King Of Thorn

King of Cliché

You know there are some things that make the horror genre great. Some things that catch your attention and never lets you go. Some things that’ll make you come back for more. And then there are some things that…well…make you kind of wish you saved your money.  King of Thorn is one of the latter. It’s like someone googled “Horror” and put all the keywords into a Manga and then published it. Generic comes to mind. However before I start tearing into this thing with fetid, ravenous hatred let’s get the plot summary out of the way.

Kasumi and a bunch of her pals have been infected with something called a “Medusa Virus” that lays dormant in their systems for weeks and then petrifies them. I get it, it’s called “Medusa Virus.” Clever. She then wins some kind of morbid lottery and gets to be put into suspended animation until a cure is found. And of course when she wakes up, she finds that the world around her has gone to hell and they’re suddenly being stalked by these blood thirsty monsters, etc, etc. You’re introduced to a cast of the most cliché and uninteresting survivor-horror sterotypes you’ve ever seen in your life. Seriously, it’s like they pulled the cast from a marathon of every Friday the 13th movie ever made. They throw a ton of suspense your way, but you couldn’t possibly give a crap since you don’t care at all for any of the characters. That being said it’s not a “terrible” manga as some of the others I’ve had to read for this job (*coughHellGirlcough*), but it’s not exactly amazing either. The artwork’s nothing new, the characters are about as bland as you can get aside from the main character who finally gets  *slightly* interesting in the third volume and it overall gives and overwhelming sensation of “…Eh.”

Now for you die hard horror manga fans, most of what you love will still be there. Iwahara offers no lack of blood, guts, suspense and gritty monsters, but for those of you who expect something original from King of Thorn, look elsewhere. It reads very much like an unsuccessful horror movie with plenty of cheap pops but no real depth. It lacks the special something that classics have that’ll make you come back for more in the years to come. Trust me, you won’t be adding King of Thorn to your “must own” collection any time soon. However if you enjoy a “cheap pop” every once in awhile you might want to drag your moldering self from your cave and head down to your nearest supplier of cheap pops and pick this up for yourself and all your cheap popyness. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to try and get a refund from my overlords and Manga.com.