Padding: At one point in Android Kikaider: The Animation, Mitsuko has an encounter with her long-lost mother which goes very badly. In a later scene Jiro says that they need to leave, only for Mitsuko, after a long pause, to say that she's going to try to talk to her mother again. Sage feels it's insultingly obvious that this was only done to pad out the episode's run time.
It's the only time that I've felt that an anime was deliberately and obstinately wasting my time.
Pants-Free: During Twilight of the Cockroaches, after Jeremy suggests giving the female viewers some fanservice in the form of Sage's bottom half, the camera cuts to a full body shot of Sage showing him in boxer shots while Sage says he doesn't think that's such a good idea.
At the end of a gory scene in the "Genocyber Part I" reviewnote in which a scientist wakes up to find that he's handcuffed to a bed and his torso has been flayed down to the skeleton, a "Not going anywhere? Grab a Snickers!" "ad" pops up.
In the X review, he calls out a blatant scene where the main character drops down in front of a Coke billboard.
Subtle product placement there, Potzi. Well, you can count on me to keep artistic integrity and keep corporate sponsorship at a bare minimum...just like the prices at your local Sizzler. * cut to a Sizzler "ad" that ends with "At least we're not Denny's!"*
While reviewing Burn Up!, Sage notices that one of the bit bad guys looks a lot like Wilford Brimley, which leads to an extended parody of Brimley’s memetic plugs for Liberty Medical.
Sage sits back, drinks a soda, has some popcorn and just shows clips of Ultimate Teacher until Rob Walker calls him out on it. Then Rob starts to watch the show... and joins in.
Sage whips out some popcorn as he begins to discuss Gundress's disastrous production, slowly chewing some throughout the review until, finally, he giddily chows down when he gets to the movie's unfinished theatrical release.
He points out the rather large one in Doomed Megalopolis concerning the fact that Yukiko claims to know that her father is really her mother's brother, even though he supposedly impregnated her after Kato tried to use her as a conduit to summon the spirit.note the actual explanation seems to be that he raped her more than once, but it's still not clear in the show
Either the asshole has time-traveling sperm, or we've got a plot hole the size of fuckin' China.
Discussed during the Kikaider review. Sage brings up the tendency of critics to focus on plot holes when lambasting a work, noting that they're inescapable, that every film has them regardless of overall quality, and that over-emphasis on pointing them out is an intellectually lazy and dishonest form of criticism. On the other hand, he says that a work has to be solid enough to make flaws such as plot holes easily overlooked and/or outweighed by what it does right, otherwise they just stand out that much more.
Punny Name: He frequently points out the various Japanese puns that don't translate to English, such as the fact that in Mezzo Forte the names Momokichi and Momomi Momoi are roughly the equivalent of "Peach Peacherson and his daughter Peachy Peachman."
He feels that Scott McNeil was miscast as "Thunder Hawk"note Ganbachi in Ultimate Teacher, as his "gruff, monotone voice" makes what should be a goofy character sound demonic.
In his Ranma ½: Tendo Family Christmas Scramble review, he considers the dub casting an actress as Male Ranma to be one of its most confounding decisions. The dub already cast a separate actress as Female Ranmanote Venus Terzo, thus wasting a good opportunity for either to voice both halves, and the actress for Male Ranma note Sarah Strangeis clearly affecting her voice.
Rage Quit: Invoked in the Kikaider review. Sage leads off the discussion of the "Mitsuko tries to talk to her mother again" scene by noting that it's the only time an anime has ever made him "throw down [his] notes and just rage quit", and he later says that it infuriated him so badly that he actually had a tantrum over it.
Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Sage clearly believes this as he describes it point-blank as "possibly the worst thing one person can do to another [...]" in the Doomed Megalopolis review. Seeing such a serious subject treated in a juvenile manner, such as in Mad Bull 34, generally disgusts him as well.
He makes a point to note this during the review of Vampire Wars:
Japan, what is this, the third fucking time in a row we've had this discussion? If you can't write a story without rape in it, could you at least wait until after the five minute mark?
Brought up again in the first part of the Genocyber review, with the added squick that the victim is a child who's being molested, and Sage comments that he doesn't even feel comfortable showing the censored scene.
