King of Thorn (manga, vols. 5-6) by Yuji Iwahara

As with After School Nightmare, I realized a while back that I had come very close to finishing this series, so I decided I'd finish it during my vacation. I probably would have benefited from a reread of the previous volumes, and, as with After School Nightmare, all I had were the volumes I hadn't yet read.

At least the final volume of After School Nightmare made sense to me, even though I wished I could reread parts of the series after gaining new knowledge about what was really going on. The final two volumes of King of Thorn were just really confusing. Iwahara crammed a lot into six volumes. Although I wasn't quite as lost as a newbie to the series would have been, the events in the final two volumes were still tough to process. I'm assuming it would have been a little easier if I had read the first four volumes more recently - 3 years is a long time.

It's not surprising to me that King of Thorn was turned into a movie. This series has always had the feel of a big budget sci-fi action movie, and these final two volumes are no exception. Iwahara brings out more varieties of monsters and creatures and leaves things open enough at the end for a sequel (not that I've heard anything about there being a sequel in the works).

(Again, GIANT SPOILER ALERT, read the stuff below at your own risk!)

For those who actually read all the volumes in this series one right after the other, the ending is probably mind-blowing and awesome. I mostly just tried to keep my head above the water, and I think I've managed to get straight in my mind what happened to the twins. Iwahara kept up the hints of romance that appeared in the earlier volumes, but then, in my opinion, ruined that tiny romantic subplot by introducing elements of brainwashing to the series. I'm assuming readers were supposed to think that Marco would have come back from the dead to protect Kasumi even if he hadn't been brainwashed, but I couldn't help but doubt the romance anyway. I didn't think there was enough time for Iwahara to truly prove that Marco's actions weren't affected by the brainwashing, so what should have been an "aww, how sweet" moment was soured for me.

Finishing this series didn't give me the same urge to reread all the volumes that finishing After School Nightmare did, but I would like to see the movie one day. Six volumes seems like a lot to fit into two hours, but I think it's doable, and I think this is one of those series that could be even better in animated form. The monsters and action scenes would be a lot of fun to watch, and Marco would make for great eye candy.

Below are summaries (as much as I was able to figure out) for the volumes I read:

• King of Thorn (manga, vol. 5) - Katherine dies, giving her body over to Medusa - her motherly instinct is born from her body, in the form of a bird creature with breasts. The creature almost dies while protecting Tim, so what's left of the group leaves Tim and the creature in a safe place. Kasumi finds Alice, the creepy little abused girl who was the first person to contract Medusa. Alice reveals to Kasumi that her form is just a hologram (or something similar) and takes Kasumi to her real body, which is in shocking condition. The only reason Alice is still alive is because of Medusa. Meanwhile, Marco is getting the crap beaten out of him by Zeus.
• King of Thorn (manga, vol. 6) - This volume is chock full of stuff that confused me. Zeus has Marco killed. Zeus reveals that Kasumi's twin, Shizuku, has been around all this time...as a giant monster. He also reveals that everyone has been unconsciously trying to protect Kasumi because of brainwashing he (or possibly Shizuku - my notes aren't too clear on that) did to all of them while they were in cryogenic stasis. Marco drags himself back from death, with the help of the last of Alice's energy, and helps Kasumi get to the real Shizuku, who is somewhere inside the giant monster. In order to save everyone else in the group from being turned into Medusa monsters by Zeus, Kasumi has to get through to Shizuku, and when she does, she learns the truth: the real Kasumi is dead. When Kasumi was chosen to be put in cryogenic stasis, she tried to get Shizuku to commit suicide with her, and Shizuku accidentally killed her while resisting. As far as I can figure, Shizuku was already succumbing to Medusa when she was taken to the cryogenic stasis lab, and she used Medusa to create another Kasumi, sort of like bringing her back to life. Kasumi, of course, is shocked, but Marco seems to have suspected something like this, and he gets her through it. The series ends with everybody deciding to go out into the world and help anyone who hasn't already succumbed to Medusa fight the monsters and learn to control their Medusa powers.

See what I mean? That last volume in particular was super-condensed confusion for me. I felt like begging Iwahara to give me more time to breathe and think.

