The Hand

The Hand (ザ・ハンド) is the Stand of Okuyasu Nijimura featured in Part IV: Diamond is Unbreakable.

Appearance/Personality
The Hand appears as a humanoid figure typically in yellow and black attire similar to football pads, though it has several spikes jutting from them. A towel-like object drapes over its shoulders, with a $ symbol on one end and a ¥ symbol on the other – corresponding with Okuyasu's own fashion theme of currency symbols. On each side of the stand's face are blinders that cover it's headlight-shaped eyes and limit its vision, a result of Okuyasu's own impulsive demeanor. Its right hand has spiderweb-like lines on the inside. It has no personality.

Abilities
The Hand is a heavily battle-oriented stand. Similarly to Polnareff's Silver Chariot, all its powers are either destructive or used to get an opponent in range of its powers. The Hand is possibly as strong as Crazy Diamond, though not as quick.


 * Elimination of Space: The Hand is able to erase whatever space its right hand touches. Like Cream's ability, this effectively removes whatever is in its path from existence. Okuyasu states that not even he knows where the voided objects go, but it seems the objects are eliminated like an extremely sharp blade had sliced clean through them. This ability allows the normally short-range Stand extreme distance in its attacks, as it can simply remove the air between itself and a target to bring them within range. It also seems to apply some type of force on inanimate objects that it moves forward, as a pair of trashcans were sent crashing into Okuyasu from across a street when it was used. Okuyasu has used this ability to move himself, allowing himself to "teleport" short distances. This may mean it works under the principle of a vacuum cleaner - sucking matter into itself rather than completely removing the space it touches. This ability is so powerful that even Killer Queen's touch and explode bombs are useless to The Hand's ability, Okuyasu even states that his ability is no problem as he can attack Kira without actually touching him.


 * Super Strength: Even though The Hand's major strength lies in its ability, it is not weak. Josuke notes that its right hand is strong enough such that even a normal punch from it would likely cause considerable damage to Crazy Diamond. A knee to Josuke's side made him bleed, and an uppercut sent the grounded Crazy Diamond flying backwards. Okuyasu also claimed in his fight with Superfly that a giant steel tower would be no problem to break down for The Hand.
 * Faster than light reflexes: Although speed is not The Hand's strength, it is also not slow as shown when The Hand was able to fight evenly with Josuke's Crazy Diamond, which had shown to have speed comparable or even greater than Star Platinum's who is much faster than light. In addition, Josuke also had trouble reacting to all of Okuyasu's attacks, while Crazy Diamond is still significantly faster than The Hand it is no slouch. The Hand was even able to successfully attack Red Hot Chili Pepper (A Stand who moves through electricity and was able to even outmaneuver Josuke) by utilizing The Hand's ability to erase space and quickly stomp on the Stand. The Hand has been shown to at least be able to follow and track the movements of Stands like Red Hot Chili Peppers but due to The Hand's predictable method of attack, naturally faster Stands are still able to take advantage of their superior speed and strike The Hand first.

Trivia

 * "The Band", which was the basis for The Hand's name, when written in Japanese Katakana, is only one diacritic mark off from "The Hand".
 * Interestingly, like Vanilla Ice and Cream, Okuyasu and The Hand are able to eliminate space, but their uses of their abilities are otherwise restricted by their personalities. Also to note is that their statistics differ by only one letter, with The Hand having more developmental potential.