sister from her induced slumber, he tampered with the other survivors' minds, forcing them to unconsciously not run away after waking up, and especially protect Kasumi's life, which was necessary to coerce Shizuku in doing his biddings. His material body reduced to a rotting corpse, Zeus manifested himself through membranes expelled by Shizuku's tail, and later took direct control of her, declaring the act to be "the birth of a god". This final act proved to be fatal, as he was first weakened when Kasumi and Shizuku encountered each other, and then completely erased when Marco hacked into his data, deleting him. Zeus does not appear in the film version. Ivan was the Russian founder of Venus Gate, a religious cult which came to see the power of Medusa as a gift from God himself, and which took Alice in after discovering her in Siberia. Though her suffering could be attributed to him and his religious views could have been easily labeled as senseless fanaticism, Vega was indeed left speechless and horrified by the sheer cruelty of Zeus, whose true identity and goals he was oblivious of, and during the chaotic outbreak at Level 4 he sealed himself inside his study, deep in the facility. He recorded the entire story of how Medusa came into being, how it could turn imagination into reality and what really happened in the lab, ending his last speech asking Alice for forgiveness, before killing himself with a shotgun blast in his mouth. Much later in the story, Vega's dead body would be discovered by Kasumi, Marco, Kathrine and Tim. In the film version, he attempts suicide with a pistol before Kasumi intervened with a shotgun, then appears to die when the floor beneath him collapses. Media Manga King of Thorn was serialized by Enterbrain in Monthly Comic Beam from October 2002 to October 2005, and collected in six bound volumes. It is published in North America by Tokyopop, in Germany and Hungary by Tokyopop Germany, in France by Soleil, in Italy by Flashbook, and in Spain by Glénat. The Japanese volume 4 was also released in a special edition () including a limited edition figurine of Kasumi. Film An anime film adaptation produced by Kadokawa Pictures premiered in October 2009 at the Sitges Film Festival and was released in theaters in Japan on May 1, 2010 in Japan and was released on DVD and