90% of Bennett's game reviews focus on the negative aspects of whatever he's reviewing, and unlike the Anime Abandon reviews, the negativity is played completely straight instead of done in a bombastic, jokey manner. It seems like the only triple-A FPS title he genuinely liked over the past few years were Killzone 3 and Resistance 3, two titles he really gushes over, while cross-platform and Xbox titles tend to get much more critical treatment.
Sometimes averted in Anime Abandon reviews. Even if Sage doesn't like a certain anime he will acknowledge some of its good points, or in the case of AKIRA and Neon Genesis Evangelion, their influence on anime culture as a whole. This is especially evident in his review of Perfect Blue, which he says he doesn't hate but doesn't really like either, and that he can tell it was Satoshi Kon's first film since certain parts of it feel weak compared to his later work.
Adaptational Protagonist: Discussed in his review of Night Warriors: Darkstalker's Revenge, as Bennett makes no secret he doesn't like Donovan Baine. While Bennett recognizes that Donovan was The Hero of Darkstalkers II, he find Donovan to be boring and is annoyed by Donovan's angst, and expresses the opinion that the lead character of the anime should've been someone other than Donovan.
Sage notes in his review of Fake that the plot makes no sense when the show isn't a dub, because the reveal that the (British) killer, who has been targeting Japanese tourists, now attacks a specific main character based on someone noting that one of the (American) characters is half Japanese makes no sense when everyone, even the killer, is speaking flawless Japanese.
In the Wild Cardz review, the introduction of the racist Chinese caricature leads Sage to point out that a scene in Black Lagoon in which the Taiwanese Shenhua threatens to kill Revy for making fun of her bad English doesn't have nearly the same impact in the original Japanese audio.
All I'm saying is that this moment, and many more like it, make way more sense in English than it does in Japanese. If you're going to have your character speak a language other than what the audience is hearing, don't draw attention to it.
Art Evolution: In the commentary for Mad Bull 34, Marc the Engineer notes the horrible animation from the earlier episodes of Anime Abandon and says that will change in upcoming episodes. Cue the next review, Apocalypse Zero, where Censor Kaiser goes from his original still shot to an updated animated version based on the Laughing Man logo.
Sage finally snaps in the Virgin Fleet episode, where he tosses the titular series DVD into the ocean.
Awesome Art: invoked Sage will give even the worst animes credit if they have good art and/or animation. In his review of X, for instance, he makes clear that he thinks it's absolutely gorgeous before tearing it to pieces.
Hearing Kuwabara's name mispronounced as "Kuwahara"note the main difference being the lack of a dakuten when written in hiragana in the dub of YuYu Hakusho: Poltergeist Report. He yells so loud it echoes.
Susan Sommers, a character that enraged him so much that he went as far as to claim that Naru Narusegawawas a better character, and then later drove him to break off the review and walk out of the room to have a screaming, expletive-laden rant that lasted for nearly a minute.
Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male is a trope that he particularly dislikes. This was one of his biggest gripes about the three Love Hina films and Inuyasha: had the relationship dynamics been reversed, everyone would call the main characters' relationships in both shows abusive, but because of the gender flip it's expected to be seen as funny or even romantic. He takes great pleasure in often showing how those scenes are almost identical (except for the gender swap) to scenes you'd see in a Lifetime Movie of the Week, such as Kagome assaulting InuYasha because he's more excited about the ramen (that she brought) than the food she prepared, or Keitaro cringing and begging to not be hurt in expectation of a blow from Naru after a bit of Accidental Pervertedness.
Atrocious dubs. Sage knows that a lot of 80s and 90s dubs aren't very good, but the truly bad ones really get under his skin, and Central Park Media is a frequent target of his ire for the consistently poor dubs it gave its anime releases. He has a lengthy rant in the middle of the Sins of the Sisters review regarding its terrible dub, and Bennett and Marc discuss bad dubs during the review's Nuts and Bolts commentary.
The mere mention of Terrence Trent D'Arby is enough to get Sage to flip out in his JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders review when he finds out about the villain named for him.
Apparently for Marc the Engineer, using two dashes and a carat as an arrow in a review instantly wrecks the quality of the video, according to the Mad Bull 34 commentary.
