King of Thorn, vol. 1
By Yuji Iwahara
Rated OT, Older Teen (16+)
Tokyopop, $9.99
I’m one of those tiresome people who goes on and on about how great Chikyu Misaki is, so naturally when I heard that Tokyopop was publishing another manga by the same author, I was filled with gleeful anticipation.
Unfortunately, King of Thorn is not only disappointing in comparison with Chikyu Misaki, it’s disappointing even when taken on its own merits. Iwahara takes the basic horror formula of a group of people stranded in a perilous situation and does absolutely nothing interesting with it, at least not in this first volume. (And I should issue the caveat that a lot of volume 2s are better than volume 1s, so all may not be lost.)
The story starts out with a promising if not exactly novel concept: A mysterious illness, dubbed the Medusa disease, is spreading throughout Japan, turning its victims to stone. There is no cure, but there is one slender hope: The government has chosen a handful of disease victims to be deep-frozen until a cure is developed. Our heroine, Kasumi, is one of the chosen few, but her twin sister, Shizuku, is not. With regrets and doubts, Kasumi steps into her cryogenic capsule, puts on a bracelet that indicates the progress of the disease, and goes to sleep.
When she wakes up, everything has gone wrong. Instead of white-coated doctors with vials of medicine, Kasumi is greeted by thorny vines that snake through the capsules. A few other disease victims stumble out, and it quickly becomes clear that they are the only ones there. Almost immediately, the perils begin. Giant lizards keep attacking them, and those damn thorns pop out from every nook and cranny, so our heroes are so busy fighting them that they don’t have much of a chance to advance the plot. By the end of the first volume, Kasumi and co. have prevailed through several hair-raising situations but still have no idea of what is really going on. And neither does the reader.
Of course, much of the dramatic interest in a story like this comes from the interplay of different personalities. Again, nothing new here. Kasumi is sweet and determined. Her companions include a selfish, pushy middle-aged guy; a woman and child who quickly fall into a mother-son relationship; and a couple of generic but sensible males. The most interesting character is the dark, simmering, tattooed stranger who is sorta good and sorta bad, which is not exactly breaking the mold. In other words, we have the standard horror story with the standard cast of characters.
Iwahara’s art, which worked so beautifully in the country setting of Chikyu Misaki, is one of the high points of this book. He uses straight pen and ink, with very little toning but lots of hatching and fine detail, but the art never comes across as stiff or fussy. His fluid style is actually well suited to this sort of subject matter. The characters are well defined, each with a different look and personality, and the winged lizards and flowing thorns are just as believable. On the first reading, though, I had trouble figuring out the geography of the story. Iwahara has put everyone into a fortress on an island, but again, there’s so much going on that it’s initially hard to figure out exactly how the space is configured and how they are moving through it.
Tokyopop obviously knew they were on to something with this book; the cover is well designed, with a matte finish and a restrained palette, making the book feel a bit more sophisticated than it actually is. They include four color pages in the front and two black and white bonus pages in the back. On the downside, the large areas of black that Iwahara uses so effectively don’t stand up well on the industry-standard paper, so the dark areas aren’t as dark as they should be, and there are light streaks on some pages.
If you liked The Drifting Classroom and Dragon Head, you may enjoy King of Thorn. Then again, you may just find it frustrating, as I did. By the end of the volume, I still had no idea how this group of people had gotten into this situation, who (if anyone) put them there, and what the title refers to. In short: Too much suspense, not enough plot. It’s a good setup, and I’m willing to give volume 2 a try; if I’m still lost after that, though, I’ll give the rest of the series a pass.
This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.
Interesting review— yours is the only negative one I’ve read so far. I find myself trusting reviews from a few select sources these days and you just made the short list.
Thanks for the honesty!
Thanks, Rena! I actually feel bad, as everyone else seemed to genuinely like it. Usually I don’t feel 100% one way or another about any book—there are things I like and things I don’t, and I try to highlight both. I figure that makes the review useful even to people who don’t have the same tastes as me.
