King of Thorn (いばらの王, Ibara no Ou) is a Japanese fantastique manga series written and illustrated by Yuji Iwahara.
Thinking that a great amount of time passed since their arrival on the island, soon the survivors discover not only that their sleep was indeed too short to label such dramatic changes as natural occurrence, but also that the situation in and of itself is far greater than they could imagine.
However, 48 hours later, some of those put in hibernation abruptly woke up, only to find the facility where they were supposed to be treated in a total state of decay, invaded by a lush jungles of trees and especially strange vines covered in thorns, which appear to have something of a mind on their own.
Thinking that a great amount of time passed since their arrival on the island, soon the survivors discover not only that their sleep was indeed too short to label such dramatic changes as natural occurrence, but also that the situation in and of itself is far greater than they could imagine.
It was then that the people affiliated with Venus Gate, a religious sect, showed themselves and approached Alice, believing her ability to turn imagination into reality to be a gift from the heavens.
Experimenting on her and Medusa, during that time they employed a hacker named Zeus as their security specialist, though in doing so they doomed themselves when he, pursuing his crazy dreams, developed an artificial way to force dreams into suitable hosts and, thus, fabricate mind-created realities at will to accomplish his plan to force the world into a primal survival game to amuse himself.
The English edition of King of Thorn was named by the Young Adult Library Services Association as among the 10 best graphic novels for teens for 2008.
[6] Theron Martin of Anime News Network found both the writing and artwork effectively convey the characters' tension and danger, but claimed that Iwahara's borrowing elements from many sources did not initially create an original work,[18] but that as the series progresses it "offer[s] some intriguing twists on sci fi and horror gimmicks.