The Grateful Dead (ザ・グレイトフル・デッド (偉大なる死) Za Gureitofuru Deddo) is the Stand of Prosciutto, featured in Vento Aureo.
Quick Answers
What is the special ability of The Grateful Dead in Vento Aureo?
Who is the Stand user of The Grateful Dead?
What is the design inspiration behind The Grateful Dead's appearance?
How does The Grateful Dead move without legs?
What is the significance of the eyes all over The Grateful Dead's body?
Appearance
The Grateful Dead is a humanoid torso covered with eyes. It has no mouth. It lacks legs but has large arms. It walks on its hands, where each has four huge metal-like and segmented fingers evenly spaced around its circumference. Hanging from its waist where its legs should be, are four segmented tentacles. The eyes all over its body give it the look of a yokaiW. Araki originally intended to draw the lower half of its body but changed his mind.[1]
The Grateful Dead emits a light mist but it is unknown if the mist is linked to its power.[2] The anime adaptation seems to imply that the two are connected, as Pesci reacts with shock and fear when he sees it manifest.
In the digitally colored manga, The Grateful Dead is portrayed as purple with yellow sclera on the eyes and orange fingers. The Grateful Dead's appearance in the PS2 game is mostly the same, with the exception of the Stand's mouthpiece being yellow.
In the anime adaptation, the Stand looks smaller than the manga version of itself. Its body is ice blue, the metallic parts of its body are a dark purple and its eyes have lime green sclera with yellow pupils. The anime adaptation also changes the shape of its fingers, being more claw-like in appearance.
Unlike most humanoid Stands, The Grateful Dead is shown slowly directly walking toward behind Prosciutto on the ground with its hands.
Color Schemes
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Abilities
With The Grateful Dead's ability adorning its creepy and terrifying appearance, it's also one of the deadliest Stands that has appeared in Part 5. It can be very dangerous for both enemies and allies.
The Grateful Dead's greatest asset is its ability to forcefully age people over a large area, a terrifying power because of its potential for a massacre. However, the aging can be slowed and while The Grateful Dead isn't weak, it isn't a match for other close range Stands like Sticky Fingers.
Accelerated Aging
The Grateful Dead has the ability to cause organisms to age physically and mentally at an accelerated rate.[2] It can age just about all living organisms; plants, fruits, animals, and humans - including even Prosciutto himself.
There are two ways The Grateful Dead can deploy its power. The first mode is to spread the aging over a large area and indiscriminately attack friends and foes, which is dangerous for Prosciutto's companions.[2] The second mode is to direct its power precisely by grabbing someone, in which case the aging is faster than one can react.[3] The activation of this ability manifests itself as mist spreading from The Grateful Dead although it is unknown if the mist is directly connected to the aging.
When under the effect of The Grateful Dead, people age rapidly with all the effects it implies: their skin develops wrinkles, their teeth begin to fall out, the tips of their limbs start to necrose, and their bones and joints shrink.[2][4] Even fruits and flowers wither and dry up.[2][5] A victim is also effected mentally; their cognitive ability is reduced, and they start to think and act with the mannerisms and/or stereotypes associated with the elderly, such as thinking about sitting in a nice garden. However, this could just be the victim's elderly personality, similar to how Sethan reverts its victims' minds. The degree of mental aging can vary, as seen when Narancia became senile and lethargic, while Giorno retained enough of his intellect to discern how The Grateful Dead's accelerated aging functioned.
The rate at which people age is dependent on their body heat. The warmer one's body is, the faster they age. Thus things that warm the body (e.g. intense physical activity) will accelerate the aging,[6] while exposure to cold (e.g. ingesting ice) will counter and reverse The Grateful Dead's power immediately.[4] Both effects can balance themselves and insufficient coldness will not have an effect.[6] As men usually have higher body heat due to minute differences between men and women's bodies, women will be effected more slowly.[4]
It is notable that the power of The Grateful Dead does not truly age the victim; it just transforms them into and elderly version of themself. For example, if an infant effected by this "aging", they would not grow into an adult; it would just cause their skin to wrinkle and hair to fall out.
If the ability is used on Stand users, their Stands will also be affected since the spirit is also aged by The Grateful Dead. This causes Stands to rapidly age proportionally to the user, resulting in enemy Stands being weakened. Their power and stamina are sapped[3] and even a powerful close-range Stand like Sticky Fingers can become slower than The Grateful Dead, which is already rather slow to begin with.[7]
Prosciutto is normally immune to The Grateful Dead and can stay young inside its range. However, he can freely toggle the aging on himself, notably fooling Mista into thinking he's a mere civilian.[3]
Chapters / Episodes
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Chapters in order of appearance
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Episodes in order of appearance
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Gallery
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Trivia
- The Grateful Dead has the opposite effect as Sethan, albeit with a much longer range.
- The Grateful Dead's ability and weakness are references to how prosciuttoW itself is made:
- The prosciutto itself is cleaned, salted, and aged, with the blood being drained out of it.
- Prosciutto is best prepared in a cold climate, while The Grateful Dead itself is weak to the cold. If the environment around the prosciutto is too hot or too dry, it will spoil.
References
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