Ibara no Ou
King of Thorn

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"The book is better." We've all heard that idiom, and many times it's true. Marvel films are two hours at least, based on comics that have decades of celebrated, or occasionally, sordid history. Something's gonna get left out.

Enter "King of Thorn". There's an film out there, and it's good. Pretty standard modern horror anime. But KoT has six volumes that introduce a mysteriously failed world, pull us deeper into it, only to give us a psychological twist at the end that M. Night Shamylan used to be able to pull on us. Not to mention a sly exit ... scene from the creator. Nice touch.

Resident Evil meets Dino Crisis with a little "plague to end all plagues" thrown in (we can relate, huh?). One of the best stories I've read and some of my favorite art. I got attached to these characters as they fight for their lives against a nightmare they weren't expecting to wake up into.

You want the Cliffnotes edition, go watch the movie, I recommend it. If you want a story that will keep you up at night, the manga is better.

I loved this manga so much! I’m a Shingeki no Kyojin fan and this manga was right up my alley! It’s an intense psychological thriller that had me on the edge of my seat and the plot twist at the end had me shocked and wanting more. The art style matches the feeling and the atmosphere of the manga and helped make it an even more intense read. Do be warned though that there is some grotesque scenes in it so it’s not exactly for the faint of heart. I highly recommend it though, especially to any horror/thriller/psychological thriller fans!

TL;DR, not worth time investment, but short and concise enough for an afternoon binge, if you are a fan of cheap thrill and early 2000s edge.


Ibara no Ou (InO) or king of thorn, is a manga written in 2002 by Iwahara Yuji. While most people are probably familiar with him through Dimension W or character design for Darker than Black, I got to know him through Koudelka. His style can really be best described as everything good and bad about the 2000s. I love the 2000s, but there's so many things wrong with it that carried through to the modern day.

InO is about a bunch ... of people waking up in a facility, in a world infected by a mysterious disease that turn people into stone. Through the course of the surprisingly short and concise story, the backstory of the cast is revealed, along with the plot behind the facility, the monsters, the disease, conspiracy, military, government, "hacking" and so on. It encompasses a lot of things, touching on a few subjects. It reminded me the most of visual novels, even the plot can be structured into a visual novel, easily, in my opinion, which is strange that it got turned into an animated movie instead. A 12 episodes anime would be able to narrate the entire plot, the movie couldn't and basically hacked it apart to fit it in. It focused instead on the survival aspect of it.
The story did start with a focus on the survival aspect, which is a little strange, because the atmosphere don't really reflect that. The character's capability sort of nullify the survival aspect of it a few chapters in, which wasn't great when the cast discussed among themselves how to proceed. I don't feel particularly attached to any of the cast as well. They have backstory, but that's about as much I can say about them. They are neither well done nor poorly done, they just are, which don't leave much of an impression. But before that, the story shifted to survivor horror with the "challenges" they faced becoming more deadly, or to be exact, gory. Too bad, while the monsters are well drawn, they aren't interesting nor nightmarish enough to leave an impression as well. That's the gist of the entire thing, basically.
It's not exactly interesting. The 2000s was plagued with a lot of ideas, but not a lot of guidelines on how to deal with ideas effectively. This wasn't the only victim, the most notable case for me is still Ergo Proxy. Like that show, InO had a lot of ideas, tried to cram them all into one package, and ended up doing nothing well. Like Ergo Proxy, InO's art was actually amazing on its own. The environment is detailed, the characters look fine, stylistically. the monsters are cool. But, put together, there's no punch. Ergo Proxy was the same, but it just done everything better. The story is better, the world building is better, the art is better, the style is more distinct and creative, yet they both lacked that real emotional punch and the staying power of popular show of the era. This is the core issue of 2000s experimental Japanese culture, there's no punch, not enough substance.

This small, short comic reminded me of the biggest question in one time of my life. Why did Ergo Proxy, RahXephon failed where Lain or at least GitS, Evangelion thrived? It's the weight of the story and design. Another very unfortunate unfulfillment of potential is Witch Hunter Robin. That show too was very beautiful, very captivating, but lacking in weight. While it would be unfair to compare Ergo Proxy to, there's no nice way to describe this, trashs like WHB, they were all really shallow and uninteresting at the end of the day. Personally, I suspect the problem comes from the script not focusing enough on the characters. The problem with edgy shows is that to be able to leap over the impression that the violent, uncomfortable elements were added only for entertainment, or edginess as I defined it as, the script has to expand on the cast sufficiently. Often, I find them to be lacking with the 2000s wave. If the characters are not relatable, you must be able to admire them to keep the story together. An example would be in Evangelion, the entire cast had emotional problem and trouble connecting with others. That's something relatable. Meanwhile, GitS, the Major, despite being mostly a hunk of machine, was so powerful, so professional yet so curious, you can't help but admire her. The other part of the equation is the villain. The villain of those shows are weak. RahXephon's more spiritual journey lacks a clear "enemy", which ended up not really delivering that impact. Meanwhile, Evangelion literal Impact hung over the show the entire way, affecting every aspect of the world. GitS dystopian cyberpunk future has the perfect villain, an AI trying to understand humanity. Ergo Proxy much weaker villainous "concepts" took away the personality of the villain, rendering it rather bland. I can think of a few ways that can make Ergo Proxy works, but I don't think it without a total rewrite, it can be done.

But I digressed, yet, the points I made above apply to InO just the same. Its main cast emotional depth wasn't great, the villain wasn't well done. It never gives me the tingle when I flip the page. There's no anticipation of what's happening next, nor was I curious about the mystery. Despite having decent mystery, and explaining it sufficiently, I don't walk away feeling fulfilled, I walked away feeling just fine, like I had just spent the afternoon doing anything else. There's no lasting memory, no reminiscence, I just know I will forget it in 10 years. Which, plot twist, I did. I read the first volume a long time ago, and just finished this last year. It slipped my mind until I read the newest chapter of his latest work.

That is to say, I don't think InO is really worth anyone's time. It's a decent story, but it is nothing special. The art was great, but also nothing special. But, I still enjoyed it. What's great about it, is something I mentioned above that works today sorely lacks, ideas. The world of WN created the rat race that is to write the most popular genre, the thing that people keep clicking on, the Isekai, the redo, the power fantasy. InO had a good idea about a survival, mystery, horror, adventure story. The works of today are no longer derivative, they are at the point where they are all the same equation with different variables. That's worrying. The sad thing is the only thing they learned from the early 2000s variety, is that they should focus on the fun elements and reduce let all the building up, background. This was very unfortunate. Reading InO sent me back to the time period where I was excited for new works every week, using all the money I had to get the latest work, one way or another, because each books promised something different. The bookshelf today just gives me depression, or confusion, because there's a few of them with Arifure in their title, because they follow the same set up. It's so blatant what they are doing, and yet Japanese strict copyright law don't protect against that kind of nonsense.

Here's hoping that the 2020s will bring a revolution. But my gut is telling me it's all downhill from here. Talented artists and creators are successfully transferring to the world of streaming.