What is the Left Hand in Vampire Hunter D?
A face in D's palm: part parasite, part partner, and the only companion D has.
Living in D's left palm is a sentient symbiote with a human face, a being the books call a Countenanced Carbuncle. Left Hand talks, mostly to needle his poker-faced host, and almost nobody else ever sees or hears him. At rest, D's hand looks entirely normal.
He is also the series' great unexplained mechanism. His origins have never been stated outright; the third novel, Demon Deathchase, offers the strongest hint, implying he was one of the Barbarois, the mutant hybrids who served the Sacred Ancestor, experimented on by his master and made stranger than the rest.
WHAT THE HAND CAN DO
The powersThe wind void
His mouth opens into a vacuum tunnel that can swallow matter, energy, magic, and even souls, storing what he eats in a pocket dimension inside his stomach for later use.
The four elements
After absorbing earth, water, fire, and air, Left Hand can convert them into power: attacks, regeneration, even forcing D into a full vampiric state that rivals the Sacred Ancestor.
The resurrection trick
In the first two novels he revives D outright, rebuilding his life force from the elements. When Rei-Ginsei stakes D through the heart in the first book, it is the hand that brings him back.
The quieter gifts
Psychometry, hypnosis, inducing sleep, reading a victim's medical state, and sizing up an enemy's powers beyond even D's senses. He is a sensor, a safe, and a second opinion in one palm.
THE PARTNERSHIP
Why it works on the pageThe only voice D answers
D speaks in monosyllables. Left Hand never stops. Kikuchi gets exposition, doubt, and comedy out of a character who otherwise gives the reader nothing, without breaking D's silence.
A reservoir of the old world
The hand remembers the lost culture of the Nobility better than any living Noble. When the plot needs ten-thousand-year-old knowledge, it is usually the palm that has it.
THE VOICES OF THE HAND
Japan and EnglishJapan
Ichiro Nagai, in both films: the definitive dry, elderly rasp.
English
Michael McConnohie (Streamline), Mike McShane (Bloodlust), John Hostetter (the game), Andy McAvin (Sentai), and Terence Aselford in the GraphicAudio dramas.