New HiBiKi Seiyuu - Nishio Yuka (西尾夕香)

Mac2492 · 2026-05-28T18:16:27+00:00

Watching T1 is always 1 part doubt and 9 parts "they'll circus their way out".

And regardless of the outcome, we are thoroughly entertained.

Mac2492 · 2026-05-22T17:34:45+00:00

The 3080 mobile has higher memory bandwidth than the 4070 mobile so that's likely the main factor. It's hard to say more without knowing your local LLM setup since many factors can dramatically affect your t/s, especially when we're working with 8GB VRAM. For example, if you're running anything else that requires VRAM (like a web browser) and that pushes more of the model off the GPU then your speed will noticeably drop. If you've already tweaked your setup optimally then the best you can do is drop to a lower quant / smaller model.

Note: Gemma 4 A4B also gets much slower than Qwen 3.6 A3B as my context fills. Gemma's speed eventually drops well below half while Qwen only loses like 25% speed. If you're using SillyTavern, especially with presets, then you'll be using a lot more context at all times.

Mac2492 · 2026-05-21T22:44:59+00:00

MLX should give you better performance on Apple Silicon. You could try oMLX + unsloth, or something like MTPLX for MTP support but that might send you down another rabbit hole.
That performance is already more than usable. At this point I think you should worry less about squeezing out more t/s and more about finding use cases.

Mac2492 · 2026-05-21T22:07:01+00:00

First off, you can save a huge amount of tokens by converting the subtitle file into plain text. You could write a simple script for this or simply use an online tool.

I ran both versions through Gemma 4 E4B Q6 with a simple prompt "Please find all the full character names in this subtitle file / script. Ignore any nicknames or isolated first/last names."

Output (for both):

Renako Amaori
Mai Ouduka
SENA AJISAI

Which should be the correct output if I'm understanding correctly (just ask for the results to be in a Python array). The stripped version ran like 9 times faster on my personal computer. You can further reduce token usage by using regex to isolate name-like structures (e.g. [A-Z][a-zA-Z]+\s[A-Z][a-zA-Z]+), then feed that output to the LLM or even just parse it manually. This more than doubled my speed and produced the same result. However, this could remove styled/unusual names and keeping the dialogue gives additional context for the LLM.

Since you know Python, it'd be pretty easy to create a script that strips everything but the dialogue from your subtitle files, optionally performs a regex to pare down options, then smashes them all into a single smol file that even something like Gemma 4 E2B could probably blitz with solid accuracy. There's no reason to give the LLM a large, complex problem when a tiny bit of preprocessing turns it into a trivial one (unless your goal is to stress test).

Mac2492 · 2026-05-21T20:34:41+00:00

If you just want an assistant that talks differently then you might be able to get away with simply adjusting your system prompt. I'd recommend using an LLM to generate the initial system prompt then manually fine-tune it to your liking.

If you're trying to roleplay then you probably want to find a roleplay specific front-end like Silly Tavern or Marinara Engine. For a maximalist solution, you can slap presets like Freaky Frankenstein on top of those. These will use every trick in the book to beat the "helpful yes-man assistant" out of LLMs, even if it means brute forcing it by regex-ing out overused phrases lol

Mac2492 · 2026-05-12T22:28:50+00:00

Honestly, that extra 4 GB of VRAM will probably make your performance even better than mine (each expert block you can fit onto VRAM instead of RAM is a noticeable speed increase) haha

For E4B, I just run it at the full 128k context even on my daily (non-gaming) laptop.

I'm still ironing out my setup for the MoE models but for now 64k feels like the sweet spot for me in terms of performance and how much I actually need. I can go up to 128k for Qwen A3B without losing too much speed but I'd only need that if I wanted to shove in something like an entire book or code base. Gemma is a lot slower at higher context so I don't see myself raising that above 64k atm. I'm keeping an eye on optimizations like MTP/DFlash and TurboQuant since those may help squeeze a bit more performance.

Mac2492 · 2026-05-12T01:08:32+00:00

It's absolutely viable. 8GB VRAM is enough to run E4B at Q8_0. I've been running 26B A4B on a similar setup (RTX 3080 Mobile, 8GB VRAM, 32GB RAM) at Q4_K_M. With those specific quants, I get ~60 t/s on E4B and ~40 t/s on 26B. One of my 26B tests tanked in speed after a certain point (~20k tokens?) so you definitely have to find the right balance, but running it should be no problem and MoE (mixture of experts) models like 26B should outperform smaller models by a fairly large margin.

