King Of Thorn (Ibara no Ou) Movie

[Thanatos]

So last night I watched this movie. It came out on home video here (in Japan) at the end of October last year. Has anyone else seen it? I don't understand what happened at the end of the film... Nobody seems concerned about the Medusa virus anymore. Have they accepted their fate and will soon die? Did it somehow get cured when the ALICE system was shutdown and Kasumi realized the truth?

[Gatts]

I haven't seen the movie, but in the manga the reason why Kasumi didn't need to worry about Medusa (manga spoilers) was because she was a manifestation of Shizuku's Medusa. I'm not sure how much detail the movie goes into, but a person with a strong imagination can create a living being using Medusa. Shizuku was the one with Medusa and Kasumi had killed herself because of her low self esteem. Shizuku then because infected with Medusa and used the powers granted by Medusa to create another Kasumi. That Kasumi was unaware that her attempt at suicide had succeeded. So in essence this Kasumi was always immune to Medusa because she was Medusa.

As for Marco, he was immune because he had a strong self image. Medusa could only infect people who did not have a solid grasp on their own reality. Because he knew who he was and what he wanted to do, he could never be infected

Since you state that no one was worried about Medusa anymore, my guess is that the movie had multiple survivors. I'm not sure why they wouldn't be worried about being infected by the virus. Unfortunately it's hard to give an explanation since the manga just ends abruptly in the last chapter with Kasumi being demi-god who can shape a new world. They never explain what happens after that. Then they play the entire thing off as if it were actors doing a stage play.

It was a pretty frustrating ending since the story was decent and could have done much better with maybe a book or two more to flesh out the details. It sounds like the movie has a similar problem where it ends before everything is explained. It might have been better to do as an OVA.

[Thanatos]

Ah. The movie, I don't think, explains that Medusa only turns people lacking a strong self image into stone. At the end of the film, the manifestion obviously doesn't need to be worried about Medusa, but as far as I know, Tim is still infected. Yet they happily go off to explore the world. I thought it didn't make sense for them to be happy, because Tim will be dead in a couple days, or hours. Or maybe it was supposed to be an ironically "happy" in the face of death ending. I don't know.

I think it worked just fine as a movie. The problem that would exist with whatever incarnartion - manga, TV, OVA, movie - is the work has an absolute riduculous premise and series of revelations which are increasingly unbelievable.