AA reviews have also seen Sage trip other creators' buttons:
Doug Walker actually pulls a gun on Sage during the MD Geist review when Sage starts to make a Dune reference. Rob Walker pops in and finishes the line, and Doug chases him out of the room, screaming and shooting.
He's also made it very clear that he hates vampires and dislikes almost any works revolving around them, with the exceptions of From Dusk Till Dawn, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, and Castlevania (2017). In his Blood: The Last Vampire review, he stated that this hatred comes from how overly romanticized vampires have become in media, resulting in excessive levels of bemoaning how they are monsters, often to the point of Wangst. The only stories revolving around the creatures of the night that he somewhat enjoys either have very few, if any, of them or treat them as genuinely terrifying monsters with no redeeming aspects.
While he's pretty indifferent to shonen, one thing that he despises that's a recurring trend for the genre is Tournament Arcs, as they come across as just mindless slug fests that put the plot on hold for characters to fight each other and waste time.
Parodied when Sage realizes that Marc the Engineer has sent him the InuYasha movie to review. He does several long, deadpan "Noooooooooooo"s while doing different things like eating and even sleeping, all while holding the DVD case.
Invoked in the My My Mai review when Sage uses Al Pacino's "NOOOOOOOOO!" at the climax of The Devil's Advocate to address an incredibly stupid question, as he couldn't give one that would do it justice.
When Sage pranks Savage at the end of the Samurai Shodown review:
[Sage holds up the DVD case for theTekkenOVA] Savage: *tearing his shirt off* YEEEESSSS!!! [Sage drops it, revealing the case for thePsychic ForceOVA] Savage: *tearing his shirt off* NOOOOOOOO!!!
Big "WHAT?!": Ninja Resurrection'sBolivian Army Ending causes Sage to stare blankly at the camera for a few seconds then yell "WHAT?!"
Bittersweet Ending: The review of Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland ends with Sage wistfully reminiscing about Video Droid, a local video rental store which was a staple of his youth and which outlasted many of the chain rental stores but couldn't weather the revenue losses after the fires that swept through Santa Rosa in 2017.
Blackmail: The review of Plastic Little sees Sage do this to his lawyer to force him to help cover his ass over the fact that the two leads, Tita and Elysse, are respectively 17 and 16, by threatening his lawyer with calls to both the lawyer's grandmother (the real reason he skipped Passover being trying to help a client screw his ex out of alimony) and the California Bar (the lawyer's last vacation was payed for a slush fund the lawyer's legal partner had).
Blind Mistake: The Virus Hunter Serge review is the first one after Gabe is rendered completely blind, and Sage leads things off by talking about having to help Gabe adjust to his condition. Cue Sage reading a comic book and ignoring Gabe as he trips and falls in front of him, and then letting Gabe go on a date with his face half-covered in shaving cream and unshaved patches, even snickering after he's gone.
In his review of Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture, after he sees and hears Hauer, he coughs into a tissue and gasps not just at the blood, but also that it's purple and covered in glitter.
He does this as part of his Heroic RRoD during the Ninja Resurrection review.
When reading My Immortal, the caption states that he couldn't decide whether to voice a character as gay or annoying, so he made the character sound annoyingly gay.
From his Teknoman review:
Old Man Sage: Now, Saban wasn't perfect by any means, but they knew what we wanted. What we wanted was giant robots, ninjas, and giant robot ninjas.
Brick Joke: At the beginning of his Venus Wars review Sage discusses the nature of comedy and talks about how if he inserted a random fart or if he telegraphed it coming too much, they would both fail as jokes for different reasons. He then looks directly at the camera for several seconds in silence with a smug smile on his face... and moves on to talk about something else. Then, during the end credits of the video it suddenly cuts back to Sage for a moment to play a fart sound.
He's particularly incensed by this subplot in Doomed Megalopolis, though his objection has less to do with it being incest and more with it being rape. Presumably if the movie had gone with the book version where the relationship between the two was actually consensual he would have had less of a problem with it.
Made fun of at length in X regarding Kotori and Fuuma.
Happens yet again in "Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer (Part I)", with him noting that while it was just a wild guess in X that he got right, Gowcaizer straight up shoved it into his face, making him cringe badly.
