Sage's "review" of Violence Jack consists of Sage trying different ways to review it without actually showing anything. At the end of the review, he gives up and says there's really no good way to do it, throwing in the towel on trying.
After his review of Tenchi Forever, Sage says that he's done with Tenchi Muyo! as a series, even though there's other continuities and entries that he hasn't touched. Sage admits that he really doesn't have anything else to say about the series and its many different continuities, and he chose Tenchi Forever to end on because it ends the Universe continuity and carries an air of finality throughout the film. (At the time, Forever really was going to be the last Tenchi animation ever made, but it got a Continuity Reboot years later.)
Sage makes a series of bad puns during the Viper GTS review. The first two get groans, the one about Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome causes Gabe to jump on him and choke him.
In "Evangelion: Nothing Ever Ends", he makes a pun about the last-minute changes made to Neon Genesis Evangelion in the wake of the sarin gas attack in Tokyo: "[...] or, in other words...to rebuild." As he smirks, someone off-camera boos and throws something at him.
Leeroy Jenkins: Sage describes Leila as such in the Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust review after she takes off on her own to confront Meier Link...although he admits that it may have been just to get away from Borgoff's dad jokes.
Let Us Never Speak of This Again: After Sage and Gabe are forced into a temporary role reversal during the Info Dump segment of the Bubblegum Crisis review, Gabe tries to let Sage know that he'd like to do it again, only to be told to can it and never bring the subject up again, lest he suffer the consequences.
During the City Hunter review, Sage gives a list of all the euphemisms the dub could have used in place of "Nookie" to refer to sex, with the final one simply being "fucking".
During the End of Evangelion review, Sage pulls out a list of the show's plotholes and related questions. The list is apparently made up of over 2,400 entries.
Suave admits during the Angel Blade review that he cannot show the audience a certain scene, which Censor Kaiser agrees to. Suave simply plays the audio, making what's going on quite obvious.
This is also done in the Mezzo Forte review during the second pornographic sequence. Sage notes that he can’t show what’s happening but plays the audio from the last few scenes, which is very clear about what's happening.
Lost in Translation: Sage points out in his Ultimate Teacher review that a lot of wacky anime comedies have satirical points about Japanese society underneath the slapstick, which often fly over the heads of American viewers. As such, what are perfectly good jokes in Japanese fall flat when they're literally translated into English. This leads Sage to frequently say "if a line doesn't work in English, make it work in English." For a few specific examples:
The Ultimate Teacher review mentions Excel's "Sarin gas" rant in the last episode of Excel♡Saganote Which was intentionally made too risque to air.. While American viewers would wonder what the heck she's talking about (as usual), Japanese viewers would recognize it as a reference to the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo Subways in 1995.
He points out in Hyper Speed Grandoll that glove and sleeping bag are homophones in Japanese (tebukuro and nebukuro, respectively), which is why Sigil challenges who she thinks is Grandoll by throwing down the latterinstead of the former. But since the dub transliterates that joke, it turns a perfectly good pun into a non-sequitur that "wouldn't make the grade in a Family Circus comic."
He points out in Jungle de Ikou! that Ongo asking "what is Japan?" is only funny in the original Japanese because of him asking that question in Japanese. Him asking the same question in English turns it into a valid question, thus ruining "the one joke that works in this farcical heap."
He begins his Dragon Half review by discussing how sentence structure can make or break a joke in English, and directly translating it into Japanese, which has a different sentence structure, can break that joke.
As discussed in "Evangelion: Nothing Ever Ends", what is generally accepted as translation boils down to generations of mutual agreement rather than empirical results, especially when it concerns linguistically dissimilar languages such as Japanese and English. This helps explain some of the show's nuances, including using "Children" as a singular pronoun, or translating "the Shito'', roughly meaning "apostle," as "Angels."
Sage: *holds up bottle of lotion* Excuse me for a moment, folks. I've got some business to take care of. [cut to commercial] [cut back after commercial, he is rubbing his elbows] What? I have crusty elbows!
Macho Masochism: Sage mocks Apocalypse Zero's protagonist's one-note machismo and willingness to take injury just to prove his toughness.
Scars? Don't you mean man tattoos?
