Antonio Torres

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon! This is boring! God, you're pathetic, Jorge! Can't you at least go out like a man?! Or are you gonna die like this?!"

- Antonio Torres to George Joestar II

Antonio Torres (アントニオ・トーレス), born Anthony Hightower (アンソニー・ハイタワー), is a major antagonist featured in the light novel JORGE JOESTAR.

He is the son of and. Antonio was one of the main childhood bullies of George Joestar II and later torments him throughout his life as a Zombie working for Dio Brando.

Appearance
Antonio has unruly brown that is shorter on the sides and back along with side-swept bangs. He is skinny with tan skin and wears a striped t-shirt.

As a zombie, Antonio appears naked with flat, stretched out skin along with claws and fangs. He has no eyeballs but instead dark pits where his eyes should be, no blood, no muscles, and no bones. People who saw glimpses of him while flying airplanes described him as a gremlin with varying physical appearances. His height would vary from a gnome-like 50 centimeters to being child-sized, some would say he looks like a lizard with giant ears, and others would say he has horns growing out of his head. Lisa Lisa states that these depictions are merely stories made up by people based on the rumors, but their imaginations and fear manifested into real things.

Personality
Antonio is a cruel, aggressive, and violent child as a result of his abusive upbringing. He and his friends such as constantly bully George for several years. Despite secretly being the same nationality as George, Antonio insults George and his family by calling him "balsa blanca", meaning "white raft" in Spanish. Although he gets beat up by Lisa Lisa for harming George, Antonio persistently beats up George and goes as far as to rub dog feces in George's face in an attempt to force him to eat it.

"Thinking back on it now I believe that was something evil in the shape of a child."

After becoming a zombie, Antonio retains his sadistic nature but is also as immature as he was twenty years ago when he was a child. Mentioning his mother puts him into a fit of rage and emotional trauma. George states that although Antonio is mean, he isn't stupid. Antonio is submissive to his boss Dio and follows his orders completely.

Wound

 * Rapid Skin Cell Production: Antonio's mother Maria abused him so badly that his metabolism accelerated until she could peel off his entire skin every year, from his head to his toes, in one single peel. All cells in the average human body are replaced every seven years but skin is replaced once a month. In Antonio Torres' case, his skin cells adapted to being torn off on the same day every year. Three days before June 16th which was Maria's customary skinning day, his skin cell production would speed up.


 * Body Shedding: He could shed his own skin like a snake every year on June 16th, from a single incision. His new skin would be thin, but fully grown.

Zombie

 * Body Possession: As a zombie, Antonio is capable of going inside the body of humans and possessing them from within. By hiding inside their body, he is shielded from his weakness to sunlight.
 * Cloning: The skin he sheds would also be a zombie, essentially making a copy of himself with the same abilities. Each clone can make their own clones by shedding their skin as well. By 2012, he has 919,040 zombie clones of himself.
 * Pilot: By possessing the bodies of various human pilots in the air force, Antonio learns how to fly planes.

Background
Antonio Torres was born as Anthony Hightower in. His family had been in the railroad business there, but went bankrupt and washed up at, one of 's.

Ever since he was a baby, his mother peeled only his skin away bit by bit while leaving his blood, bones, and flesh intact. She then carefully placed the pieces together, treated them with a thin-coating of oil to prevent them from drying out, sealed them with medical adhesive, and sewed the pieces together with very fine thread. Antonio's hair that was shed from prior months would be placed on top of the head of her creation to complete the full body work of art, which she called "This Year's Antonio". Antonio's body adapted to the torture, rapidly accelerating the production of his skin cells three days before Maria's skinning day. He was eventually able to slip out of his old skin from only a single incision on his back. Antonio, his friend, and the rest of his gang frequently bullied George Joestar on his way to and from school for several years. Lisa Lisa would beat them up but this only gave Antonio more fuel to bully George, mocking him for needing protection from a girl.

La Palma (1900)
One day, Antonio and his gang attempt to force dog feces into George's mouth on George's way home from school. Lisa Lisa appears and saves him, but they still manage to get some up his nose. Despite Lisa Lisa knocking Antonio down and kicking him until the point where his nose starts bleeding, he had gotten used to the beatings from her and continues to insult George. The next day, Antonio is found dead in the morning and Julio accuses George of being the culprit who murdered him along with the assistance of Lisa Lisa. Tsukumojuku Kato reveals Antonio's cast-off skin to the rest of the class, and then the class sees another Antonio at the door. It ends up being Lisa Lisa who was hiding inside Antonio's corpse in an attempt to lure his killer. The plan succeeds and Antonio's father, Alejandro, reveals himself. Alejandro was a Vampire who ate the blood, flesh, and bones of his son because he hated him for being an awful brat.

Straizo later explains to George that the remains of Antonio and Alejandro were cleaned up. However, they were unaware that Antonio had become a zombie due to Alejandro eating his flesh. Antonio would constantly clone himself every year each time he sheds his skin, and his clones would go on to make more clones.

1905
Five years later, Antonio's zombie clones follow George when he moves to Wastewood, England. For several months after George becomes friends with the Motorize family, whenever Kenton Motorize flew while the clouds were dark or it was raining, a monster would show up. She said it would laugh at her, say things that she thought might be in Spanish, and do things to her or the plane. Antonio would tear up the cloth on Kenton's glider, make screws or nuts on the wings become loose, or sometimes even scratch her body while she was flying.