Todd in the Shadows showed in two music list episodes (Top Five Best and Worst Covers of All Time, asking him to do a music list; and Top 20 Worst #1 Hits, both calling out Bennett for just putting "Glory of Love" at #19 and being called out for not including Ciara's "Goodies" in his list of the worst hits of 2004).
LittleKuriboh is a frequent appearance or voiceover in Anime Abandon.
He filmed a number of cameos at the Too Many Games convention for his Elfen Lied review. Linkara, Takahata101, and Erin (his title card artist) all beat him up with bats. Woolie, of then still active Two Best Friends Play, smashes a pool cue on Bennett's back.
Captain Obvious: Baoh is so full of them, Sage starts a "No Shit!" counter to see how many times people say the blatantly obvious.
Catch Phrase Interruptus: When reviewing E.Y.E.S. of Mars, the hero of the story, who goes by the name of Du/Doo, returns to his base, with several other characters yelling "Du! It's Du! Hey Du!"
90's Kid: Duuuuuuuuuuuuu—! Sage: Shuttup! 90's Kid: ... Well okay!?
Cat Girl: Discussed in the Dominion Tank Police review, in regards to Anni and Una, cat girl twins who are recurring antagonists. Sage notes that the more gross parts of living with cats as a child ruined his ability to appreciate cat girl fanservice, using a cat yarking up a hairball as a visual for the point. He's then distracted by Anni and Una's debut scene where they do a striptease to distract the Tank Police, but an unfortunate flashback to that cat wrecks everything.
Caustic Critic: Par for the course. Sage will destroy bad anime and doesn't hesitate to point out the flaws in good anime.
Cerebus Callback: Sage gouging out Gabe's eye in Jungle de Ikou! was played for Black Comedy back when it was filmed. In the Nuts and Bolts for the Sins of the Sisters review, Bennett admitted that this was such a hateful thing to do that he crafted the Sisters review's nightmarish eye trauma subplot to show that Sage has some deep-seated guilt over the act.
Cerebus Retcon: Sage torturing Critic, Ask That Guy, JesuOtaku and countless others was played for laughs, but in The Guyver not only does (actual) Sage call his other self "shadow of a shadow" and "a me that could have been", but he tries really hard to prove himself to Critic that he's not a bad guy and gets rejected thanks to Critic's new douchiness.
Cheap Heat: Sage considers the attempts to make hate sinks out of the gyaru girls in Very Private Lesson to be lazy and... well, cheap. He compares it to a heel trying to get boos from the audience by insulting the local sports team.
Cheshire Cat Grin: Sage is a master of the really pervy, unsettling grin; the second opening theme included a shot of him doing this. It helps that he has really prominent cuspids.
Chickification: One of his major complaints about the movie version of The Vision of Escaflowne is how it did this to Hitomi compared to her TV series incarnation, stripping her of all agency and turning her into a character who just has things happen to her. Also, by not having her divination powers from the show she's little more than a bystander.
Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Every character not played by Bennett has completely disappeared from the show without any reference to them, with the exception of Censor Kaiser (who is not even a character anymore, as he no longer speaks and functions solely as a censor bar). The two most notable are the characters of Gabe and Marc the Engineer, two rather prominent characters within the review universe in the early-to-mid 10s. Gabe suddenly disappeared because his portrayer, Ashira Herzig, voluntarily stopped working with Bennett in August of 2017, coming out as transgender a few months later. As for Marc, while he completely stopped appearing in episodes and commentaries after 2016, he still works prominently behind the camera in animation and script supervision. Today, the only Anime Abandon characters left are Sage, Suave, and Savage.
Clark Kenting: When dealing with Pretty Sammy OVA series's handling of this trope, Sage is first flabbergasted, then points out the United States has the Trope Namerhimself and thus can't comment on it.
Cluster F-Bomb: Sage is no stranger to foul language, but in the "Genocyber Part I" review, he calls out Manga Entertainment for its tendency to load its early dubs with cursing to make them seem more adult and serious, and brings this up in a handful of other reviews.
Ah yes, distracting and superfluous cursing. That's the Manga UK we all know and...tolerate.
