Sugar Wiki / Needs More Love

aka: Need More Love

Sometimes, a work has it all: great characters, fascinating plot, cool scenes, compelling mysteries, etc., etc. However, it fails to achieve any considerably high profile. Whatever the reason, it may have been overshadowed by another work at the time, its authors decided to cut on promotion and invest into production, it was promoted to the wrong audience, or it got Screwed by the Network, its fandom is nearly nonexistent. It can't even be considered a Cult Classic because, well, there aren't enough fans to even call them a "cult".

If you can think of an awesome work that just didn't get the love it deserved, here's the place to put it!

If its page on the wiki needs more love too, there is Pages Needing Wiki Magic.

Note: please put works that are generally considered to be obscure here. Works that have a lot of fans do not count. Remember to italicize titles of works and do not put this term on a work's pages.

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Example Subpages:

• Anime & Manga
• Comic Books
• Fan Works
• Films — Animation
• Films — Live-Action
• Literature
• Live-Action TV
• Manhua
• Music
• Tabletop Games
• Video Games
• Web Original
• Web Videos
• Webcomics
• Western Animation
• Real Life

Other Examples:

Asian Animation

• Happy Heroes, a series about robot Kid Heroes from the same people who made Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, is genuinely enjoyable and is very popular in China. Outside of China, it only has a small cult following and is rarely ever mentioned.
• Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, about the various ways a wolf tries to catch and eat a group of goats, is a popular show in its native China, but everywhere else... eehhhhhh. There are Western fans assuming you know where to look, but they're few and far between. There's a group of people dedicated to spreading the show, and awareness is slowly increasing as a result, but it's still a rather obscure show.
• Simple Samosa is certainly not the best show to come out of India, but it has its fans. The thing is that none of the Indian fans ever made any full episode lists anywhere when the show originally premiered, which is especially odd for a series that premiered in 2018. Episodes also have a hard time surfacing on YouTube, with only five English episodes and a few extra in Hindi being well-circulated at the time of this writing. It feels like one of those shows that would gain an ironic fanbase in the West by way of Memetic Mutation or something, like what happened to The Nutshack. At any rate, it's extremely obscure outside of India and could do with some kind of love from Western fans, big time.

Manhwa

• Ciel ~The Last Autumn Story~ is a Korean manhwa that takes place in a fantasy world similar to 18th/19th century Europe. The main character is Yvienne Magnolia, a 15 year old girl who was accepted into a government run school for witches and sorcerers. Though I say 'main character', she shares her screentime pretty equally with three others she befriends- Lariatte Kingdiamond, January Lightsphere, and Daughter. It's a clever, engaging series that enjoys poking fun at and deconstructing the various cliches involved with the romance genre, and the growing relationships between the four main characters are entertaining and heartwarming. And if it sounds a little too lighthearted for you, in volume 14 Cerebus Syndrome sets in and all the darker elements that have been brimming under the surface regarding the characters and their world in general finally start to come to the forefront.
• Laon is a manhwa about a Gumiho (Korean version of the Asian Fox Spirit) who is sent to earth as punishment and has to seek out its missing tails. In the process lots of people die, demons attempt to invade our world, and a poor young man who lost his true love long ago and yet can't remember how or why gets mixed up in the meddling. The page only has tropes and description up to about the third volume at best, and since all six have been localized in a number of countries by now it definitely deserves more attention than it's been getting, if only because it's pretty informative about certain Korean myths.

