Santana

Santana (サンタナ  Santana) is a minor antagonist featured in Part II: Battle Tendency and part of the special group of beings called The Pillar Men, though he has been abandoned by Cars's 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.

History
Santana had originally lived in Mexico with the other Pillar Men. After Cars' rampage and slaughter of the Pillar Man race, the child Santana, along with Wham, were adopted and trained by Cars and ACDC. 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 Cars' 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. Cars 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.

Battle Tendency
Santana is discovered in a Mexican pyramid in 1938 by an expedition team led by Robert Edward 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 Cars' 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 absorbing fruit that eats the opponents cells individually, creating the illusion that they appear to be merging.
 * Ripped Blades: Santana is able to controlRipped Blades.png his rib blades, 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 (A.K.A 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.

Trivia

 * Santana is the only one of the Pillar Men whose "past" or "true" name is unknown; he was nicknamed "Santana" by Stroheim.
 * In the 2013 anime, Wham is not shown informing Cars of Santana's defeat (overheard from the Nazis in Italy). This creates a minor plot-hole when Stroheim mentions Santana by name and Cars recognizes who Stroheim is referring to, although this could simply be attributed to Cars' superior intelligence and deductive abilities.