YMMV / Bennett the Sage

• Base-Breaking Character: Marc the Engineer's role as The Duke (though an homage to a character from The Critic) in the Twilight of the Cockroaches review was divisive, as many felt he came across as an unpleasant jerkass (and in the commentaries even Marc himself felt uncomfortable with the character, though Bennett found it funny). His appearances afterwards tone him down to a humorously prickly Bad Boss.
• Bile Fascination: A number of his fans went and watched Violence Jack after his (non-) review of it, adding to the Broken Base.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • During the Tokyo Revelation review, he decides it's time to retire his Big Book of Gay Jokes. Cut to a scene with Sage giving a tear-filled goodbye to it, only for it to suddenly turn bitter as he realizes that it used to belong to Jeff Dunham.
  • This happens in his review of Junk Boy with the entire scene of Vic Mignogna's floating head.
• Broken Base:
  • Over the Violence Jack review:
    • On the one hand, there's quite a few fans who think that the video was great and that it managed to review the show even without showing it, all whilst not being anything like a normal review. They also agree that the show itself is very hard to review and even harder to watch, as it consists of huge amounts of repetitive gorn, so it's not like Bennett was making a huge deal over something minor. And even given the content, these fans like that Bennett managed to discuss the content- even if the video doesn't necessarily count as a review- and actually tried to review it instead of just giving up on it.
    • On the other hand, there's also many fans angry that they waited six months, with constant teasers, for what amounted to nothing more than a 30 minute non-review explaining why he wouldn't actually review it. They pointed out that nobody said that a review of Violence Jack had to be funny, and that he wouldn't have to show the footage. They also questioned why, of all the grotesque and obscene anime Bennett has reviewed, that this was the one he wouldn't do. Simply put, these fans felt that he shouldn't have dragged Violence Jack into his show if he wasn't prepared to "properly" review it. One person even stated that this was worse than the baseball stunt he pulled in his End of Evangelion review.
    • Adding fuel to the fire is the ones who went and watched it, and found it rather tame compare of some of the other animes he had no problem showing, such as Ninja Scroll.
    • What makes it more ludicrous in retrospect, is that, years later, Kaiserbeamz of Kyoto Video managed to do a proper in-depth review of Violence Jack, with no issue on his end.
  • His review of Perfect Blue. One group felt like Bennett missed key subtext and plot points in the movie that nullify some of his complaints. Another group felt that while his criticisms were valid they don't bring the film down as much as Bennett said. Then there's the final group who agree with him in that while it isn't a terrible movie it is definitely a lot rougher than Satoshi Kon's future works. Of course there's also the debate about whether or not the dub is to blame for his criticisms, as Bennett has made it clear that he's a dub only fan.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Some of Bennett's joke go into this territory, such as in his Burn Up! review, when he comments on a slaver who looks like Wilford Brimley and brings up the Liberty Medical commercials.
• Fridge Brilliance: Bennett's old theme for Anime Abandon was "Ultra" by KMFDM. The song was also used in Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie during the one scene that's Best Known for the Fanservice. Of course, that would be the theme for the anime review show that more often than not looks at the more perverse side of anime.
• Genius Bonus: In his review of X, he states that trying to understand the plot while watching it for the first time is "like trying to read Finnegans Wake in Sanskrit". That's not the only example; he references some pretty obscure works, anime and otherwise.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • When returning to the present in the Cyber City Oedo 808 review, Bennett is shown looking forlornly at Justin "JewWario" Carmical's hat. The Google document released during the mass exodus of producers from Channel Awesome contained anonymous accounts of grooming and sexual assault by a former producer—and around the time of Bennett's own exit from the site, it was revealed the producer in question was JewWario. As of April 2018, the hat he kept in memory of JewWario is gone.
  • Some of the humor about characters whose gender is ambiguous, such as Sage's confusion about the barber in Macross II, has not aged well in light of Ashira's transition and subsequent departure from the show.
  • His Crossover with The Nostalgia Critic ends with Rob Walker chastising the Critic for kidnapping Sage and sending him home first class in exchange for not suing them. This became a lot darker following the revelations about Channel Awesome in 2018, such as Rob's underhanded tendencies and how they kept Justin Carmichael's actions covered up.
  • In his Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot review, Bennett calls "Doctor Netflix" after pointing out that the series ends on a setup for a third season that never happened. At the time, Netflix was seen as a powerhouse in television and animation production, held in high regard by people. Nowadays, due to the many controversial adaptations they have produced over the years (most notably Masters of the Universe: Revelation, Death Note (2017), The Witcher (2019), Resident Evil (2022), and Cowboy Bebop (2021), which was reviewed by Sage himself in a video), Netflix would be the last company people would ask to revive a beloved series.
• He Really Can Act:
  • In the The End of Evangelion review, where he breaks down because he thinks he has nothing left to say about something that's already been analyzed to death.
  • His creepiness passes into this in some of his cameo appearances. When he teams up with Nostalgia Critic to review Starchaser: The Legend of Orin, the Critic is terrified of him, and by the time the intro is over, you'll understand why.
  • When he sends Ask That Guy in a quivering crying wreck, you have no difficulty believing that he can pull that off.
  • For the Violence Jack "review" when he simulates himself going crazy... and goddamn he pulls it off.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Sage calling Miles Teller a skinny version of Jonah Hill makes you wonder what Sage is going to say about them starring in a movie together.
  • In the start of his Mad Bull 34 review, he mentions the show at the time was never released on DVD, and then mentions various other infamous anime that were, including Garzey's Wing of all things. Not long after the review was made, it was reissued courtesy of Discotek Media. Sage snarked in his Elfen Lied review that said release was probably done on a dare.
  • During his review of the first Pokemon movie, Bennett asked if Ash had ever won a Pokemon Championship outside of the Orange League, with Linkara admitting he hadn't. Over 2 years later, Ash would wind up winning the Alola League.
  • In his cross-over review of Speed Racer, he talks about the live-action anime adaptations that have been stuck in development hell. Two of the films mentioned have since actually been made.
• Misaimed Fandom: When reviewing the movie of X1999, Bennett claimed to see the implication that the protagonist had sex with his own mother, which Sage turned into a Running Gag for every time he finds incest again. In reality, while Bennett might be forgiven for not understanding the movie due to its infamous Continuity Lockout, there's no such incest in the plot, only a creepy vision of the woman naked before burning to death, and it's a bit odd that he interpreted it that way. Bennett might have been influenced to do so if he ever heard that another character of X does have a scene kissing his mother in the lips (which, while certainly suggestive, is implied to be ritualistic in nature and doesn't necessarily insinuate any further incest), but nothing of this appears in the movie itself.
• More Popular Spin-Off: Bennett originally started off as a video game critic with his Sage Reviews segments. His Anime Abandon videos began more as a curiosity, and eventually grew to be his primary output, whilst Sage Reviews were retired in 2013.
• Signature Scene: The "grenades tied to pubes" from his Mad Bull 34 review has become one of the most well known scenes of utter craziness that the show's had. It's the video where he realized Anime Abandon's potential (Marc joked that it's when Bennett White finally became Bennett the Sage), and it was voted as the number one Anime Abandon moment. Though when discussing the scene he does regret that the most memorable moment of his show came entirely from a separate entity rather than something he created.

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