Original artist: yow

Kadokawa Pictures have just listed an animated film adaptation of Iwahara Yuji’s manga series 「King of Thorn / いばらの王」 on their website. It is slated to premiere sometime in 2010.

*Description courtesy Wikipedia:

King of Thorn is a science fiction survivor drama. It is told mostly from the view point of a girl named Kasumi. The story begins when 160 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 contracting it, causes victim to have seizures, and within five hours all of the victim’s cells have solidified into a clay-like substance. It is named for the Medusa of Greek mythology, whose gaze could turn a person into stone.
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When some of the sleepers wake up, the world has drastically changed, and 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. Although at first the survivors assume that many years have passed by, later in the storyline they realize that they have only been asleep for a very short period of time, and that there is far more to the Medusa virus and their situation than they ever could have imagined. In reality, the survivors have only been asleep a short while and the thorns and creatures are creations from the minds Kasumi’s sister, Shizuku, as materialized Medusa bodies.

*Staff Info:

  • Director: Katayama Kazuyoshi
  • Script: Yamaguchi Hiroshi, Katayama Kazuyoshi
  • Character Design: Matsubara Hidenori
  • Monster Design: Ando Kenji

Source(s): [1], [2]