I’ll be the next King of Thorn!

                Hello everyone! As always my laziness kills me =) But here I am with a new review. This time it will be about a manga (type of comic originating in Japan If you didn’t know) called King of Thorn (Ibara no Ō). It was created by Iwahara Yūji and published in Monthly Comic Beam between 2002 and 2005. Later on chapters were collected into six bound volumes. King of Thorn is a seinen (adult comic book) filled with action science-fiction survivor drama featuring two protagonists – Kasumi a Japanese teenager and Marco Owen an American badass.

                The premise is simple. Sometime in the near future a mysterious virus called Medusa ravages throughout the world turning infected people into stone figures. But then some rich guy establishes laboratories in his castle to find a cure. In addition 160 were chosen to be put into capsules in suspended animation to wait for the cure. The main plot starts when Kasumi and a couple of other survivors woke up only to see their entire capsule room covered in strange thorny vines and a jungle of trees. Soon enough they discover another scary thing. Dinosaur-like monsters try to feast on them. Seven survivors are now fighting and trying to find a way out of the complex and discover what really happened during their dream.

                For a very short series it has many characters. Story is not only focused on the two main protagonists Kasumi and Marco but also on other survivors – Tim, Katherine, the Senator, Peter and Ron. All of the characters developed as chapters passed by. They are not shallow always having reasons behind their actions. Story almost always is in big suspension mode trying to surprise the readers with unexpected plot twists and scary moments. What is more the story is situated only in castle turned into a medical lab and I really liked it. I didn’t know what really was going until I read the last chapters. This manga provided many WTF!? and Hell No! moments for me. The drawings were are also fine, but the main character face slightly did not fit the overall art of King of Thorn.  Even though it is a little bit too complicated but fortunately the ending didn’t turn out into technologic gibberish explaining what happened.

Final Score: 7/10

(There is an anime adaption of King of Thorn, but don’t watch it. It’s horrible and changed plot a lot…)