Made Myself Sad: Jokes about this in the Macross II review, where he utters this after imitating the mustached pilots' Contemplate Our Navels speech about how the Earth isn't the center of the universe.
When you examine [Obari's works] they follow a very 'pubescent boy' kind of motif. Fighting is awesome, giant robots are awesome, boobs are awesome. All else is in the background.
Memetic Badass: In-Universe. Like JesuOtaku, Sage and Suave both marvel at how awesome Harlock is, Sage even citing him as one of the most Baller Baddasses to ever live.
*drops a mic* *holds out his other hand, holding two mics, and drops them* *pulls out a sack filled with mics, and starts spilling them out onto the floor*
He had to snap his head loose after an extremely bad instance from Doomed Megalopolis.
One of his and the Nostalgia Critic's biggest complaints with the first Guyver live-action movie is that the film can't decide whether it wants to be dark and violent or Denser and Wackier, and ends up wildly schizophrenic as a result.
He cites this as one of the major problems with Puppet Princess, as it frequently switches from gory violence to slapstick comedy on a dime.
He discusses a specific version in the Voogie's Angel review which he calls "Final Act Syndrome", in which a comedic series, rather than going through Cerebus Syndrome, suddenly and drastically switches to tragic in its last episode. He also notes that Voogie's Angel, in his opinion, took over from Desert Punk as the defining example of this type of shift. He brings this up again in the Master of Martial Hearts review, although in that one, he describes the tonal shift in the last episode as being so out of nowhere and so ludicrously exaggerated that it causes the plot to circle all the way back to black comedy.
He says this is High School Of The Dead's biggest flaw. It tries being a Rule of Cool zombie killing action show, a profound drama about the human condition and a fanservice show, which results in a "tonal catastrophe."
He says that he can't have any sympathy for the protagonist of Junk Boy after he tells a starlet that masturbating to photos of her is probably the only reason he's not a rapist.
He is absolutely repulsed by Shinji jacking off to the comatose Asuka in The End of Evangelion. In his opinion, this scene doesn't make Shinji an unlikely hero, it makes him a douchebag.
Moral Guardians: Sage has noted that he would like to do more reviews as Suave, but YouTube demonetizing them kills the incentive. Suave lampshades his absence as host in the Green Green review.note This review was sponsored, getting around the demonetizing issue.
Sage's all-in-one-breath explanation of Gnosticism during the Æon Flux review.
His breakneck-speed rundown of Kite (1998)'s climax takes him three deep breaths to get through.
Mundane Made Awesome: In order to deal with Odin, which he claimed was the most boring anime he'd ever seen, Sage decided to set the mood... with Suave's light jazz and a copy of Highlights magazine. After a while, though, that doesn't cut it anymore, and he brings out "the big guns": National Geographic.
Let's do this bitch!
My God, What Have I Done?: Declared in his Top Ten Worst Songs (By Otherwise Good Artists) list, after realizing that he resuscitated Genesis' otherwise under-the-rug "Illegal Alien".
Discussed in regards to Tetsuro's character design in a flashback in Galaxy Express 999, where the fact that he looks so strange completely kills the mood of a scene where he watches his mother die.
Also brought up in his discussion of Gall Force, saying the mourning montage was ruined by one character doing so while sitting on a toilet.
He finds the scene in Mobile Suit Gundam F91 where a random woman gets bonked on the head by a falling shell casing to be this, saying it's something he'd expect in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. He illustrates his point by playing the scene a few times with silly sound effects dubbed in.
Nature Versus Nurture: Discussed in the Elfen Lied review as one of the work's core themes. Sage argues that, while the show sets up the question "are we born evil, or are we made evil?", it ultimately plays the two extremes against the middle and never picks a side.
The Nicknamer: In Anime Abandon, he hardly ever calls any character by their actual name unless he can't find anything he can compare them to.
He takes this to an extreme in the Super Atragon review, where he refers to the main character by a different nickname every time he mentions him.
He plays around with this finely in his Wild Cardz review, where the four main characters are card-themed with each representing a suit, and every time Sage refers to them with song titles containing the suit. Fortunately, Spade deserves the least mention.
Clubland and Total Eclipse of the Heart manage to blow their way onto the white knight, leaving Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds to fend off... him.
