Stories You Think are Underrated

[vanguard333]

As the title says, what stories, be they a TV show, movie, novel, etc., do you think are particularly underrated?

It could be underrated in the sense that you think it was a lot better than people said it was when it released, or it could be underrated in the sense that you think a lot of people would like it, but almost no one has actually seen it or read it.

[Jotari]

Well I just made a thread analyzing every line of dialogue from the first Sin and Punishment so...yeah, I think it's highly underrated.

 

[Original Alear]

Many works by CJ Cherryh. I haven't read them all and she good critical reception and awards for some/many but I never see anyone talk about them. Maybe it's my perception that is skewed about how well appreciated they are.

[vanguard333]

I may as well list some that I think are underrated:

1. The Speed Racer movie. I unironically enjoyed this movie when it released and thought it was a weird, but pretty good movie overall, with some good social commentary about what can happen when there's too much money in organized sports. I admit I was rather young when I first saw it, but I have rewatched it a couple times and still thought it was good. Imagine my surprise then to find out years later that I was one of maybe three people to see it and maybe two people to see it and enjoy it (I'm obviously exaggerating with those numbers).

2. Record of Grancrest War: a fantasy war anime about a continent in chaos. It's not the best story ever written by any means, and there's one particular moment that even the story's fans tend not to like, but it's overall an interesting story with a neat set of characters, and it's basically Fire Emblem meets Lodoss War. To anyone disappointed in how Game of Thrones ended, I would suggest Grancrest as a fantasy war story that actually manages to stick the landing. And yet, even in a post-Game of Thrones world, very few people seem to have seen it.

3. Golden Kamuy: a genre-defying anime set in Hokkaido in the year 1907; it is a really fantastic story with a great set of characters and it does something I almost never see historical fiction actually do: actually bother to do some research. I should point out that, in Japan at least, it is very popular. Here in the west, however, it isn't, and I honestly find that rather surprising because, despite being an anime set in Hokkaido, it has a lot in common with the Western genre.

Edited February 24, 2022 by vanguard333

[ciphertul]

12 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

It's not the best story ever written by any means, and there's one particular moment that even the story's fans tend not to like,

Hey, I resemble that remark!

For me it would have to be "The good deeds of Kain the old guy" a sweet slice of life story about an older adventurer (Mid-thirties) who is a genuine good guy. It mostly revolves around the others around him who want him to be seen as a hero, while he is just content doing what he does.

Second would be "Maou Desu, Onna Yuusha" (heavily shorten) another sweet story where the "evil' demon lord marries the Heroine's mother. Nothing like having your worse enemy now trying to be your father.

Edited February 24, 2022 by ciphertul

[lenticular]

Obvious answer is obvious: Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. I mean, they were commercial flops, very few people bought them (relatively speaking) but I don't think it's particularly controverial around these parts to say that they're actually pretty good.

Not as bad as most people think: Star Trek: Enterprise and the original ending to Mass Effect 3. I'm not going to claim that either of these are amazing, but I don't think that they're nearly as bad as the general perception seems to be. For Enterprise, yeah, it was subject to a crapton of network interference and horny fanservice, but if you can manage to look past that, there's a decent Star Trek series trying to get out. For ME3, I was quite content to have an edning that left things fairly vague rather than trying to tie everything up in a bow. The relationship between organic and synthetic life had been a big theme of the series since the start too, so I don't think it was bad to ask the player "based on everything you've seen, what is your personal take on this issue?" But then it turns out I was one of only 17 people on the planet who didn't hate it.

Famous authors, less famous books: Zodiac by Neal Stephenson, Changing Planes by Ursula K. Le Guin, and The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov. I don't think that these are especially obscure or especially disliked, but they're certainly nowhere near as acclaimed as their authors' most famous works. And they are my favourites by their respective authors (at least, out of the ones I have read; I'm certainly not going to claim to have read everything Asimov and Le Guin ever wrote).

So damn many games by indie and mid-sized developers: With occasional exceptions, indie games just don't end up being seen by huge audiences, and some of them have great stories. To stop myself from being here forever, let's say Analogue: A Hate Story, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, The Longest Journey series, 80 Days, Black Closet, Growing Up, Never Alone, Gone Home... OK, maybe not all of those go so far as being "great" stories, but I'm fairly sure I enjoyed all of them more than their acclaim might suggest.

[vanguard333]

11 minutes ago, lenticular said:

Obvious answer is obvious: Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. I mean, they were commercial flops, very few people bought them (relatively speaking) but I don't think it's particularly controverial around these parts to say that they're actually pretty good.

I can't believe I forgot to list those as well.

11 minutes ago, lenticular said:

Not as bad as most people think: Star Trek: Enterprise and the original ending to Mass Effect 3. I'm not going to claim that either of these are amazing, but I don't think that they're nearly as bad as the general perception seems to be. For Enterprise, yeah, it was subject to a crap-ton of network interference and horny fanservice, but if you can manage to look past that, there's a decent Star Trek series trying to get out.

I haven't played the Mass Effect games, but I have seen all of Star Trek: Enterprise, and I agree about it being underrated. It's nowhere near the best Star Trek, but it was decent Star Trek; when it wasn't focused on the studio-mandated Temporal Cold War or the Xindi arc, it was capable of some pretty good stories. Plus, it actually was about the stuff that people watch Star Trek for: exploration, complex philosophical issues, etc. It's certainly miles better than any more recent stuff labelled "Star Trek"; I tried the first season of Discovery and my thought on it at the end was, "This is not Star Trek; it's wearing the skin of Star Trek, but it has none of what Star Trek was about.