Combat Cue Stick: At the start of the Elfen Lied review, Sage recalls being lured into a hotel conference room and "beaten" severely by several of his friends and (at that time) co-creators at Channel Awesomenote everyone was using wiffle ball bats and similarly harmless items, which culminated with someone breaking a pool cue across his back as he tried to get away. This was supposed to be faked, as the cue had been set up with a break spot, but it actually broke several inches below that spot, meaning he actually took the hit, which left a long welt across his back. This was shown in the episode's credits and the Nuts and Bolts video for the review.
Content Warnings: A small handful of episodes have featured viewer advisories, due to the anime being reviewed featuring disturbing material that goes above and beyond the normal fare. Bennett and Marc discussed this at the start of the Nuts and Bolts episode for Sins of the Sisters, noting that while some viewers were upset that this was done for that review, some were appreciative of the heads-up.
Country Matters: Sage has used this epithet in a number of reviews, particularly Angel Cop,Love Hina, Virgin Fleet, and Very Private Lesson, and it's his summation of Asuka Soryu and Susan Sommers. However, he has said that he wants to cut down on gendered profanity like this, because he knows how much it can offend the female members of his audience.
Crosses the Line Twice: invoked He feels Elfen Lied is inadvertently prone to this, as its tendency to make its villains cartoonishly evil so that viewers will still sympathize with Lucy causes them to become laughable. Similarly, Hiromi's death is so over-the-top melodramatic that it makes him break into laughter.
Cry Laughing: Gabe does this in the last shot of the InuYasha review. He stands and waves with a big smile on his face...but seeing as he's covered in Sage's "semen", his smile slowly breaks down into sobs of humiliated rage.
Department of Redundancy Department: He explains that YuYu Hakusho roughly translates to "Poltergeist Report", making the movie's title YuYu Hakusho the Movie: Poltergeist Report being translated as "Poltergeist Report the Movie: Poltergeist Report". He decides to shorten it as PRTMPR and pronounces the acronym for the rest of the review.
Designated Hero: invoked He finds it hard to get invested in X as Kamui, "The Chosen One", whines and mopes for most of the film and leaves most of the fighting to the other Heaven and Earth Dragons, who mainly show up to have one fight that leaves one or both dead.
Marc: I want you to do your FUCKING JOB! Because if you don't, someone else will And Then What??! You cashed in all your chips on being a clown on the Internet, and now you're backing away at the first sign of trouble! YOU CANNOT! LIVE THIS LIFE!WITHOUT OFFENDING SOMEONE!
Distanced from Current Events:invoked The reason he decides not to even touch the reference to earthquakes in Japan during the Doomed Megalopolis review.
Sage: It should be noted, though, that Gainax has a long history of misappropriating and using funds...and ohhhh child, you bet your sweet ass we'll get back to that one!
The Guyver. Sage's efforts to get Critic to have some fun again fail, he loses his temper when Critic goes full on condescending hypocritical Fan Hater, Critic refuses to apologize and storms off, and Sage goes home depressed. Lady Death twists the knife in even more, as Critic apparently keeps sending Sage rosary beads.
Dramatic Ellipsis: Brought up to the point of overuse in the Masterpiece Fanfic Theatre episode reading of "Until the End of Time".
Drowning My Sorrows: Marc's noting that most Sonic fans treat Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie either with Fanon Discontinuity or booze leads Sage to respond with "Whelp, mama didn't raise me to be no liar." and pull out a bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon. He kills three bottles of it over the course of the first half of the review.
Dude, Not Funny!: What Bennett thinks ofViolence Jack. He later elaborates on this in the review itself, saying that it's actually very hard to say anything about it because of several reasons: he can't show the violence, he can't make jokes about it because there's basically no humour in it whatsoever (and he doesn't want to make jokes about gang-rape and child murder), and he doesn't hate it enough to rage at it.
Brian Maynote nickname based on the character looking like the Queen guitarist of the same name: No, Lucifer... you've gone way too far already. We're not coming with you. Sage: [flatly] Oh, Bridgetnote nickname based on the character looking like 80s actress Brigitte Nielsen... you've gone mad with power; I will stop you, I hate you so muuuuuch...
The wooden delivery of a character talking about her parents being killed in Maze leads Sage to scream "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACT!!!"
Early-Installment Weirdness: Many of Sage's older works are considerably harsher, angrier, and contain some hypocritical content. Contrast to now, where he is somewhat more laid back and has a much more consistent moral compass.
