To preface whatever I’m going to say next: this manhwa got a good adaptation. An amazing artist and an amazing team who brought many people into the fandom.
Unfortunately, the steep price to pay for that is the same thing that left you, my fellow reader, me and many more people upset.
The adaptation added a lot of humour. And at some point it becomes too much. Every more or less serious topic gets swept under the rag or broken into a funny moment. Characters’ insecurities get treated as a joke, the personalities are twisted by the constant need to exaggerate, and do not let me start on the depressed call of angst that is Han Yoojin who got turned into a clown.
The novel intakes itself much more serious. I honestly do not know why they chose so rely so much on the humour when it came down to manhwa, since it harmed the personalities pretty badly, but, well.
Take Yoohyun, for example. In the manhwa, he is often portrayed as screaming, emotional and just looks like a whiny kid most of the time. In the novel, he’s really calm outwardly, hardly expresses emotion apart from giving someone a cold stare; he’s very collected and stilted, also very polite (could give a cold shoulder or dismiss or ignore, but will use polite ways of phrasing) since Yoojin got it into him as a habit since childhood. He’s definitely overly protective, but since the brothers talked in the dungeon, he’s much more lenient. Even the scene itself in the dungeon was way more mild in the novel: Yoohyun basically just carried his brother a bit, then told him what he’d plan to do, but some strict words from Yoojin were enough to deescalate the entire thing.
Noah actually rarely crossed paths with his sister or interacted with her. The clash didn’t really happen until they fought it. It was less “friendship is magic” like it was in the manhwa, and more just Yoojin and Noah getting Riett down. It didn’t resolve their conflict, and it didn’t heal Noah insecurities – the true depth of which would only be learnt later in the story and heavily tied on support hunters in general – but it clearly felt like some weight has been taken off. Again, they didn’t interact at all after that, and it was clear none of them even wanted it. Riett got under chief Song’s custody and put on dungeon control duty, so it might be said that she is paying back for damages – some true form of retribution against her is not truly possible due to her not breaking international law for real.
Anyway, I got a bit sidetracked, but what I mean to say, yeah, manhwa does feel stagnate. Hard to notice any growth when the goal is to make funny jokes or exaggerated faces – like, I personally read it to just see Yoojin and Hyunjae drawn, but even I’m starting to get annoying how much everything is exaggerated and treated as a joke.
If you’d like to give the original story another go, I’d recommend trying a novel. And if you’re not, I’m sorry you have to experience so much frustration.
i’ve actually heard this a lot! ty for the deep breakdown, i enjoyed reading this. it’s so sad to see how the novel changed a lot of their personalities to make this more humorous. especially w how dark this story can get them trying to make it wholesome kinda feels tactless at times? once i finish the gsgw novel ill read this novel, bc i think it really deserves a second chance haha
I read this like a couple years back when I was new to the manhwa space but now that I’ve reread I really have to go wow. I kinda did not expect how one dimensional it was. A lot of the conflicts in this story go: Yoohyun is bothered from Yoojin -> Blows his fuse -> Yoojin promises he won’t do xyz again -> Yoojin retracts his promise to do xyz and thus the cycle continues. It’s fun the first two times, but gets exhausting for me to see yandere Yoohyun be the source of a conflict yet AGAIN even after a billion chapters have passed. That’s the thing with any korean webnovel in that the characters remain static so that the author can keep writing a billion chapters instead of actual character growth.
And that’s my other problem w this cast - it’s been over like 150 chapters and not a single one of these ppl have actually progressed. like why tf has riette literally not apologized and continues to get a pass in abusing noah?? why is this all treated as a joke? it’s literally so disgusting. we also just don’t get any mentions of noah and his trauma? they literally had to separate them countries apart and yet they continuously keep having them on screen together and it’s all thrown under the rug about his trauma. idk this story really rubs me the wrong way on how it consistently brushes aside how dark these characters are and how they just get slaps on the wrist to keep this pretext of wholesomeness. i like this as a guilty pleasure, but i really have to just not be able to look at this critically to be able to enjoy it. I like yanderes, but i don’t like how plastic this story gets