Massimo Volpe

Volpe stands tall with a gaunt, bony frame that lends him an almost Irish look. His nose, eyes, and brows are all thin, his gaze unfocused, and dark rings hang beneath his eyes. Long straight hair falls under a fur-trimmed hat. He wears a one-piece outfit whose shoes blend into the fabric, cinched by a belt with a broad rectangular buckle marked by three circles. Fur edges much of the otherwise plain garment, running along his outer arms and cuffs and up two strips from the belt to a wholly furred collar, below which sits an odd handle, while tasseled rings dangle from the fur at his legs.

Volpe drifts through life in near-total apathy, feeling little about anything and carrying no real passion, which leaves him closed off and listless, though a capacity for violence surfaces once he joins the Narcotics Team. Resentment runs deep in him, aimed above all at his older brother and at Fugo, yet the team forms an exception, and he serves as a steadying figure for Angelica Attanasio and Vittorio Cataldi.

Vladimir Kocaqi believes Volpe powerful enough to rule the world, a claim Volpe rejects even as he follows the man loyally and mourns him bitterly. His bond with Angelica is genuinely tender, and he uses his Stand to ease the pain of her chronic sickness. Her death shatters his restraint, sending him to brutal extremes to lure Fugo out and avenge his fallen comrades.

Volpe's Stand, Manic Depression, is a tiny colony of miniature Stands that ramps up the biological functions of living things. He came from a family whose wealth had faded, surrounded by relatives with no blood tie who had sold their noble titles to merchants, people his father flattered in public and scorned in private. The inheritance was meant for his older brother, but that brother walked away to train as a chef, dropped the Volpe name for their mother's maiden name Trussardi, and was disowned by their traditionalist father. Left holding the family's mounting debt, Volpe entered Passione, and his own father eventually grew addicted to the very drugs he brewed.

The two brothers' powers proved mirror images, since Manic Depression corrupts the body's chemistry while Tonio Trussardi's Pearl Jam mends illness. At college Volpe crossed paths with Fugo and loathed him on sight, seeing through the younger man's model-student act, and was unsurprised when Fugo got himself expelled for striking a professor.

In the climax of Purple Haze Feedback, with Giorno now in charge, the Narcotics Team retreats to Sicily and travels to Ortygia for a Stone Mask meant to strengthen Volpe. He waylays Sheila E on a road, uses Manic Depression to boost his strength enough to halt her car, and takes her captive. Returning to find Angelica dead from overexerting her Stand, he furiously summons Fugo to the temple of Apollo. There his heightened body very nearly finishes Fugo, but Fugo has hidden a Purple Haze capsule in his mouth and spits the virus into Volpe's face, ending his life.