Name: King of Thorn Volume 1 (King of Thorn)
ISBN: 9781598162356

Yuji Iwahara

King of Thorn Volume 1 (King of Thorn)

Wynter

February 13, 2019: King of Thorn is one of those mangas that I started reading at the height of my fascination with Japanese graphic novels - back in high school. To give you a perspective, I still remember the times when this was considered a fresh release. I only read maybe half of the first volume, and I couldn't really recall the name of the series, so over a decade later, I had to do a little digging to find it again. But the post-apocalyptic setting with strange monsters and deadly disease that turns people into stone stuck around enough for me to finally track down King of Thorn. 

I used to be more lenient to manga's tendency to rely a lot on stock characters, but today I find myself a bit annoyed. There are a lot of females that get hysterical and overtly cute/helpless, which is somehow admirable. There is a tough man of few words with a mysterious past of crime, and an evil politician calls him "bastard" every few panels. The main character obsesses over her twin she was forced to leave behind, and there are pages of "I can't go on", interlaced by random bursts of courage, over and over again. I can't get over how annoying she is. 

But the world is so compelling I want to find out what happened to it. The art is also great, even though some action panels are a bit confusing. The dialogue is stilted, of course, as to be expected, and comes with the territory of shounen manga. I'll be reading further, since there are only 6 volumes in total, and it's a very easy, fast read.

King of Thorn Volume 1 (King of Thorn)

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