight with the MMA fighter in a way that allows him to make a lot of money from donations. The stream is set up in a way that allows viewers to choose whether they wish to donate to the teenager or his opponent. This also means that Shimura needs to be in the fight for as long as possible to extend the duration of the stream, giving people more opportunities to make donations. As Shimura makes it all the way to the third round, he becomes a favored underdog and starts raking in a lot of money. The last time we saw the stats, he had made more than 9 million yen. Thus, it’s entirely plausible to assume he met his goal and has garnered enough money for his mother’s treatment after his victory.

Do Shimura and Asamiya End Up Together?

Shimura and Asamiya’s love story unravels slowly and steadily over the course of the entire season. However, it’s only near the end that several truths about it are revealed. As it turns out, their fateful meeting at the diner isn’t all that coincidental. Asamiya first saw the boy in the hospital when he was meeting his mother. Having lost her own mother recently, she is intrigued by the young boy, his kind demeanor, and his evident love for his mother. Therefore, she intentionally seeks out employment at the same workplace as him. Afterward, once she begins working with him, she realizes that he’s struggling with bullies. As a result, she’s the one who sends him the link to Tou-Kei’s videos, wanting him to stand up for himself.

Since then, Shimura’s ability to fight for himself and refuse to let anything knock him down permanently has been a big source of inspiration for Asamiya. Her father is a controlling man who wants to dictate every aspect of his daughter’s life. In fact, he even takes issue with the higher seeing the streamer and tries to forbid their relationship. The fact that he’s the head doctor at the same hospital where Shimura’s mother is admitted certainly makes things easier in this regard. He offers to waive the mother’s treatment fee in exchange for the promise that his daughter will never see the boy again. He makes a similar offer to the mother herself, who declines it at once.

Asamiya takes the deal and tries to maintain some distance from Shimura. Still, inevitably, she ends up paying him a visit one last time. During this time, the latter vehemently opposes the deal and urges her to stand up to her father. In the moment, she thinks she isn’t strong enough to do such a thing, and believes this meeting would be the last one she would have with the boy she loves. However, during Shimura’s fight with Kuwata, she finally takes her life into her own hands. She goes live on social media and makes the teenager’s case to the fans. Later, when her father tries to shut her down, she finally stands up for herself, throws a punch, and runs away from home. Ultimately, the future of her relationship with Shimura remains open to possibilities, as her own fate does.

Who is Tou-Kei? Why Was He Making the Videos?

Tou-Kei is the masked chicken-fighter whose videos shape Shimura’s fighting style and instill him with the belief that even he can take on opponents who are much stronger than him. However, while he plays a huge role in the teen’s life, the latter doesn’t get to know about his identity for the longest time. Even Asamiya, who sent the link to Shimura, doesn’t know the origin of the channel. Instead, she had just happened upon the keychain with the web address to the video. In reality, this keychain initially belonged to Aki, Shimura’s friend and Viral Hit’s editor. As a child, Aki was secluded and isolated, often preferring to keep to herself. Her only real friend was a pet chicken, who tragically passed away.

In the wake of this death, Aki’s father, Motoharu Yashio, a champion MMA fighter, gave the young girl a keychain that took her to a series of videos. In these videos, her father dressed up as a chicken to show her some of the basics of fighting to compel her to grow strong and stand up for herself when trouble inevitably comes her way. This is also why Aki has a strong reaction to Shimura the first time she sees him fight. She recognizes the moves and the techniques as the building blocks of her own skill. Therefore, she’s compelled to help the teenager with his channel. In the end, when Shimura accepts the challenge against Kuwata, Aki finally reveals this secret to him and brings him to train with her real Tou-Kei, her father.