This comes up again in the De:vadasy review when Not-Shinji is raped by his female superior under the pretense of obtaining a semen sample. Sage starts his dissection with "This...isn't the most egregiously terrible thing I was allowed to show you, but it probably is the most morally repugnant." and adds another layer to the show being a bad rip-off of Neon Genesis Evangelion by comparing the scene to the "Misato kissing Shinji" scene in The End of Evangelion, noting that while there are surface similarities, the latter has plot- and character-relevant context to offset and even justify its squicky nature whereas the former simply tries to gloss over its grossness.
It's never brought up again, there's no repercussion for Minato, and the anime clearly portrays not-Shinji being traumatized from it.[...] Not-Shinji is trying to deal with this horrible situation by just laughing it off, but it's undercut with these dark looming shots of Minato to clearly show what he's thinking. [clearly incensed] 'Depraved' is too short a word for this.
Sage: We cut to Felicia the cat woman—or "waman"note as an on-screen typo from the movie suggests as it were—running into Raptor, an undead cockney rock star. *Beat* ... aaaaaaand yes! I just confirmed that this sentence has never been uttered in the history of language.
In the Nuts and Bolts video for the Video Girl Ai review, Bennett and Marc discuss how the first draft of Sage's talk at the end of the review was much harsher in tone, took a very critical stance toward "loneliness aids" and the emotionally predatory nature of their industry, and had an attitude of mixed pity and cringe toward the people who would gravitate toward them. Marc confronted Bennett about this during the script polishing process, which led to a long conversation about where that segment and the feelings behind it were coming from. It made Bennett realize how assholish the whole thing sounded, and while his feelings about "loneliness aids" haven't changed, he was able to look at the people they're geared toward in a much more sympathetic light, which led to the final segment being completely redone in the manner that showed up in the review.
Bennett was originally going to do a normal episode for the Voogie's Angel review, but his script-writing program seized up and corrupted the episode's file, killing a week and a half's work. Rather than trying to blitz through a rewrite to get the episode out on time, he decided to do an off-the-cuff commentary-style episode as himself and not Sage. In the Master of Martial Hearts review, Sage says that this format got such a warm reception that he decided to make it the norm for anime that are so lackluster that they don't deserve an in-depth review, with MoMH being such a case.
Bennett had intended from the get-go for his two-part revisit of Evangelion to be released as one long episode, to commemorate Anime Abandon's 11th anniversary. However, he had to nix that plan due to issues in both production and RL, and released the parts individually. He finally got a chance to edit the two parts into one episode, "Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Story of an Otaku", which was released on Jan. 31, 2024.
"The Reason You Suck" Speech: He gives an extended one to the brother in Doomed Megalopolis after he launches into a wangsty whine session about how hard his life is since he has to take care of his sister, who, Sage points out, he raped and impregnated, and his own niece/daughter, and Sage concludes that he should have a fundraiser concert thrown for him. The pure vitriol in the last line really sells it.
Oh my dear sweet Lord, how tough do you have it? Not only do you have to take care of your mentally damaged sister that you raped, but you also have to take care of your daughter/niece. You know what? I think I'm gonna start a fundraiser to help you out, in fact, someone get me Bob Geldof's number, I'm sure he'd bend over backwards to throw a benefit concert just for you! Don't you worry, asshole, because when Bono is up there on stage, guilt-tripping the audience about you and your plight, you'll finally get all of the sympathy you've been waiting for since you first took your sister's virginity, you worthless sack of shit!
Reformed, but Rejected: The Guyver review has him being really nice to Critic because he's trying to convince him that he's not Devil!Sage, but Critic keeps throwing any kindness back in his face. Given that the reboot reviews have made it very likely that Critic Came Back Wrong though, it also works to further that Story Arc.
Reused Character Design: He will point this out for creators whose work features more than once on the show, such as Levih Rah from Demon City Shinjuku sharing his design with Zack from Kawajiri's earlier work The Running Man.
In the review of Cyber City Oedo 808 in 2016, Sage first discusses how he started Anime Abandon in 2011 mainly to mock bad anime, and says for the aforementioned title, "I want to return to my roots." Gabe sends him back in time to 2011, and when Sage sees his original set, he remarks "Lack of DVDs on the shelf? Horrible lighting and camera angle?! No Gabe?! It's 2011, mo'fuckers!" The video then does the original opening theme, and Sage does the review in his more sardonic, snarky, unrefined riffing style of the era, instead of the more mature, nuanced opinions he gave by 2016. In the Nuts and Bolts commentary, Bennett mentioned his plan was to originally use the then-mediocre editing methods of the time as well, but later decided that was unnecessary.