[lenticular]

1 hour ago, vanguard333 said:

I haven't played the Mass Effect games, but I have seen all of Star Trek: Enterprise, and I agree about it being underrated. It's nowhere near the best Star Trek, but it was decent Star Trek; when it wasn't focused on the studio-mandated Temporal Cold War or the Xindi arc, it was capable of some pretty good stories. Plus, it actually was about the stuff that people watch Star Trek for: exploration, complex philosophical issues, etc. It's certainly miles better than any more recent stuff labelled "Star Trek"; I tried the first season of Discovery and my thought on it at the end was, "This is not Star Trek; it's wearing the skin of Star Trek, but it has none of what Star Trek was about.

I felt similarly about Discovery, with the big difference being that I didn't even get through the full first season before giving up on it. I don't like to say what the true essence or spirit of a franchise is, since I'm sure lots of different people watch Star Trek for different reasons, but I do feel comfortable saying that Discovery didn't match up with my personal tastes or what I enjoy about Star Trek.

On the other hand, I thought that Picard was OK. Not great, but good enough for me to get through the first season and plan to watch the second season when that comes out. And I do very much enjoy Lower Decks. For all that it's first and foremost a comedy, it certainly has moments where it wears its Star Trek heritage unabashedly.

[Jotari]

On the subject of Star Trek, I don't know what the general community thinks of it, but I find The Cage, the original pilot to be, by a pretty large margin, the best standalone thing ever made by Star Trek. You know the one with the guy who isn't Kirk. It's just so raw and cerebral on a way that is on a completely different level to anything I've seen from the IP. I really wonder what the series would have been like in terms of tone if that was the pilot they actually kept. Everything we did get in the end was eventually good, of course, and maybe the Captain Pike show wouldn't have had momentum, so perhaps its for the best as something stand alone. The whole series of events feel significant enough that The Cage would have been diluted as part of a continued episodic series.

I think I ended up rambling there, but tl;dr, I found The Cage to be freaking amazing in a way Star Trek hasn't managed to reach since.

Edited February 26, 2022 by Jotari

[XRay]

On 2/23/2022 at 5:03 PM, vanguard333 said:

2. Record of Grancrest War: a fantasy war anime about a continent in chaos. It's not the best story ever written by any means, and there's one particular moment that even the story's fans tend not to like, but it's overall an interesting story with a neat set of characters, and it's basically Fire Emblem meets Lodoss War. To anyone disappointed in how Game of Thrones ended, I would suggest Grancrest as a fantasy war story that actually manages to stick the landing. And yet, even in a post-Game of Thrones world, very few people seem to have seen it.

Ooohhh! I really like this one. And yeah, that scene was extremely memorable, and the way they presented it in the anime makes it just so much more heart and gut wrenching. Remembering it makes me want to slowly slice Putin's balls off in front of his family and for all of Ukraine to see. That moment will mentally fuck you up for a while. I like it when stories do not shy away from the darkness and evil within humanity, and having my emotions violently yanked to and fro is exciting.

They also have a TTRPG I want to try, but sadly I do not think they are going to release it outside of Japan.

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I really like Omamori Himari. It is a harem anime/manga. I think it is my first foray into the harem genre, so I remember it fondly. I really like the main cat girl heroine, and in the manga, I think they did an amazing job having her dialog portrayed as early modern English, à la characters in Shakespeare's plays.

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Book IV of Fire Emblem Heroes is meh overall to me, but I really like the happy ending of Booking IV with Peony showing up. Unlike other Books, the last battle of Book IV is piss easy even by story mode standards, but the final ending scene is really nice, warm, and fuzzy.

‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ -

Some of Runescape's quests are pretty nostalgic for me. Dragon Slayer is probably the most memorable because it was so long at the time, and it was the final quest to complete for free players. I also like Gertrude's Cat because it involves cute kitties, and you get a kitten as a reward at the end of the quest.

I also really like the Baby Troll since you can rename to anything it can eat. If you you let it eat a pot, the Baby Troll's name will then be Pot. I also really like Eek, a pet spider from a Halloween event, and the spider is just a joy to interact with and read its dialog.

[Jotari]

It would be less the story specifically and more the whole package, but I have no idea why Digimon: Cyber Sleuth made such a small splash in the video game community. It's a genuinely great game.

[Sidereal Wraith]

A lot of the books I have read over the last few years, but if I had to nail down one author’s work it would definitely be that of Clark Ashton Smith.

Edited March 29, 2022 by WraithReborn

[Elina]

Fe PoR and Rd (but ya know, not too underrated here) and Tales of the Abyss. I didn’t play the game, but I watched the anime and it made me cry. Nothing makes me cry! That’s how I knew it was good. It also has a really good intro, so I highly recommend!

[henrymidfields]

The original Super Mario Bros movie that came out in the early 90s. Yeah, some of the non-human characters were too grotesque. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that got changed from what was the Marioverse back then. But Mario, Luigi, and Peach/Toadstool were actually fun to watch as heroes. The latter two in particular I actually wanted to root for in contrast to how they feel like outright pathetic jokes in the more recent video games (or at least anything after Smash Bros Meelee).

Edited April 17, 2022 by henrymidfields

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, henrymidfields said:

The original Super Mario Bros movie that came out in the early 90s. Yeah, some of the non-human characters were too grotesque. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that got changed from what was the Marioverse back then. But Mario, Luigi, and Peach/Toadstool were actually fun to watch as heroes. The latter two in particular I actually wanted to root for in contrast to how they feel like outright pathetic jokes in the more recent video games (or at least anything after Smash Bros Meelee).

Do you mean Daisy?