Read-alikes and Watch-alikes:

• After School Nightmare (manga) by Setona Mizushiro - If you'd like another series that may blow your mind, you might want to try this, even though it's got less of a "blockbuster movie" feel than King of Thorn and is less action-oriented. I have written about every volume in the series.
• Avatar (live action and CGI animation movie) - When the newest Medusa monsters started running around, my first thought was "Wow, those guys look kind of like the aliens in Avatar." Plus, there's action, a bit of romance, cool creatures, and people doing stuff in artificially created bodies that they can't do in their own bodies. I've written a little about this movie.
• Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle (manga) by CLAMP; Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle (anime TV series) - I haven't yet finished this series, but there are elements to it that I think are similar to King of Thorn. This series has action, romance (to a greater degree than King of Thorn), and some potentially mind-blowing events in the later volumes. I've written about volumes 17 and 18 of the manga.
• Ceres: Celestial Legend (manga) by Yuu Watase; Ceres: Celestial Legend (anime TV series) - If you'd just like another messed up twin story, you might want to try this, although be warned that the twin drama is sorta kinda incestuous. On their 16th birthday, Aya, the sister, inherits the powers of and ability to transform into Ceres, a vengeful celestial maiden. Aki, her twin brother, has inherited baggage of his own: the personality of the man who Ceres loved and who betrayed her starts to take him over. This series is more romance-focused than King of Thorn, but there's still plenty of action, dark fantasy, and drama. I consider this one of Watase's darkest works, although I think the ending is at least bittersweet, if not completely happy.
• The Matrix (live action movie) - This movie starts off with the mind-blowing stuff and then gives you action and coolness for the rest of the running time. Those who, like me, found themselves gasping for breath in that last volume of King of Thorn might appreciate a movie that gives your brain a chance to catch up.
• Blue Gender (anime TV series) - I have to admit, I've never seen this series. I added it to this list because the basic premise sounds very similar to King of Thorn. The main character is diagnosed with a disease and is put in cryogenic stasis. When he wakes up 15 years later, alien bugs called the Blue have taken over Earth and a few select humans have moved to a space station called Second Earth.
• Resident Evil (live action movie) - Another action-filled story with flesh-eating monsters (zombies!), survival horror, and a main female character who gradually regains her memory of how she came to be stuck in the middle of all of it.

King of Thorn (manga, vol. 4) by Yuji Iwahara

(There's really no way I can do a decent summary without some spoilers, so beware.)

In the last volume, Kasumi learned that there's a traitor among the small group of people who were cryogenically frozen during the attempt to deal with the Medusa Virus, and the things she saw led her to believe that Marco Owen was probably the traitor. In this volume, the few remaining people in the group discover the probable origin of the Medusa Virus and that it is not actually a virus at all. Medusa is something in a person's mind, and there is a slim chance that those in the group infected with Medusa (which means everyone except Marco) can cure themselves - one of the very first people to get the virus, a young girl, managed it. Marco has Kasumi watch a video and keeps her, the other young woman (Katherine), and the little boy (Tim) from following him as he goes off on his own to settle things with a hacker named Zeus. There are lots of flashbacks to Marco's past, showing him when he was asked to infiltrate the complex and showing him when he tried to follow through with NSA and CIA's plan - obviously, the plan didn't work. While Marco is gone, Kasumi continues to watch the tape and finds evidence that her twin sister is alive and probably somewhere in the complex. Kasumi's twin isn't the only one still alive - one of the people in the group who was recently killed is still kinda-sorta alive, in an "is he a zombie?" sort of way.

I'm still loving this series, even if parts of this volume confused me. Mainly, it was the stuff with Marco's past that confused me - I had trouble keeping track of what Marco was supposed to be doing for the NSA, and I couldn't remember what it was exactly that Zeus did to Marco (he set him up for something, but I can't remember what it was - it'd probably help to reread the previous volumes). By the way, if you've seen the Tokyopop cover for this volume and you're wondering, the guy on the lower right of the cover is Marco before he went to prison. As usual, Marco made me go embarrassingly fangirly, so I'm a little more forgiving of any confusion the bits about his past caused me than I might have been if those bits had been about another character.

The revelations about Medusa were great and kept me at the edge of my seat, although I don't have Marco's confidence that everyone in the group will figure out how to cure themselves. For one thing, the guy in the recording who was explaining things as much as said that it was no longer possible for people to cure themselves the same way the little girl who was among the first to catch it did. For another, Katherine is doing pretty badly by the end of this volume - I doubt it'll be long before she shatters herself on something. I did enjoy finally finding out who that creepy little girl is who's been following the group around, although it's hard to believe that she's the same cute girl shown in the flashbacks - she seems darker and meaner now than she looked to be then.

