In the post before this one, I posted about a Chinese web novel that promised one thing, delivered for a while then switched it out for something else. Chinese web novels are not the only culprits. Beware of the Brothers is a manhwa based on a Korean web novel that does the same bait-and-switch.
It offers a tale of a woman who goes back in time to her childhood to try and make sense of her difficult and tragic relationship with her adoptive parents and siblings. And it delivers that for a while in sometimes heartwarming, sometimes painful and sometimes frustrating detail. But then… Ugh. Anyway, here’s the summary first:
Summary: Hari, a destitute girl, got adopted by Duke Ernst at 7 years old when she lost her mother. The Ernsts had themselves lost their youngest daughter Arina and sought Hari due to her resemblance to the late girl.
After suffering all kinds of persecution in 20 years of life at the Ernst estate, Hari is about to escape by getting married. But right before the wedding, she wakes up to find herself back to her childhood in that hellish household. Well this time she’s going to live how she pleases and not repeat the tragedies of the past!
Or so she claims, but if that’s what you’re expecting, forget it. While most “back to the past” protagonists use their knowledge and maturity to change things and improve their lives, Hari in Beware of the Brothers isn’t one of those.
So prepare yourself to see a supposed 27-year old acting like a kid most of the time. Sulking, fighting, arguing with her young brothers Eugene, Cabel and Erich. What you won’t see is a former adult trying to prepare herself for an independent life through education, hard work, networking or anything other kind of common sense behavior. When help is needed, she doesn’t even offer to perform basic bookkeeping or writing tasks even though as a former adult she should have been able to do all that.
While she does try and fail to prevent one great tragedy, that’s the limit of her efforts in that regard. It goes to ridiculous levels when she blandly endures physical abuse for no good reason until her brothers save her. What’s the point of the “adult returned to kid” setting if she keeps acting like a kid? The author would have created a better story by simply having this be her first and only life. There are a lot of series like that, where the “isekai” or “reincarnator” setting feels completely tacked on.
Regardless, none of that is my main beef with Beware of the Brothers. For all her clumsiness and helplessness, Hari is still a pitiable figure who thinks her family never cared about her in the first or second life. The slow, frustrating but ultimately rewarding process by which they all admit that they all care about each other, and the brothers explain that they see Hari as their real sister… it was very sweet and heartwarming to read. After all the annoyances, it was like FINALLY! Phew! And the fandom rejoiced…
…until the timeskip…
…which made it clear that the whole “brothers” thing was a lie…
…and Hari is going to end up in a romantic relationship with her older “brother” Eugene.
Back up and let’s review. Beware of the Brothers spent the first 30 or so chapters building a warm and solid family relationship. Then after that it apparently turned into an incest romance series. In other words, the author built the family just to have incest – can’t have incest without family right?
I say “apparently turned” because I stopped reading once I saw a suspicious scene. The usual “bump into each other, ooh he’s so cute” kind of scene. I did a quick search for spoilers, saw the Eugene x Hari ending and noped right out of there.
Well it does say “Beware of the brothers” in the title. It just didn’t use the full version: “Beware of the brothers who may be secretly lusting after their adoptive sister who is a dead ringer for their late little sister.” Eugene is nuts for considering it, but Hari is even harder to understand. For a lifetime and a half, over 40 years, she has seen Eugene as nothing more than a somewhat distant older brother. She was all gung-ho about marrying another, very decent guy. And now it’s suddenly “hey, time to marry my big brother”???
If I were a masochist I would want to see them explain things to their friends, siblings and the society at large, but I’m not one so I dropped out long ago. If you still want to read the series after this spoilerrific post, then clearly incest doesn’t put you off, so enjoy yourself. As for me, and hundreds of fans, we’re just pissed off because the author hid her true purpose so cunningly. If that incest tag had been there from the start, I would never have touched the series. Thus this post is here to warn innocent victims like myself.
On to better, less immoral series!