In his review of Galerians: Rion in 2019, he talks about how the anime was based on a PS1 game called Galerians. To elaborate on it, he announces "Time for us to hop into the Wayback Machine!"; the review then immediately transfers to the style of Sage Reviews, his review show he retired 6 years prior and which was his start on Blistered Thumbs. He returns to his dry, humorless tone of informing the viewers how the game completely rips off Resident Evil and how disappointing it is. However, unlike those videos, which were usually 5-10 minutes in length, he stops this "review" 30 seconds in and then returns to his contemporary format.
Rouge Angles of Satin: Several stories reviewed on Masterpiece Fanfic Theater suffer from this to a ridiculous degree (troll fics or not), particularly in episodes 2 and 10.
Outside of videos, his refusal to admit he has fangirls.
During the Mad Bull 34 review, the "Blondes in Peril" count.
His "No Shit" counter in response to characters making narrations and statements on the obvious in his Baoh review.
Not a "gag" per se, but his constant refusal to review Violence Jack, culminating in him throwing his copy into a river...and then the actual "review" came along.
Sadistic Choice: The review of Violence Jack turns out to be this: Bennett doesn't love the show enough to give it a glowing review, but he doesn't hate it enough to go on a screaming rant about it. He knows that it's possible to make the show's horrific material (which includes child murder, gang-rape and cannibalism) funny, but he actually doesn't want to. And even then, there's one huge overriding problem: half the show is too obscene, too violent, or too gratuitous to show. Ordinarily, he'd just say 'OK, let's try something else' and do another show, but after months and months of hyping it, he feels that he has an obligation to his fans to give them something. He finally ends up realizing that the show isn't worth the agony he put himself through and ditches it.
Satan: He's the devil, to nobody's surprise. Okay, not really. (Or is he?)
He shouts in horror during his review of Tenchi the Movie 2: The Daughter of Darkness when Yosho apparently starts hitting on his own great-granddaughter.
Sage cuts his The End of Evangelion review short when he's finally fed up with the ending's navel-gazing.
Sage bails out of the reviews of Sword for Truth and Jungle de Ikou! before they are finished. With the former, it's because he's so pissed off with the show, with a seeming Cruel Twist Endingnote Shuranosuke facing a firing squad just after being given his reward for rescuing Princess Mayu. Sage bails out just as the firing squad arrives, but Shuranosuke actually survives thanks to Mayu's intervention, but she later dies from poisoning. being the last straw. The latter is due to the incredible creepiness of one character's transformation dance; he's already thoroughly uncomfortable with a lot of what's happened before this scene, but that's the final straw.
Sage preemptively quits before the Love Hina Again review because he can't stand Love Hina, leaving it to Suave. Suave himself tries to quit halfway through, but he finds that the doors to the review room are locked and he can't leave.
Gabe runs out of the room and locks the door behind him when he sees Sage about to have an apoplectic fit at the end of the A Very Private Lesson review. Over the credits, Sage can be heard banging on the door yelling for Gabe to let him out, along with "I NEED TO PUT MY EVIL INSIDE YOU!!!"
Goddammit, does evil have the market cornered for stacked chicks? Why can't the good guys load their side with bountiful blouse bunnies?!
Share the Male Pain: In the My My Mai review, Sage winces and cringes through an extended scene talking about curing split personality disorder...through an acupuncture needle to the base of the testicles.
Sage: [strained, high-pitched voice] Let's...move on, please!
Shared Universe: Anime Abandon was officially part of The Reviewaverse, but after Bennett left Channel Awesome in the wake of the #ChangeTheChannel and JewWario controversies, all ties to it appear to have been erased.
Show, Don't Tell: Discussed. One of Sage's most widespread criticisms of anime in general is the tendency to flat-out state what characters are thinking and feeling instead of invoking it through actions and body language. He does understand the economical reasons behind this, but doesn't like it.
His video game reviews are done as dryly as possible without any real humor to them, in contrast to most of the rest of the TGWTG stuff.