Once this volume reveals what Medusa is, the next question is "whose messed up mental image resulted in all those horrible monsters found throughout the compound?" Apparently, Zeus played a part in their creation, although it's not quite clear how he managed it and how they can be gotten rid of. This is bad, because these monsters aren't just in the compound - they're all over the world. Zeus's reason for making this all happen is either massively stupid or massively crazy. Maybe both.

Although there are a lot of explanatory flashbacks and video footage in this volume, that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of action. In fact, the flashbacks and video footage constitute most of the action in this volume. It all reminded me a lot of the movie Jurassic Park - everybody goes in, things go a little wrong in a planned way, then things go a lot wrong in an unplanned way, with lots of people dying quickly. The main difference is that in this manga, the dinosaur-like creatures can hurt you with more than just teeth and claws (although that's bad enough) and some or all of them can sprout more nasty creatures. I don't think this has been made into an anime yet, but it really should be - this would make a fun, adrenaline-fueled survival thriller. Marco's the lean and muscular convict who can handle himself in any kind of fight and then go hack into a computer system if he needs to. Kasumi and Katherine are the pretty women with painful pasts, Tim's a cute kid who needs to be kept safe, and then there are a few other characters to keep the mix interesting. The slowly unraveling mystery, as well as the question of whether any of them will actually survive Medusa, even if they survive the monsters, keeps this story from just being about all the action.

Overall, I really enjoyed this volume and this title in general. With this volume in particular, you get a lot of story for your money - I think there are probably at least 200 pages here for $9.99. You could also do what I've been doing (before I moved, anyway) and just get this manga from your local public library, if they're nice enough to have it in their collection. Personally, I'm hoping that this actually does get made into an anime - right away, it'd end up on my list of anime I plan on buying as soon as I'm able. I'm only hoping that the ending doesn't turn out to be a total letdown. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens to all the characters, whether they survive or not. I'd also like to know if there's now a zombie problem, if Marco will manage to kick Zeus's crazy butt, and what Kasumi's twin has to do with Zeus.

As far as extras go, the volume begins with four full-color pages and ends with a couple pages of the author's comments and random drawings. For those readers who are guys, the drawings include Katherine from the waist up, in a bikini, and Kazumi from behind, in her underwear and some kind of strapless top (there's probably a name for this kind of top, but I've never been a clothing fan, so I don't know it). The four full-color pages were depressing. The cover illustrations are always gorgeously colored, so I was expecting something of that quality, but the pages I saw looked a tad blurry and a little muddy here and there.

I continue to have problems coming up with read-alikes and watch-alikes for this series. My usual resources aren't much help, either - NoveList seems to choke when it comes to manga, WorldCat's list of supposedly related items (for another volume in this series) is just odd (a Tom Sawyer comic? Huh???), Amazon.com's "also bought" list isn't much better, and Anime-Planet doesn't even have this series.

Read-alikes and Watch-alikes:

• Jurassic Park (live action movie) - A very wealthy man has the brilliant idea to create a park filled with dinosaurs. Unfortunately, things go wrong, and he and a bunch of visitors are suddenly trapped on an island with a bunch of large prehistoric reptiles, quite a few of which are carnivorous. Those who'd like another survival thriller with heart-pounding action and dangerous monsters might enjoy this movie.
  
• Pitch Black (live action movie) - A group of space travelers are stranded on a seemingly lifeless sun-scorched planet. Unfortunately, when darkness falls they discover that the planet isn't as lifeless as they thought. Those who'd like another survival thriller with heart-pounding action and dangerous monsters might enjoy this movie. In addition, there's a convict character who, at times, reminds me of Marco Owens.
  
• The Sandman (graphic novel series) by Neil Gaiman - The first book is the series is called Preludes and Nocturnes. This series focuses mainly on Morpheus, the Sandman, a dark figure who watches over dreams and makes sure they stay separate from reality. Despite this, several of the stories in this series involve the blending of reality and dreams. Morpheus' various siblings make the occasional appearance, and they're fascinating as well. Those who'd like another story that often deals with the strange and sometimes horrific things people's minds can produce might like this series. Unlike King of Thorn, however, this is not an action-oriented series, but rather a character-oriented one.
• Red Garden (anime TV series) - There's been a lot of strange suicides in New York lately. One day, four girls with little in common wake up feeling tired and dizzy, unable to remember what happened the previous night. They discover that one of their classmates has committed suicide. Not long after that, the four girls are told that they all died the previous night and must fight when called to do so if they wish to continue to live. Those who'd like another horror-thriller with supernatural weirdness and dark and unnerving aspects might enjoy this anime. I'll admit, I haven't seen it yet, but I'd like to - I've read a few reviews, and it seems like it might be worth the money.
• After School Nightmare (manga) by Setona Mizushiro - Ichijo Mashiro is one of several students at his school who are made to attend a special class, in which students battle each other in a dream world. Almost everyone's dream selves look nothing like their waking selves, but, unfortunately, this is not the case for Ichijo. His dream self reveals his most closely guarded secret, that he is neither male nor female. As the series progresses, more students' secrets are revealed. Those who'd like another strange horror story in which characters' secrets, as well as their environment's secrets, are gradually revealed may enjoy this manga.
  

