King of Thorn is a short, post-apocalyptic manga. The story begins when the main character, Kasumi, and 159 other people are chosen to go into cold sleep until a cure is found for their mysterious disease, the Medusa virus. The Medusa virus is a disease which, six weeks after infection, causes the victim to have seizures; within five hours, all of the victim's cells have solidified into a clay-like substance.When some of the sleepers wake up, the world has drastically changed; there is a veritable jungle running around and through the facility. Massive monsters roam through the facility, and there are no signs of any other human beings. At first, the survivors assume that many years have passed; later in the storyline, they realize that they have only been asleep for a short period of time, and that there is far more to the Medusa virus and their situation than they ever could have imagined.A movie adaptation was released in May 2010, whose trailer you can view here. The movie deviated heavily from the canon, watering down many of the characters' backstories and omitting the Big Bad from the manga. It was, however, nominated for the 4th Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best Animated Feature Film.Provides examples of:
A little more on that subject: Katherine turned herself into a giant eagle with female breasts, believing that is how a real mother should be presented. Yeah, it's symbolic.
Cat Boy: Laloo Also the Zeus Breed; and Tim becomes half of one.
Compressed Adaptation: The film adaptation, at only 109 minutes, adapts all 6 volumes. While it does follow the same basic story, there are several changes throughout.
Conspicuous CG: The film adaptation's creatures are primarily made of CGI. The characters are also CGI'd when fighting these creatures. Some creatures are better animated than others.
Death by Adaptation: Ron, Marco, and harpy!Katherine survive in the manga, but not the movie.
Death's Hourglass: The bracelets on the survivors's wrists. When the bar on them turns completely black, they are in the final stage of Medusa Virus and will petrify very soon.
Driven to Suicide: Kasumi once tries to committ suicide when she realizes that she will be saved, while Shizuku will not be. Shizuku slaps her for itright in time, though. Later, she takes a dive from a cliff while realizing Shizuku's condition is quickly worsening, and asked her to take her place instead. Naturally, Shizuku didn't takethat very well....
The Dulcinea Effect: It's revealed later that all the survivors had "keys" implanted in their minds, one being to "protect a weak Japanese woman with your life." Meaning that all of them were under The Dulcinea Effect towards Kasumi, irrationally protecting her despite never knowing or meeting her previously.
Eat Me: Marco and Kasumi have to let the mother monster swallow them to reach Zeus.
Heroic Sacrifice: Katherine who killed herself to gain power to protect Tim, and Alice, of all people who gave up her life resusicating Owen, and giving him some of nifty power, including insulated body.
In fact, every single male character in the series seems to be bigger than Kasumi.
Human Popsicle: The Medusa infectees. But for much less time than they think.
The Immune: Marco is immune to Medusa. Zeus eventually explains why: Determinators such as Marco or himself don't have any wounds in their psyche for Medusa to exploit.
Infant Immortality: Tim is still alive by the end of both the manga and the movie. However, an aversion also occurs as there are a few other children briefly seen among the Medusa infectees who are killed/eaten within moments of awakening.
Inferred Holocaust: The state of the world outside the island is left deliberately vague, though there is at least some hope: Marco points out that other people infected with Medusa would be able to create their own monsters to fight Zeus's.
Jerkass Has a Point: After Alexandro reveals he paid to become a Human Popsicle rather than just hope he was randomly selected, some of the others react with outrage. However, he calmly points out that anyone would have done the same thing if they had the means.
Kill It with Fire: Used effectively against the octopus-monsters and Laloo.
No Name Given: We never do find out anything about the Senator except that he's, uh, a senator, but he's a jerk so who cares. The rest of the cast do eventually get names, even if it takes two-thirds of the series for them to get mentioned.
The movie, however, actually calls him Alexandro Pecchino.
Which is correct - for more alert viewers will have noticed him introducing himself (as not "the old guy") in the first quiet moment they have after all hell breaks loose.
Series Continuity Error: Okay, wait... assuming Zeus wasn't just talking out of his ass saying that all of the capsules opened at the same time according to his design, and everyone else got eaten in the elevator... how is it that four patients apparently arrived at (and died in) the power station long before the main cast showed up?
Averted, since when the army invaded, only 98 of the 160 patients were loses in the capsules. The rest were either locked in the capsule room or herded to the courtyard outide the castle.
Split Personality: Laloo was originally a split personality of Alice before being given life by Medusa. (Alice had DID, not schizophrenia. Ivan Coral Vega fails psychiatry forever.)
Your Mind Makes It Real: Medusa can acting like this toward someone with really high imagination. In other words, the ones who want to run from reality.
This is, in fact, the reason the Medusa monsters were able to take over the world so quickly: everybody thought they were unstoppable monsters, and so they were.
. The movie deviated heavily from the canon, watering down many of the characters' backstories and omitting the Big Bad from the manga. It was, however, nominated for the 4th Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best Animated Feature Film.
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