Santana
Santana (サンタナ, Santana) is a minor antagonist featured in Battle Tendency and part of the special group of beings called Pillar Men, though he has been abandoned by Kars' group.
Personality
Santana is, like his brethren, violent and aloof. Also like the other Pillar Men, he is shown to be very intelligent, capable of disassembling weapons far ahead of his time and of learning other languages from only moments of exposure to them.
Santana initially has a detached attitude toward everything around him, neither caring for the humans and calmly escaping his prison. When he's exposed for the first time by Joseph's Ripple, Santana remains unfazed and experiments with it a little. Even exposed to sunlight, Santana kept his cool and used Stroheim as a shield against it.
Like all Pillar Men, Santana is dismissive of humans, comparing them to monkey. As Joseph exasperated him with his antics, he loses his calm and began to insult him.
Synopsis
History
Santana had originally lived in Mexico with the other Pillar Men. After Kars' rampage and slaughter of the Pillar Man race, the child Santana, along with Wamuu, were adopted and trained by Kars and Esidisi. Santana some time after, had turned to stone in exposure to the sun and became trapped in the pillar. He claims that he had slept for so long because he used too much power but the reasons for this are unknown.
The presence of the stone masks near his resting spot suggests that Santana was one of the proponents for Kars' Stone Mask project, though the location of his resting spot in Mexico suggests that he did not go to Rome to fight the Ripple users and became trapped in the column by other means. His comments about how Joseph is developed for a human implies that he never met a Ripple user before. The comments of the other three Pillar Men show that they at least knew about and acknowledged his existence. Kars considers him weaker compared to his companions who went to Rome with him, stating that Santana was unable to keep up with the abilities of the other three and has lived only 1/10 of their lives, hinting that Santana was abandoned by his brethren.[1]
Battle Tendency
Santana is discovered in a Mexican pyramid in 1938 by an expedition team led by Robert E. O. Speedwagon that is later betrayed by Straizo. However, Straizo notices that Santana had been absorbing the blood he shed and, to prevent Santana from awakening, dumped the bodies of the men he attacked into a nearby river.
Santana is then excavated and studied by a team of Nazis in an underground base. The team, led by Major Rudol von Stroheim, conducts live human experiments with the stone mask in order to try to strengthen the Nazi Army. The blood from a Jewish prisoner causes Santana to awaken, after which they attempt to conduct behavioral experiments on him. Santana is revealed to feed on vampires and is able to absorb food from the surface of his body. Santana, sensing hostility within the iron, fortified room, breaks many of his own bones in order to squeeze himself into the 4-by-20 cm ventilation outlet of the room, doing so at a speed faster than human eyes can perceive. Santana is then shot with machine guns, but quickly learns both their language and the mechanisms of their weapons from only minutes of contact. He then fires the bullets inside his body from his fingertips, killing almost everyone in the room.
Joseph Joestar (disguised as a Nazi) protects Speedwagon, Stroheim, and himself from Santana's attack by channeling the ripple into Stroheim's hair and using it to shield them. Santana, expressing annoyance at Joseph's antics, tries to absorb Joseph into his body but Joseph uses this opportunity to send the ripple into him. Joseph is able to tie him up and attempts to drag him outside the shelter so that he can be destroyed by the sunlight. After a struggle involving Stroheim sacrificing one of his legs the door to the outside is open and Santana is exposed to the light. However, he quickly forces himself into Stroheim's body in order to escape the sun. Stroheim makes a sacrifice and blows himself up, forcing Santana into the open. Santana attempts to hide inside a well and Joseph goes down the well with him. Santana is exposed to the sun due to light reflecting off the water at the bottom of the well, and is turned to stone. The remains of Santana are seen under the care of the Speedwagon Foundation, where it is kept immobile by UV Lights. A snake is absorbed and turned to stone upon touching it, showing Santana is still alive.
Steel Ball Run
It is possible that the Santana Winds blowing from Mexico at the start of Steel Ball Run are in homage to Santana, as well as a possible pun on the Santa Anna winds.