One day, Antonio mutters "Horhe Joestar" in Spanish, and Kenton could tell whatever he was saying was insulting George. She yells at Antonio for insulting her friend but Antonio declares she would die. While George is at the Motorize residence that night, Antonio arrives at their home and tells the butler that he's looking for George. When George goes to the door, he is instead greeted by the spirit of Tsukumojuku, who teleports George to Rome where Lisa Lisa is. Faraday had not seen Tsukumojuku and was terrified that the devil child he saw at the door had done something to George, but he didn't tell anyone about Antonio due to his fear.

The next day, Antonio possesses someone's body and tells Kenton that George is waiting for her at the cliffs. When Kenton goes there, Antonio murders her by stabbing her twenty-three times in the face and body. Antonio then ties her body to George's glider named Star Shooter which he also tethered to a rock, so that George would be accused of murdering her.

1915
A while after George joins the, Antonio and his zombie clones begin to attack pilots on their flights, spreading mass rumors and stories of gremlin sightings with varying descriptions. Antonio then targets George's friend,, by clinging to the underside of his plane and trying to mess with the engine. However, Jim manages to escape safely.

When George and Jim are flying together in George's plane, they prepare to make an emergency landing after their fuel suddenly runs out. Antonio reveals himself between the plane's propeller blades, with petrol running down his chin like drool after sucking the fuel all out of the plane. Antonio announces that he'll kill George and his family and does a shrill laugh. George manages to take a photograph of Antonio, just before he dives into Jim's mouth. This leads to Jim stretching his own tongue and pulling out his flesh, organs, and intestines with all of his strength. George assumes Jim is dead and is saved by Lisa Lisa and Steven Motorize, but Antonio remains in Jim's body. Jim is found floating in the wreckage of the plane by the. Imitating Jim, Antonio lies to the new commander that George abandoned him while he was injured, immediately surrendered to the German fighters, ran away, and is now spying for the enemies. Antonio then speaks to George on the phone while pretending to be Jim, stating he'll happily testify to George being a spy and that he'll kill him the next time he sees him. Lisa Lisa realizes that there must be 16,384 (2¹⁴) clones of Antonio by now if all of them constantly cloned themselves every year. Antonio's clones follow George, Lisa Lisa, and Steven to the secret underground base of the Ripple warriors in France. Possessing English soldiers, they bomb the underground headquarters. The trio shoots the zombies down in Steven's Motorize plane. One of them recognizes Lisa Lisa and mocks George for still needing her protection. George mocks Antonio's crazy mother in retaliation, leading Antonio to try biting George in anger before Lisa Lisa kills the clone. Meanwhile, the Antonio hiding in Jim's body takes over the English Naval Air Force headquarters and turns most of their soldiers into zombies. William Cardinal manages to escape with only a broken leg and gets promoted to be the supreme commander after the war.

1920
November 11th, on the day of George's wedding, Antonio kills Steven,, Darlington, and presumably Faraday. When George sees that Steven is late to be the best man for his wedding, he heads to the Motorize residence only to find the carpet on the staircase seeped with blood. He is confronted by Kenton, now a zombie, who lunges herself at him. George has no choice but to decapitate her with a fireplace poker. Just then, William Cardinal appears behind George with a gun pointed at him. George uses the same poker to strike the gun out of Cardinal's hand, but realizes Cardinal's hand isn't bleeding. Antonio reveals himself in Cardinal's mouth, eating Cardinal's organs from within. He describes how he's only following his boss's orders but enjoys torturing George nonetheless. George looks out the window and sees a flock of 920,000 Antonios gliding outside like flying squirrels. They surrounded all of England, planning to have their boss take over the country. Antonio gets the upper hand in the fight and George nearly passes out after a punch that sends him flying, slamming his head onto a wall. Antonio hits George's head several times with the blunt side of the poker, disappointed in George for being weak and mocking his genitals. He pulls George's pants down, starts attacking George below his back, and then vomits after seeing his crotch.

George manages to summon Tsukumojuku's spirit one last time by believing in his Beyond, and Antonio is shocked to see him still appearing young. Tsukumojuku teleports George to 2012 in Morioh, leaving Antonio and the zombies. Lisa Lisa and Penelope de la Rosa arrive at the Motorize residence and cry, asssuming that George had died due to the shredded pieces of his uniform on the ground. Lisa Lisa tearfully kills Antonio and the body of the Cardinal he was possessing. Furious at George's supposed death, Penelope accidentally creates a locked room made from the 920,000 flying squirrel Antonios and torn up bits of them. The giant locked room surrounds the whole world, swallowing everything up. Dio Brando raises his hand and an upside down giant form of Antonio grows from the wall that Penelope made. The whole world is inside Antonio's stomach, excluding Great Britain which remains on the outside as an island.

The giant Antonio swallows Enrico Pucci from the orders of Dio, allowing Pucci to travel outside England and use Made in Heaven. Time speeds up and the universe loops thirty-six times, bringing the island of Great Britain to 2012.

Japan (2012)
Tsukumojuku still has Antonio's cast-off skin in his suitcase when he ends up traveling through time from 1904 to Nishi Akatsuki, Japan in 2012. However, his luggage and the skin within it disappears when he arrives there.

Detective Jorge and George both deduce that the original zombie Antonio in 1900 had traded places with the skin sample that Tsukumojuku was carrying, traveling through time with him. Antonio kills three Japanese detectives including Tsukumojuku and with the help of Giorno Giovanna, arranges their bodies to resemble Japanese folk tales.

When Rohan Kishibe later tries using Heaven's Door on Giorno, the back of the book cover on Giorno's face reveals himself to be Antonio.