Also pops up occasionally in Anime Abandon; see Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil for an example of something he does not take lightly at all.
As explained in the commentary, Critic!Sage's comments on Twilight of the Cockroaches also more or less match up with what he actually thinks of it.
Skinship Grope: Discussed in the Strange Love review. After the lead character does this to her love interest, Sage asks the audience to tell him in the comments the level of bullshit the trope itself actually is.
Skyward Scream: Done by the Critic when Sage's snarky comments about Gunsmith Cats' depiction of Chicago traffic cause him to lose his cool and try to drive to Sage's place to pummel him...only to get stuck in traffic.
Critic: SAAAAAAAAAAAAGE!!! Sage: Ahhhhh...you hear that? That's the sound of me being right.
Slapstick: Sage discusses the universal appeal of slapstick in the review for The Samurai, noting that while it's bottom-tier humor, it's humor everyone gets, without a need for culture-specific knowledge or history, and proves the point with a scene where Takashi and the ninja sisters all pratfall in different ways during a chase sequence through a woman's bathroom.
So Bad, It's Good: invoked A small handful of the clunkers Sage has covered on Anime Abandon have earned this distinction. It's also his general opinion about Masami Obari, as the detail and attention he puts into the focal points of his works (namely, fighting, mecha, and fanservice) give them a certain infectious charm even though they're generally terrible.
[from the Gowcaizer review] It's nothing but shiny, glorious failure and I love it like a mother loves her child who can't stop eating paste.
So Bad, It Was Better: invoked His view of Uwe Boll and Masami Obari is that they're best when they're doing off-the-wall stupidity. Boll's original films had terrible acting, plots, etc. and were So Bad, It's Good, and when he improved the films lost their insane charm, and just became regular bad instead of the fun kind. He feels that Obari is an inversion and comes to enjoy the insanity in his later works.
His Masterpiece Fanfic Theater segments have him read rather dreadful stuff in as sophisticated a tone as he can muster.
Parodied in his review of Cyber City Oedo 808, which had an episode featuring two characters speaking formally—while threatening to shove the remains of a robot and a person respectively up the other's ass. Bennett's response? A hammy, faux-English accented, handkerchief-waving faux-classy threat of threatening to shove a sphere up someone's urethra.
Soundtrack Dissonance: In the Masterpiece Fanfic Theaterepisode for My Immortal (considered a legendarily bad fic even by bad fic standards), Sage plays Vivaldi'sFour Seasons as the background music.
Spiteful Spit: Done by Sage after he throws the Violence Jack tape off a bridge.
I never thought the sound of laughter could be so... agonizing... *shudders*
One of the captions during Clowd Mows the Lawn is "No! No! Do not want!" once the scat scenes start.
Stealth Parody: He says that it's possible that Agent Aika is actually this instead of wank material due to the ludicrously overdone panty shots and the villain's master plan being to turn the world into his own harem.
As the entire plot of Wicked City revolves around it, it annoys him that the two leads don't really interact in any meaningful way. Just suddenly they are in love out of nowhere.
Blood Reign: Curse of the Yoma also annoys him as the main female character becomes immediately so infatuated with the main male character that she says she'd rather die than be without him, despite having met him only minutes ago, and him at best ignoring her and at worst treating her with contempt.
Also a point of contention with the movie version of The Vision of Escaflowne, since Hitomi decides that she and Van are destined to be together after a few minutes of conversation, a good portion of which is him threatening her with a sword.
Inuyasha—Miroku's wind tunnel can basically solve all their problems, so the show needs to constantly find ways to sideline him, often when it makes no sense or is contradictory to how his power should work.
Plastic Little—The ship's Wave-Motion Gun one-shotting the ''entire military fleet" makes no sense, as the crew were talking how their ship was just a whaling ship and no match for military vessels, yet when the time comes they vaporize the entire navy in one single shot. Sage wonders if the ship isn't made for hunting whales so much as hunting God.
Strictly Formula: He holds this view on FAKE, to the point of having a Gay Positioning System (or GPS) Running Gag and not even bothering with the main characters' names and just calling them Uke and Seme.
Sudden Downer Ending: He seems to dislike this trope (or at least how it's sometimes handled), feeling that a downbeat conclusion has to be "earned".
