Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		5.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

King of Thorn Blu-ray Movie Review

Thorny is right.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 4, 2012

Did you have trouble (like I did, frankly) figuring out just what exactly was happening in “real life” and what was happening in the Matrix by the time you got to The Matrix Revolutions? It’s probably best not to admit something like this out loud where sneering fans can raise their eyebrows derisively in your direction, but I’d swear that parts of that final Matrix installment (shhh. . .) didn’t make any sense. The Matrix Revolutions might seem like a model of narrative clarity, however, compared to the appropriately thorny story in King of Thorn, an often fascinating anime based on a popular manga by Yuji Iwahara. King of Thorn actually mimics some of the conceits of The Matrix, and while a great deal of the film plays out with at least relative clarity, there are a number of developments along the way that may have even the most alert viewers hitting their pause buttons to ruminate over events for a little (and maybe even a long) while. The basic story takes a group of disparate characters on a Survivor-esque trip through a gargantuan Scottish castle which has been turned into a medical facility after a devastating plague called Medusa has swept over the planet, turning those who contract the disease into stone. A lottery is held and a couple of busloads of infected people are transported to this facility where they’re told they’re going to be put into a cryogenic sleep until a cure can be found. When they awake, they find the castle now overrun with a huge plant life, including an incredibly twisted series of vines, all of which have immense thorns. Also roaming the halls of the castle are all manner of weird beasts, robotic dinosaurs, horrible alien like birds that gnaw faces off, and other things that definitely go bump in the night. The rest of the film plays like one of those old Irwin Allen disaster movies where the few remaining survivors attempt to reach the “outside world” and achieve some sort of salvation. That part of King of Thorn is incredibly well realized and at least mostly clear. But once a few twists are injected into the enterprise, a baseline of comprehensibility becomes markedly unstable.

Note: There is no way to adequately discuss King of Thorn without at least dancing around some potential spoilers. If you don’t want even any hints about some major plot points, it’s probably best to skip down to the technical aspects of the review.

The main character of King of Thorn is Kasumi, a young girl who is the identical twin of Shizuku. As the film opens we’re also introduced to a number of other lottery winners who are being transported to the cryogenic lab in the huge castle. These include a heavily tattooed prisoner whom we later find out is named Marco Owen, a burly African American policeman named Ron Portman, a young Australian woman named Katherine who is reading Sleeping Beauty, and a young boy named Tim who is addicted to videogames. Though it’s only dealt with discursively in the opening moments of King of Thorn, we soon realize that only Kasumi has been selected to go into cryogenic sleep and that Shizuku is simply “along for the ride”, coming to bid her sister farewell and to no doubt ultimately die from the Medusa virus.

The lottery winners are all convened at a little training seminar hosted by Venus Gate, the operation which is supposedly working on a cure and will be putting all of these “winners” in suspended animation until such a cure is discovered. The artificial intelligence in control of the cryogenic facility is named Alice, and she sweetly soothes nervous Kasumi to sleep once Kasumi enters her little pod. Suddenly, though, Kasumi is wide awake, as is everybody else in the lab, and total chaos is erupting. The entire castle is overgrown with huge vines and soon vicious alien birdlike creatures begin attacking. Only a handful of survivors make it out of that first encounter, and the hunt is on to figure out what exactly is going on.

What is going on turns out to be rather convoluted and giving away too much would definitely take some of the fun out of seeing King of Thorn for the first time, even if it might also provide a little roadmap helping to explicate some of the film’s more problematic content. Let it suffice to say that several of the characters are not exactly who we initially think they are, and in fact one of the characters may not even be “real”, in the way that the others supposedly are. This is one of the, well, thornier aspects of this film, for it delivers an admittedly neat little twist toward the end which upon any in depth rumination fails to really hold up to logic, especially with the film’s coda (again, to say more would not be fair to those who want to experience King of Thorn without knowing what’s going to happen). It is more or less the exact same problem which hobbled the final installment of the Matrix trilogy, namely an outright confusion about what is really happening and what is merely virtual. The line between these two phenomena in King of Thorn is decidedly blurry and unfortunately the film never really manages to explain things in a deliberately clear manner.

However, even with its manifest lapses of logic, King of Thorn is an incredibly engaging and entertaining piece, one of the better fantasy laden anime that’s come down the pike recently. There’s little doubt the whole enterprise is intentionally designed to be a bit of a “head game”, as it were, and so perhaps some of its oblique content has a built in saving grace. With a little tighter writing and a clearer exposition of the film’s central conceit, not to mention its somewhat bizarre climax, this piece could easily be ported over into a live action feature with someone like Guillermo del Toro, James Cameron or even Gore Verbinski at the helm, to spectacular results. As it stands, you may be occasionally (or even more than occasionally) a little confused by King of Thorn, but it’s virtually guaranteed you won’t be bored.

King of Thorn Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

King of Thorn is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of FUNimation Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. This is an outstanding high definition presentation which offers razor sharp line detail, nicely articulated character design and some cool (if bizarre) looking CGI elements. About the only minor complain some may have with this anime is its intentionally dark ambience which also includes a lack of bright primary colors. Things have an almost black and white look some of the time, with an emphasis on deep emerald greens and pale skin tones. Other than that, though, the animation is top rate and is delivered with excellent sharpness and acuity on this Blu-ray. The CGI elements are very well woven into the general fabric of the film, and if these elements sometimes have a patently artificial look to them, once you understand one of the key plot elements, even that aspect makes perfect sense.

King of Thorn Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

King of Thorn features two Dolby TrueHD 5.1 tracks, one in the original Japanese and the other in English. Both mixes are virtually identical other than the voice work, and even the voice casting has been done with a certain ear toward timbre, if not accent (it's hard to tell if the Japanese track mimics the English language version which offers clear British and Australian accents for various characters, for example). Fidelity on both of these tracks is excellent, and surround activity is frequently quite impressive, especially when various marauding beasts are on the rampage. Both tracks have a fair amount of boisterous LFE as well. Dialogue is cleanly and clearly presented and the nicely evocative underscore also sounds great. Dynamic range is quite wide throughout this film.

King of Thorn Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Talk Event at Cinema Sunshine Ikebukuro (1080i; 29:23) is an interesting session held on May 25, 2010 with Jun Chiba, Kadaokawa Pictures Advertising Producer introducing the film's director, Kazuhoshi Katayama and producer, Yasumasa Tsuchiya. The two answer submitted questions from the audience, who ask about everything from the differences between the manga and anime to the theme song.


• Director Interview (1080i; 11:32) has anime critic Ryusuke Hikawa interviewing Katayama. The best laugh is up front when Hikawa quotes Katayama as having said the film can be easily understood in one viewing. Right.


• Pilot Film (HD; 1:54) is more like a trailer.


• Original Trailer (HD; 1:55)


• Overseas Trailer (HD; 1:48)


• TV Spot (HD; 00:17)


• U.S. Trailer (HD; 1:02)


• Previews for other FUNimation Entertainment Releases

King of Thorn Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Don't get me wrong: I know exactly (or at least mostly exactly) what King of Thorn wants me to understand is what happens to these various characters. I'm just saying that if you think about it very carefully, it starts to show its seams and ultimately falls apart under the cold light of logic. But putting that aside, this is a really interesting and compelling piece that features a fairly unusual storyline and a handful of very distinctive characters. The animation is fantastic and this Blu-ray both looks and sounds excellent. With a decent coterie of supplementary materials rounding out this package, King of Thorn comes Highly recommended.