Podcasts

• The Bright Sessions is a Radio Drama absolutely full of superpower deconstructions and justifications, and manages to make an empath empathetic. It's based around a psychologist who sees these people with superpowers (and who is not an empath), and makes the most of a simple format.
• Treknologic is an amazing podcast. The hosts have an innate ability to be funny and serious at the same time, and are actually accepting of ideas different from their own. This, along with a strong fanbase and fun trivia, begs one to ask why the show isn't more popular.
• The Comic Book Cast podcast. Comic news, funny, and just plain happy.
• Now Playing Podcast. With an intelligent, hilarious group of hosts, they give consistent entertainment and reviews of many a franchise.
• Kakos Industries is an incredibly funny, well-written, and is presented in a charming fake news format for an Evil, Inc.. It has a modest following at best, though, and certainly deserves a bigger audience.
• The Monster Hunters offers adventure, a lovable cast with interesting character arcs, and every conceivable so-bad-it's-good movie trope played for laughs, yet has a tiny following.
• The Biggest Problem In The Universe is a hilarious, insightful podcast co-hosted by Maddox, of The Best Page in the Universe fame.
• Six Feats Under is an Actual Play podcast focused on tabletop RPGs beyond Dungeons & Dragons. It has a high-production quality, a rotating cast of engaging players, and both of its currently ongoing campaigns are filled with complex, unique characters and compelling, inventive, and lived-in-feeling worlds.
• The Far Meridian is an interesting podcast by the same people who created arsPARADOXICA. It follows Peri, who is agoraphobic, as her home begins to travel in the night, taking her to strange places. It's really fun and has such an interesting premise.
• The entire point of video game music podcast Nitro Game Injection. From the FAQ on the website: "We have an undying love and appreciation for video game music, and the various arrangement/remix scenes surrounding it. We want to share this music with the world, and to give exposure to this great art form. We want to let you know about great musicians and arrangers that you may have never heard of to encourage you to check out more works from them. That is essentially why we have created these shows."
• Get Up On This with Jensen Karp where Jensen, co-host Matt Robinson and a weekly guest discuss three things you need to check out and some things they admit they were late up on.
• We're Alive: A podcast audio drama about a people trying to survive a Zombie Apocalypse in Los Angeles. Consistently growing in popularity with an involved and interactive fan community, but still needs more love.
• Brimstone Valley Mall: Set in The '90s, this is a comedy that follows some misfit demons sent to Earth to tempt humans into sin, and prepare for Y2K. Oh, and they're in a band. The plot kicks off when their lead singer goes missing, and their boss back in Hell is not happy about it. The entire cast is fantastic, the characters are all well-developed and have endearing relationships with one another, and the comedy is top-notch. It really deserves more attention.
• In the mood for a character-driven New Weird dramedy? Check out Find Us Alive, an ongoing podcast set in the SCP Foundation universe about a site that's dragged into a Pocket Dimension with all its employees still inside. Full of euphorically action-packed battles against the site's anomalous effects, mystery about the secrets hidden in the site and the past, compelling character drama, and even a little romance, this podcast is definitely worth checking out.

Print Media

• During a "Game of the Year" feature in Electronic Gaming Monthly, Persona 3 was given an award for being "The Most Controversial Game That Caused No Controversy". Considering that Persona 3 had subplots featuring student/teacher dating, references to teen suicide, more occult imagery than you can shake a pentagram at, Satan, Lucifer, and Beelzebub, and lots of tender moments between teenagers, this reward was extremely merited. Note that this was the same year that Mass Effect garnered piles of media attention for apparently being a pornographic simulator.
• Game Pro once called out the video gaming fandom, using this trope.
  Four million copies of promotional games sold, while perfectly good copies of Ōkami gather dust on the shelves?!

Theatre

• Baroque opera (George Frederic Handel et al.) is nowadays seriously overshadowed by the late 18th- and 19th-century opera juggernauts, but it is definitely more than worth checking out. The music is absolutely gorgeous^note This troper, while listening to baroque music, is reminded of a butterfly's flight or of flower petals slowly unraveling.! Moreover, for example, George Frederic Handel's works can offer much more compelling plots than the standard Italian tenor-soprano-baritone Love Triangle formula. Just look at Agrippina, which is about a Magnificent Bitch winning against all odds, or at Alcina with its Action Girl heroine fighting to win her beloved back from the complex and legitimately dangerous villainesses, or at Giulio Cesare in Egitto with its variety of interpretations, from sugary Historical Hero Upgrade to cynical Black-and-Gray Morality.