He's incensed at the use of it in SiN The Movie to kill off JC, one of your companion characters from the game, with the only apparent reason being to introduce his Suspiciously Similar Substitute sister for the purposes of Fanservice.
He's similarly enraged by The Reveal in 8 Man After that the original 8 Man was simply deleted — offscreen — so the new 8 Man could replace him. He goes on to explain that not all cases of a Legacy Character replacing a character who dies are bad by nature (with a cameo by Linkara specifically comparing it to Ted Kord, who Sage points out at least got to die on screen and tell his killer off one last time), but the way his show did it was downright disrespectful for the original.
He evidently does not like Vic Mignogna, judging by the long sequence in the Junk Boy review where he beats up Floating!Vic Mignogna's head with a baseball bat.
He doesn't like the 2014 remake of RoboCop, as he did a negative review of it for Sage Vs, and in Anime Abandon, he says the franchise doesn't need help ruining itself after talking about the Bubblegum Crisis tie-in A.D. Police Files, whose last episode was a Darker and Edgier/Hotter and Sexier ripoff of the 1987 original.
Testosterone Poisoning: The Riding Bean review is loaded with over-the-top manlinesss. Sage does the entire review wearing a Rambo-esque headband and black aviator sunglasses and using a loud gravelly voice, does at least half a dozen shirt rips, and dedicates the review to "MANIME". He even puts Bean in the "Manime Hall of Fame" alongside Guts, Kenshiro, and Revy. This portrayal would eventually be spun into a new character, Savage.
His feelings on the fact that Doomed Megalopolis only introduces Keiko, who, as he points out, is the one who beats the Big Bad, in the third out of 4 episodes. He concludes that she would have been more interesting to focus on rather than her assholish, incestuous rapist husband.
He also thinks this about the Odd Friendship between Elaine and the street urchin boy in Genocyber, which he remarks is actually well done since it's done almost entirely without dialog.
Also thinks this about Count Mecha from Galaxy Express 999, since he appears briefly at the beginning and then is forgotten about for an hour only to get unceremoniously killed off.
He points out how there's a particularly well-done scene in Devilman between Akira and Miki where she offers to bandage his face after a fight. He tries to turn her down, but she points at the bed with a "do not argue with me" expression on her face and he acquiesces without a word. Sage notes that that one bit of silent interaction says more about their relationship than any amount of exposition ever could, but unfortunately this almost immediately gets shoved to the side in favor of the plot and isn't brought up again in any meaningful way.
Toilet Humor: Sage will occasionally poke fun at a (melo)dramatic scene by adding farts (or worse), especially if there's something jarring about the scene itself.
One particular instance is in the Gall Force review, where Sage points out the WTF factor of a character shown mourning another's death while on the can. Cue sound effects.
At the end of X when the film has a solemn Downer Ending, Sage feels it did nothing to deserve the emotional impact it is obviously going for and proceeds to make it fit his feelings by replaying the scene with fart sounds over it.
During a scene in Hyper Doll where a talking anus appears, Sage has Gabe give him a 30 second timer, then rattles off seven poop-based jokes, complete with dramatic bows at the end.
Token Evil Teammate: Crossover videos with Sage usually portray him as the spawn of Satan. He occasionally lampshades this with mention of "the other guy" who looks just like him.
Too Kinky to Torture: Well, considering that he was pretty cool with being spooned by Spoony and even asked "same time next year?" the second time it happened...
Top Ten List: He's done various list episodes, including his picks for the top 20 giant robots, the 20 worst songs that hit #1 on Billboard, and the 20 best songs that hit #1. The picks in the "Top 10 Anime Abandon Moments" episode were decided by the fanbase.
Troubled Production: invoked He spends most of his Gundress review talking about its complicated production history, including its theatrical release in a pitifully unfinished state, rather than focusing on the film itself, which he finds to be a lackluster retread of Bubblegum Crisis.
Trying Not to Cry: He discusses The Iron Giant, and when watching the giant's Heroic Sacrifice at the end, he says that each time, he tells himself he's not gonna cry, but still finds himself sniffling.
memetic plugs for Liberty Medical.
either to voice both halves, and the actress for Male Ranma note is clearly affecting her voice.
", which was released on Jan. 31, 2024.