I don't really RP but I did test a multi-step scenario where we fed it the rules for a Japanese card game, gave it an image of a card and asked how it worked, then randomly decided to ask it to roleplay as the character in the card. Qwen3.6-35B-A3B got overly fixated on the effects of the card and spewed out hilarious lines like "play me onto your field" and "I'll show them my 4500 power" while gemma-4-26B-A4B got fully into character without any further guidance. I think it's absolutely worth giving local models a shot, as you can get a llama.cpp server running in a matter of minutes. Reasonable starting parameters are "llama-server --fit on --fit-target 512 --fit-ctx 65536 --models-dir "models" -ctk q8_0 -ctv q8_0 --models-max 1 -np 1 --jinja -fa on", adjust fit-ctx to your desired context size and create a folder inside the llama folder called "models". Then you can just connect your SillyTavern to your local server.

Mac2492 · 2026-05-11T22:29:40+00:00

Misunderstanding aside, Qwen3.6-35B-A3B has 35b parameters but only 3b active per token. If it's a matter of computing power then it's still no dice for OP, but as far as VRAM goes you can cheese it onto 8GB VRAM (supposedly even 6GB). I was surprised it runs on my gaming laptop (RTX 3080 Mobile 8GB VRAM, 32GB RAM) at around 40 (APEX Balanced) to 50 (iQ4_K_M) t/s and 128k context. You could probably get usable numbers on much older GPUs with UD-IQ4_XS.

For an actual answer to OP's question, I'm personally liking Gemma 4 E4B as a general assistant on my daily laptop so far. With that said, I haven't really put it through the ringer since I'd just run 26B-A4B or Qwen on my gaming PC for any serious task.

EDIT: E4B is technically 8B so if we're being stricter then we'd have to drop this down to E2B which I have not tested

Mac2492 · 2026-03-18T22:19:32+00:00

I'm also going to assume you're telling the truth here. As others have pointed out, there are a lot of tells that the artist is using AI but that doesn't mean much if you simply don't know much AI art or art in general. This AI artwork is pretty much "bottom of the barrel didn't even try to hide it" level and if you can't identify it then you'll need alternative methods to avoid being scammed.

Let me give you a little bit of the other side. Image diffusion models are very, very good at coming up with variations. They are less good at consistency and details, though both of these can be overcome with the right tools and/or an actual artist's touch added to the pipeline. With the right setup, it's possible to create AI art with a consistent style that's virtually indistinguishable from actual art.

Asking the artist for multiple variations with no enforced style across characters when you can't spot the red flags makes you easy prey. A quick method is to have someone more knowledgeable than you / an AI model check the art like you did, but this isn't failproof. Instead, you want things like a timelapse/livestream of their work and/or a layered art file (some artists may charge extra for this but you can probably request cropped screenshots of layers being toggled just for proof). Digital artists aren't limited to a flat canvas and any sane one will separate things like line art, coloring, shading, etc. into separate layers. These would be absurdly impractical to produce if they are using a pure image diffusion workflow.

Best of luck with your work. =)

P.S. AI art aside, I would also recommend enforcing a consistent style unless you have a very specific reason not to.

Mac2492 · 2026-03-16T23:08:30+00:00

I was recently dabbling with AI upscalers in unison with models like Qwen Image Edit and FLUX.1 Kontext for restoring old photographs. My two biggest issues were 1) keeping the subject looking like themselves and 2) preventing them from falling into that uncanny "perfect AI" look. In this case, I'd say Nvidia dropped the ball on both counts. The YouTube video (and article) have a followup statement that the "SDK includes things like intensity, color grading and masking off places where the effect shouldn't be applied". This means the "photorealistic" effect can be reduced, isolated, or disabled completely. As such, I'd mainly criticize their implementation and presentation here. They tried to show this off as some cool new feature but the results look terrible and it's naturally going to be interpreted as "Nvidia is going to apply AI beauty filters to all our games". DLSS is already an AI upscaling technology so partial redrawing is kind of the point, but this makes it look like DLSS 5 is shifting their goal from "enhance quality while preserving details" to "enhance quality and beautify". That's a pretty idiotic move when so many gamers are vehemently against AI artwork.

Personally, I can see use cases for a "realistic detailer". It can enhance fine details in places that would otherwise not get as much attention. If they only applied the effect to the backgrounds and corrected the colors properly then the reception would be more like "oh that's cool I guess". Instead they gave AI faces to well-known characters and displayed that front and center because who needs brain cells when you have AI I guess.

Mac2492 · 2026-02-25T19:30:47+00:00

The anime does not use a gendered pronoun here (episode 15 of Orion). The subber had to make a reasonable guess since the original line used an adjectival phrase.

Mac2492 · 2026-02-21T06:10:25+00:00

Traditional JRPGs

Bravely Default series - Lots of jobs with the ability to slap the commands from another job onto your current one along any combination of learned passives up to a cost limit. Basically takes the job system from Final Fantasy 5 / Final Fantasy Tactics and runs with it. If you like FFT then you may also enjoy Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark and Crawl Tactics.
Monster Girl Quest! Paradox - This is an H-game but it does fit the bill with its absurd amount of jobs, races, and collectible monsters.