Abilities
As a Pillar Man, Santana is capable of performing the most basic abilities of one. While much younger and not as experienced, Santana has demonstrated several techniques similar to ones used by those in Kars' group, as well as some of his own.
- Enhanced Sensory: As an advanced being, Santana's senses are much higher than that of a human. During his initial emergence from the pillar, he was seen using his nose to scout out the area.
- Advanced Intelligence: Santana possesses a higher form of intelligence and is able to figure out most things simply by studying them for a brief moment. Given a short amount of time, Santana can quickly learn and become fluent in any language, and was able to dismantle a gun almost instantly, a feat which would have taken several hours for a trained soldier to learn.
- Body Manipulation: As with all pillar men, Santana is capable of freely manipulating his body structure. Doing so allows him to fit into small spaces such as sliding through the grate of an air vent or the orifice of a human body and thus controlling them from the inside. Because the properties of his body are much like "rubber" as Joseph puts it, his body, including typically human vital areas such as his eyes or groin, tends to absorb attacks and can freely phase through objects, as well as shoot objects he just absorbed, like bullets.
- Absorption: Santana is able to absorb bodies just by pulling them into him, looking like they are merging. Each one of his cells releases a digestive fluid that eats the opponents cells individually, creating the illusion that they appear to be merging.
- Ribs Blades (
露骨な肋骨 ,Ribusu Burēdo , lit. "Open Ribs"): Santana is able to control his ribs, each of them capable of spinning and moving in any direction. Having a maximum length of 132 cm and a maximum pressure of 825kg/cm2, Santana can use them to either crush or impale his opponents. - Meat Invade (
憎き肉片 ,Mīto Inbeido , lit. "Malevolent Meat Morsels"): Aside from the standard method of absorbing humans or vampires via his body, Santana can release chunks of his flesh in the shape of leeches, which latch onto and absorb his opponent's blood.
In Video Games
Famicom Jump: Hero Retsuden (NES Game)
Santana appears as a Boss for the Area 4. The player faces him on a one-on-one battle using only Joseph Joestar.
Due to the game's release date and the events from PART II only reached prior to Esidisi's battle against Joseph, only Santana and Esidisi appears as the enemies faced during the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure part on the game, instead of Kars or Wamuu.
All-Star Battle (PS3 Game)
Santana is briefly mentioned during the dialogues on PART II's Story Mode. For the western version of the game, he was renamed "Santviento" to match the Crunchyroll subs. Initially, his name was "San Tan" in some press releases.
Stardust Shooters (Android/iOS Game)
Santana is one of the several PART II characters who posses a Metal Striker for the game. His FINISH move makes him shooting several bullets on the defeated opponent (similar to how he did to some nazi soldiers) and his second special ability allows him to counter attack any Metal Striker enemy who attacks him, by using his Rib Blades.
Trivia
- Santana is the only Pillar Man whose actual name is unknown; he was nicknamed "Santana" by Stroheim. It's likely his name never existed or was adapted as other Pillar Men refer to him as such after Wamuu overheard the Nazis in Rome.[1]
- In the anime, Wamuu is not shown informing Kars of Santana's defeat (overheard from the Nazis in Italy). This creates a minor plot-hole when Stroheim mentions Santana by name and Kars recognizes who Stroheim is referring to.
- By appearing on the 1988's NES game Famicom Jump: Hero Retsuden, Santana holds the record of being the first JoJo villain to ever appear in a game, alongside Esidisi. Unlike DIO who only made his game debut in 1993, in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (SNES).
- Though defeated and kept incapacitated under UV lights, Santana's ultimate fate is never acknowledged. Assuming he wasn't killed off screen, this would make him the only Pillar Man left on Earth by the end of Battle Tendency.
- Despite being regarded as among the weakest Pillar Man, Santana is the last one standing, as Kars mentally shuts down. Santana absorbing the snake shows he still retains sentience.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Chapter 64: The Red Stone of Aja(said to have lived only around 1/10 of the lives of the other Pillar Men)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Chapter 112: The Man Who Became a God(Was present during the genocide ~10,000 years ago.)
- ↑ Chapter 101: The Wind, the Tank, and Wamuu (7)