Noting how much De:vadasy is a ripoff of Evangelion, Sage refers to its three teenaged protagonists as Not-Shinji, Not-Asuka, and Not-Rei.
Ironically, the one character in his Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie review that he calls by name is Miles Prower, referred to as Tails rather than his real name in almost all Sonic the Hedgehog media.
Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Given that he reads the most vile, disgusting and horrendous fanfics in existence without batting an eye... yeah. And that's not even getting into his guest appearance on Ask That Guy, where he manages to do the impossible and makes ATG squick.
No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: At the start of the Elfen Lied review, Sage is lured to a hotel by the Channel Awesome crew, who proceed to beat the shit out of him...with wiffle ball bats.
No Sense of Personal Space: Even when Sage is trying to convince Critic that he's a good guy, he still can't resist grabbing him more than he should.
Nostalgia Filter: Sage has admitted on more than one occasion that he looks back on the anime of the past a lot more fondly than those of today. He states that back in the anime boom, creative freedom was at its highest and it allowed creators to fully realize their vision and push the limits of the medium. He feels that the market for today, being smaller, takes less risks and adheres to formula in order to make a secure profit. However, he also notes that while anime was at its best in his time, it was also at its worst, and said freedom spawned enough terrible anime to keep his show afloat for a good while to come. While he may not prefer today's shows, he agrees that the quality control is a lot better.
Not Helping Your Case: While The Guyver has Sage displaying saint-like patience with Critic and trying to get him to have fun again, the No Sense of Personal Space (and liking a voice actor who played a rapist) along with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles rip-off movie involving also a Disney Death and Mark Hamill turning into a gross cockroach wasn't exactly the best way to prove anything.
"Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: Since reviewers do frequently edit video clips for comedic effect, Sage often points out when he hasn't done this to a particular clip.
In Odin after the soundtrack suddenly goes to, as Sage puts it, an "out of place EngrishHair Metal montage" it cuts back to him staring into the camera and saying "I shit you not, I did nothing to that footage."
At the end of the Tokyo Revelation review, he emphasizes the utter WTF factor of its conclusion.
Now, I'm going to show you the ending, and I swear to you by all that is holy that I have not edited this in any way. This is exactly how this anime ends.
He leads into a very jarringly edited sequence in De:vadasy with "Even their painful expository scenes feel like they were edited by a chimp with ADD. I promise you, I've done nothing to the footage you're about to see."
Sage shows a small sample of the Kikaider OVA's Off-Model animation with this caption:
I have done nothing with this footage.
Sage shows a small sample of Gundress' theatrical version with pencil test mecha with this caption:
I shit you not, THIS was how they released the movie in theaters.
Not What It Looks Like: In the review for The Samurai, one scene in which Takashi's teacher and another girl try to help him get over his fear of women by first showing him a skin magazine and then stripping, only to be caught by Takashi's mother, brings this line out:
Teacher: Mrs. Yamaguchi, it's not what it looks like! Sage: You're right, this isn't what it looks like. It's arguably much worse.
Sage notes in the Love Hina Spring Movie review that there's no reason for Shinobu and Nyamo to be identical. It plays no part in the plot, and is only barely remarked upon. He figures that Ken Akamatsu just ran out of character designs and decided to re-use Shinobu's with a tan and longer hair.
Sage mentions some of the re-used character designs of Masami Obari that show up in Angel Blade and Voogie's Angel but originated from other works, most notably "Taint Misbehavin'" and a blond-haired villain from Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer.
O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Most of the time, Bennett remains in-character for his reviews, with Sage delighting in the perversity and wrongness of many of the shows he reviews. The major breaks are the "review" of Violence Jack; when he doffs his hat and speaks frankly about the rape subplot in Doomed Megalopolis; and when he, as Bennett and not Sage, breaks into the review of Memories to speak to the audience about Magnetic Rose, encouraging viewers to skip the rest of the review and watch it if they haven't already and don't want spoilers, and talking about how personal the short is to him. The Barefoot Gen review is probably the best example. Bennett was deeply affected by his visit to Hiroshima months prior, and while he does the review as Sage, it's the most somber and serious review he's done to date, with not even a hint of humor, and by the end his composure is starting to crack.
squick.
isn't a joke he made up, the guy really does have an Overly Long Name.