Santana

"Give it up, you primitive beings."

- Santana

Santana (サンタナ) is a minor antagonist featured in Battle Tendency.

Santana is discovered as a mysterious man slumbering inside a giant stone pillar and whose existence is connected to the Stone Mask. He is part of the species of beings called the Pillar Men.

Appearance
Santana looks like a tall and muscled man possessing long fair hair but also has two small horns at the top of his head. His only clothing is a simple loincloth. In the Anime, He has painted or tattooed on his right lower eyelid shaped like a gear.

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, not caring for the humans and calmly escaping his prison. When he's exposed to Joseph's Ripple for the first time, Santana remains unfazed and experiments with it a little. Even when exposed to sunlight, Santana kept calm and used Stroheim as a shield against it.

Like all Pillar Men, Santana is dismissive of humans, comparing them to monkeys. When Joseph exasperated him with his antics, he lost his calm and began to insult him.

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. He

Santana turned to stone from exposure to the sun and became trapped in the pillar. He claims that he 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.

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 the Pillar Man to awaken, Stroheim naming the being "Santana" while he and observe him. When one of the vampires created was brought into the chamber, Santana allowed the creature to attack so he can absorb the vampire and gain nourishment. But despite the Nazi's initial opinion that he was a dim-witted savage rather than an Übermensch, Santana caught everyone off guard further when he uttered Stroheim's full name once he finished his meal.

Santana then notices a 4-by-20 cm ventilation outlet, moving at a speed faster than human eyes can perceive while manipulating his body structure to escape through the vent. By the time Stromheim realized what occurred, Santana reached the observation room while entering the body of a German who was too close to the vent. Santana absorbed his host from the inside while demanding the reason for his premature awakening while being shot at, mimicking the soldiers' machine gun to fire the bullets inside his body from his fingertips, killing almost everyone in the room. But 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.

Toying with the Pillar Man, Joseph assumed Santana killed the Nazis out of self-defense before being attacked. But Santana, expressing annoyance at Joseph's antics, realized he could not absorb the human and attempted to do the same with Speedwagon out of assessment. This enrages Joseph as both learn that the human's Hamon is preventing Santana's cells from digesting him, with Joseph feigning loss of breath so he can blow up Santana's body. As Santana's body begins to regenerate, his torso was being dragged by Joseph to be exposed to sunlight and turn into stone again. After a struggle involving Stroheim sacrificing one of his legs the door to the outside is open and a fully regenerated Santana is exposed to the light. But the Pillar man quickly forces himself into Stroheim's body in order to escape the sun while attempting to hide in a well, forcing the Nazi to sacrifice himself to left Santana into the open.

Now mad, Santana charges Joseph as they two goes down the well. But Santana realized too late Joseph allowed him to enter the well as it exposed to the sun's reflection, turning the Pillar Man to back to stone with some damage caused by the fall. Santana's remains were later taken to the Washington branch of Speedwagon Foundation, the Pillar Man kept immobile by UV Lights and revived to still be alive as he absorbed a snake that turned to stone upon touching. Santana's ultimate fate is never addressed.

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: The cells that constitute Santana's body release a potent digestive acid that melts anything organic on physical contact while making it appear the Santana is absorbing his victim into his body. Santana also displayed this ability through forcing himself into a person's body, controlling their movement while gradually eating them from the inside-out. Only those who use Ripple are immune as the cells recognize the threat the energy poses to them.
 * Ribs Blades: Santana is able to controlRipped Blades.png 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 825 kg/cm², Santana can use them to either crush or impale his opponents.
 * Meat Invade: 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.

Famicom Jump: Hero Retsuden (NES)
Santana appears as a Boss in Area 4. The player faces him in a one-on-one battle using only Joseph Joestar.

Due to the game's release date, Part 2 had only reached prior to Esidisi's battle against Joseph. Thus, only Santana and Esidisi appear as the enemies faced during the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure part of the game, instead of Kars or Wamuu.

All-Star Battle (PS3)
Santana is briefly mentioned during the dialogue in Part 2'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)
Santana is one of the several Part 2 characters who possesses a Metal Striker for the game. His Finish move has him fire bullets from his fingertips at the defeated opponent (similar to his retaliation against the Nazis), and his second special ability allows him to counter attack any Metal Striker enemy who attacks him by using his Rib Blades.

Diamond Records (Android/iOS)
Santana makes his first playable appearance in Diamond Records.

Gallery
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Trivia

 * By appearing on the 1988's NES game Famicom Jump: Hero Retsuden, Santana is the first JoJo antagonist to ever appear in a game, alongside Esidisi. Unlike DIO, who only made his game debut in 1993, in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (SNES).