Visual Novels

• The interactive game Ascension (2013) by RinmaruGames. A cohesive, dynamic plot, complex world-building, races with their own unique values, a well-thought-out political structure, mythological plot elements, a strong protagonist, and lots of Character Development for the heroes and the villains.
• Swan Song is an unnoticed Visual Novel. It deals with a group of six survivors of an earthquake that destroys an entire town surrounded by mountains and their struggle to survive. Although unexceptional, it is an enjoyable read for those who like post-apocalyptic stories.
• Time Hollow by Konami. It is fairly easy, but the characters and story make it an enjoyable gaming experience.
• A Little Lily Princess Is a visual novel adaptation of the 1905s novel, A Little Princess. If you are familiar with the story either from the film adaptation, anime, or have read the original novel, this game is highly recommended for you. The player places themselves in Sara's shoes and build a relationship with one of 6-character routes. This VN is very faithful to the original novel, and each character you choose given a Hidden Depths and decent character development.

Web Animation

• :the game: (2008) is a Bloody Hilarious look at current events. With plenty of Awesome Music and nightmarish imagery, be sure to play through and expand upon the shamefully small page.
• Most Super Smash Bros. Fan Games tend to be of low quality, and Super Smash Flash is no exception. However, its sequel, Super Smash Flash 2, has had a lot of thought and effort put into it to make it a worthy entry in the Smash Bros. world.
• The Frollo Show.
• Toho Kingdom Toons may have had crappy voice acting and bad continuity early on, but the show's newer seasons are well-thought-out, funny, original, and all-around fun times to be had, not to mention Katz Kandy fighting Biollante with memes and photosynthesis in space.
• Deadly Space Action! and everything else on Cartoon Drive Thru (formerly Cartoon Death Zone). From the creator of Bonus Stage and with the same kind of humor. The old channel can be found here, the new one here.
• Tsuki Desu, a criminally obscure fanime with surprisingly engaging plot and characters.
• Melvins Macabre, a MeatCanyon creation that needs more info.
• Bowser Lemonade is an absurd, outlandish satire that revels in repetition and incorrect use of ethnic slurs, simultaneously breaking down racial barriers. It's made using the Talking Ben app, and most episodes' attention span lasts around 48 seconds, though there are exceptions (usually during multi-part arcs). They're on their fifth season now, well past the 100th episode, nearing 200. There's even a film! It's not smart to watch out of order, as it's full of fun, wacky lore, in-jokes, amazing characters, and loads of continuity (though it may not seem like it at first), and it just gets better every season; while the first half of season 3 and currently 5 may have suffered from Seasonal Rot, it's still pretty funny. Plus, what other series has three Obamas raging against an insane dog, using Jesus robots? Think of it as a shorter and more unhinged (and far more vulgar) Aqua Teen Hunger Force or Squidbillies.
• For a two-minute animated short, "The Casebook of Nips & Porkington" starring detectives Nips and Porkington trying to recover an egg. This seriously deserves more attention. The animation is nice, the voice acting is fanstastic, and the plot looks something straight out of Tintin.
• Mr Haliboot is also a good example. He makes awesome custom Mario Kart music tracks, and he also created the most adorable animation you'll ever see.
• Mystery Skulls Animated is a Scooby-Doo homage in a bright and colorful animated music video series for Mystery Skulls' songs about a mystery-solving group with a tragic backstory.
• Dr. Havoc's Diary: Even with New Form Digital's holiday special, this show made by the creators of The Most Popular Girls in School is virtually nonexistent online. The SVOD Fullscreen show is funny because it pokes fun at all the superhero/supervillain stuff you watched as a kid with all the hilarious vulgarity of MPGiS; if you love MPGiS, then you'll love Dr. Havoc.
• Minilife TV is an underrated LEGO stop-motion series. While the first three seasons may seem like standard Brickfilm fare, it still manages to be entertaining and the production values increase at Season 4 and onward.
• JAMIEvstheVOID may have quit storytime animation, but his work in the genre is deeply underrated. His videos are very engaging and use easily-identifiable visual quirks that make them stand out in comparison to other storytime channels. He's also not afraid to tackle mature subject material, such as eating disorders, parental abuse and mistreatment at the hands of others. If you've heard of aphantasia (the inability to visualise mental images), chances are you might've learned about it from him!

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