Sage: This guy's name is Nicole? I didn't think it was possible for Spike Spencer to play a character whose parents hate him more than Shinji's. But I stand corrected!
Engrish: Invoked for parody with the "Spot the Engrish" gag where Sage shows a still clip and asks the viewers to spot the goofup, such as "carate" as Ryo Sakazaki's martial art in the Art of Fighting OVA review.
In his Escaflowne review, he says that Dilandau's flippant brand of Ax-Crazy made him his favorite character in the series and the movie removing his backstory as Allen's long-lost brainwashed sister is the only divergence from the series he agrees with as it lets "Dilandau be Dilandau."
Played straight with his review of Violence Jack, where he couldn't bring himself to actually review it. That's right, the only person to make the Ask That Guy squeamish found something even he was too put off by to review. When commenters called him out on his apparent hypocrisy for reviewing the hyper-violent Elfen Lied, he countered in its Nuts and Bolts by noting that it has genuine moments of heart and lightness that counter its gore and make it able to be talked about, something completely absent from Violence Jack.
Jungle de Ikou! gets so disturbing that he has to cut the review short.
Even the Guys Want Him: During the Galaxy Express 999 review, Suave gushes over Captain Harlock, saying some rather...suggestive things about what he'd let Harlock do to him that leave Sage befuddled.
Sage and Suave both hate Love Hina, to the point that Suave renames Naru as "The Intolerable Bitch" and calls her a cunt. Bennett summarized his feelings about the show during a Q&A session at Mythicon 2014, although he does consider the manga a bit of a guilty pleasure despite the problems he has with it.
Even Suave thinks Akira from I Dream of Mimi is a scumbag due to how he treats Mimi with disdain and being even lower than ether Tenchi and Keitaro who at least care for the girls who are trying to get them. Even Suave shocked himself that he had actual standards.
Sage declares Ultimate Teacher too bizarre to review, and simply decides to break out some popcorn and soda and enjoy the ride. When Rob Walker comes in to berate him for the lazy non-review, it only takes twenty seconds of a clip from the show to reduce him to the same state.
At the end of the Green Green review, Suave says that there's a level of acceptable stupidity that goes along with trashy fanservice anime. The mark was cleared by I Dream of Mimi, abundantly cleared by Golden Boy, and even Eiken squeaked by. Green Green? Not even close.
Suave: I shall put it to you as plainly as possible. It has enough cheesecake for an entire 24-hour Golden Girls marathon...and it's still not worth the headache. And this is coming from me!
After the utter borefest of Odin, Sage needs something to clean his palate. What does he pull out, inspiring him to break into horrible laughter? Why, it's Dominion Tank Police!
Marc does an epic one as Sage learns that Marc has sent him a copy of the InuYasha movie to review.
Evil Overlord: What Sage would become if he had a Galaxy-Destroying Cannon.
Executive Meddling: invoked Parodied in the review of Twilight of the Cockroaches within the framing device of an episode of The Critic with Marc the Engineer taking the role of The Duke. He constantly interrupts Sage!Jay to demand cruder jokes to lower the entry barrier of his show's intellectual level.
Eyebrow Waggle: Suave does this at the camera at one point during the Eiken review:
Densuke: This is ridiculous! Why am I in girls' swimwear competing in this game?! This is awful! Suave: Because perverted girls need their jollies too, little whelp...and certain fellas that don't mind details. *waggle*
During the Jungle de Ikou! review, Gabe tries to stop Sage from gouging his eyes out with scissors and ends up getting his left eye put out.
The Sins of the Sisters review features three jump scares featuring the "bloody eye socket" effect from Event Horizon.
During the Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence review, as Sage makes a joke about what people will do for high-def (in reference to the coroner plugging a fancy cable into a socket behind her eyes), Gabe proceeds to stick one end of a VGA cable into his good eye.
Sage: [after hearing Gabe's scream] That one's on you!
characters and titles that overuse it, citing the Love Hina Christmas Special, Devil Hunter Yohko, and Ryo-ohki when the character becomes an extremely cutesy humanoid. The notable exception is Yomiko Readman, as he sees her cuteness as a consequence of her personality and not the driving force of her character.
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