King of Thorn (manga) by Yuji Iwahara

Originally posted in A Library Girl's Outlet on May 18, 2008:

Because of my public library's awesome manga collection, I've gotten to read the first three volumes of King of Thorn by Yuji Iwahara. It's a strange, interesting series. A disease called Medusa is killing humanity - a person infected with Medusa eventually turns into stone, or something like it, and shatters to bits. A group of people with Medusa are chosen to be cryogenically frozen while scientists attempt to find a cure. Among them are Kasumi, a girl who had to leave her twin behind in order to join this group, Marco, a dangerous-looking man with secrets, a child, and others (I can't really say much about any of them without spoiling things). The group is awakened too soon and find the island they're on to be overrun by thorny vegetation and monsters. They try to figure out what went wrong, where all the scientists are, and how to get off the island before Medusa claims their lives. They begin to discover each others pasts and secrets and have to deal with their own dark sides.

I like this manga, although I'm not sure if I like it so much that I would start buying it if I ended up moving somewhere with a less awesome public library manga collection. It depends on how long the series ends up being - right now, I think there are five volumes out in Japan, the last one released in 2005. That means about five or six volumes in the US, which isn't so bad.

The story makes me think a little of the TV show Lost, with all the strangeness, the flashbacks, and the gradual revelations about everyone's pasts. For some reason, this series also reminds me a little of Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park - don't ask me why, maybe it's the dinosaur-like monsters, all the people getting eaten, and the "scientists mucking around with things they shouldn't" theme. The character Marco reminds me a little of Riddick from the movie Pitch Black - he's strong and scary with a criminal past, but he's got enough of a soft spot to keep on helping Kasumi. I can't really think of any other manga series like this, although that's not too surprising, since I don't read much dark, suspenseful manga.

As for the art... Well, for the most part, I like it. It's dark enough to fit the feel of the series, and yet it's clear enough to convey what's going on without me having to do a lot of backtracking. When a series has as much action as this one, that's important. On a purely shallow level, Marco is some serious eye candy. There's his tattoos, his long hair, his lean, muscled body - very nice. Too bad I don't have a scanner, or I'd post one of the panels from the manga. Maybe I can find a good picture of him somewhere. Anyway, Marco looks great. The women, on the other hand, look much younger than they are. I didn't realize until book 3 that Kasumi is maybe 17 years old and Katherine (who didn't get a name until book 3) is at least that age as well. The way they're drawn, all rounded with big eyes, isn't that unusual for manga or anime - you'll often see age 15+ characters who look younger than they are because they're drawn this way. However, in other anime or manga, something about the look of at least one of the males tends to match the females - there's usually a boy the same age as the girls who's drawn in the same rounded, big-eyed way, to convey his innocence. In this manga, there's no such boy (the child doesn't count). In comparison to the way the men are drawn, then, these two young women look really young, and the way they act (vulnerable and frightened) only emphasizes the impression that they are very young.

It's not really a big criticism, but it's things like this that tend to really upset people who are just starting out with manga and anime. Personally, I can't wait to see what happens next, and the squealing fangirl in me is looking forward to seeing Marco kick more dino-monster butt.

POST EDIT:

It's taken some thinking (and it's not like I've been doing any research on this issue or anything), but I believe I've come up with a half-way decent manga recommendation if you like King of Thorn. A few weeks ago I read After School Nightmare by Setona Mizushiro. This series is more sexual than King of Thorn, but at least as odd (probably odder, actually). According to my Excel spreadsheet, I've only read one volume of this series, so I only know a little about it. A bunch of students at a strange school are made to battle each other during dreams. Since hardly anyone looks like themselves during the dreams, they don't know who everyone is in the waking world. Because this dream world reveals their inner selves, they each end up revealing more about themselves than they'd like.