Ive been interested in checking this out as I love Yuji Iwahari’s art, good honest review though.
Interesting tidbit I found out though, apparently the Japanese publisher gave special permission to the French publisher of this manga to release a really high quality fully colored version of the manga. I’m kind of interested in seeing how it looks…
“King of Thorns”, if I remember it right, is mostly an action series. Some plot revelations are made throughout the series (only about 6 books?), and there are some good character moments, but what I remember most is mostly people running and fighting. Overall, I would say it’s “good” as in “well-executed”, but it’s not my cup of tea.
I think when you hit the later volumes, that’s when the plot is at it’s best along with the action. I guess it comes down to preference, especially with these apocalyptic-type mangas XD
Wow I’m also pretty suprised by this review.
King of thorn is definatly a type of manga that you don’t see very often, but just because it doesn’t have the pacing or sense of space of steriotypical manga doesn’t mean it’s any less valid or any worse at telling a kick-ass story. It really reminded me of the sense of forboding and cinematic storytelling of manga like Katsuhiro Otomo’s “Domu”, and it’s definatly the real mastery of comic craft that I miss while reading 99.99% of the manga out there. (but of course that’s my opinion)
And you say that the characters are a-typical of horror genre but while it is common to movies and shows like ‘LOST’, I can’t think of a manga specifically that takes up this kind of a ensamble cast – Plus having a black character that has a good character design (i.e. not racist character design) is pretty hard to find in manga at the moment. (excluding Bob Makihara in Tenjhou Tenge of course).
King of Thorn has a more, I guess I’d say “Western” story telling style that seems to have put off some people. Manga tends to have (and I’m not going to do a great job explaining this) a more meandering, more philosophical and less plot-oriented style. KoT was a nice break from the norm, I thought, but maybe it’s not what manga readers are looking for.
Still, good review. You gotta like what ya like.
Also, I think Jake’s Lost comparison was a good one. Lost withdrawal is not pretty…KoT is a decent (if less complex) substitute.
I’m also not a fan of “King of Thorns” (I don’t like any post-apocalyptic mystery-thrillers, as a rule), but I hope they’ll translate more of his works after that. Most of those (e.g. “Koudelka”) I’d buy for sure, like I did “Chikyu Misaki”.
It may be quite cliched, but I thought it did pretty well considering. But then, I really like post-apocolyptic thriller stuff like this, so I’m guessing I’m a bit biased. ^^;;
Still, the art is very nice, and the story, although cliched, is still enough to keep me guessing and wanting to read more without thinking ‘oh not ANOTHER Lost-style mystery/horror/thriller thing…’
I kinda like this manga. It creeps me out, gives me nightmares, makes me paranoid, but I think it’s good. I’ve only read the 2 volumes that came out in America but the suspense! I’m usually into stuff that’s not so full of gore but still has action or maybe a romance/comedy. But I like this manga. Some of my friends read the first one and they liked it (one of them loved it and wanted to buy it and she wanted the second one the second she finished the first). I even told my mom about it because I thought she might like it, but she doesn’t like reading so I asked her if it was in English and it was a show, if she would watch it and she said she would.
i read the 3rd volume. i cant say if i like it or not. true, i couldnt put it down and the suspense was intriguing but at the same time i hated how it’s so scary and mysterious!
hi!
Interesting Review. I personally only read it, because I found it on the floor of my school library. I have to agree that vol 1 is confusing as hell..however if you stick with it, pieces will start to fall together, it is then that most people will start enjoying it.
No Momo, you are wrong – it’s quite the opposite.
The first bit was bloody awesome because it seemed like a cool survivor story except what seemed like millions of years later. I read this because I saw the movie trailer and thought it might be something like Jyo Oh Sei.
Instead, the stupid author mucks up the entire plot and switches genres to a horrible fantasy/sci-fi story. If I ever came up with such a plot, I wouldn’t even think of writing such trash and I’m sure no genuine author would either.
King of Thorn just goes to show you what an exploiting, arrogant, low-life loser the author or “mangaka” is.