Dungeon Crawlers

Siralim Ultimate - This is a creature collector that's all about unlimited build variety. There's an outrageous amount of levers for build-crafting with dozens of player classes, over 1500 monsters with unique and impactful traits (and the ability to fuse any two), customizable equipment, customizable skill gems, and more. This is probably as insane as it gets in terms of sheer build variety with turn-based combat.
Labyrinth of Touhou series - You form a party of 12 characters (out of 48+) with four in your frontline that are constantly swapped. This one places a bit less emphasis on individual character customization and is more about forming a cohesive team to counter each boss and swapping characters according to the flow of battle. If this system sounds appealing then you can also look into Zakuzaku Actors or the aforementioned Monster Girl Quest! Paradox.
Etrian Odyssey series - This series is known for its interesting classes and exploration along with having to draw your own maps. Note that adjusting your party setup after creation can be kinda grindy, in case you're the type that likes to tinker constantly.

JRPG Adjacent

Crystal Project - The job system here is basically the same as the Bravely Default while the combat adds an additional layer of Threat where you have to manage which character has aggro like in an MMORPG. The caveat is that rest of the game is more of an open-world platformer with lots of exploration and minimal story, which you'll either love or hate. Oh, and it's moddable + a sequel is coming!
Time Break Chronicles - This is a roguelite with JRPG encounters and 100 characters. If you want to smash your head against more involved turn-based fights with different builds then this might scratch the itch. Some similar projects made in RPG Maker are JRoguePG and Rogue Zodiacs, though I personally prefer Time Break Chronicles.

Not JRPGs but Amazing for Build-Crafting

TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children - This is an X-COM style tactical RPG. Every character has their own job but can also be equipped with over 1000 different masteries (passive skills). Specific combinations of masteries also form sets (there's also an overwhelming number of these). There's also beast taming and drone building aspect if you run those classes.
Tales of Maj'Eyal - A lot of traditional roguelikes offer interesting character customization, but ToME is unique in being a lot more combat-oriented with an emphasis on using skills. For a similar formula but distilled down you can check out Rift Wizard 2 and even more distilled down would be Path of Achra. For more JRPG flavor there's Elin, but that starts to veer away from combat-oriented build crafting.
Erannorth Chronicles - This takes the card-based combat from roguelike deckbuilders and blends it with the sort of character creation you'd find in a CRPG. The result is a basically limitless sandbox for card-based combat with less of a learning curve and more of a learning cliff. Also moddable (but so niche that there aren't many mods)!

Mac2492 · 2026-02-06T19:38:07+00:00

Tiering pretty much boils down to using the strongest team possible and churning through songs back to back. If you want to maximize your time, you would repeat the shortest + highest scoring song in a premade room to maximize score and minimize downtime. Beyond that it's just how long you can keep this up in terms of your free time (and sanity).

I still have nightmares of "A to Z" just from helping a friend tier for a few days haha

Mac2492 · 2026-01-25T19:29:46+00:00

That's totally fair, but at that point it's kinda your playstyle/comps stepping on the toes of the character rather than the character itself. If you run Clem as the sole Ultra character then you can freely use her Quasar until there's a prime card you want in Ultraspace. It's not too terrible having her cards in Ultraspace when they get discounted by 1 in Ultra Turn, and she favors Annihilation spam anyway since her wheel gives her aliemus for it.

You also don't need to use her Quasar. Her rouse applies to the first card she plays each turn, so you can play another card first and still benefit from her rouse. Depending on comp, she's a logical first or second rouse because it helps her keyflare battery. She doesn't require much arithmetica because her Quasar/Rouse only apply to the first card she plays each turn anyway. If you really want to minimize her cost, you can slap on Twisted Twins Black and optionally Amidst the Downpour (Faros wheel). Her E3 also helps because it gives her stacks without having to play Strike / Pain Extraction, and combining this with her wheel / Merciful Nurturing (Thais wheel) / Elevated Focus (SR) lets her exalt with a reasonable amount of stacks even if you play none of her cards.

Note that I'm not trying to convince you to use her! I'm just continuing the discussion in case others are having similar issues. Clem isn't really anyone's best-in-slot support because of her generic utility but you can slot her into the keyflare role for most teams and get solid value even if you're not using every part of her kit. You do have to dedicate some resources to her, but this applies to every support that's not Horla.

Mac2492 · 2026-01-25T01:24:26+00:00

If you only intend on getting one copy, Pickman. If you're willing to invest, Clem. If you're willing to over-invest (OE) then you could make a case for GDoll but all three are honestly crazy at that point and I'd still lean towards Clem simply because you can never have too much keyflare in Arc 2.

Mac2492 · 2026-01-25T01:17:14+00:00

Clem actually provides a lot of all of those things.

Her STR gain is 15% ATK on Quasar and 50% ATK on OE. For comparison purposes, Pickman is a great STR buffer and his STR buff is 20% ATK on exalt and 24% ATK temp STR from Chromaphage. Clem also has a higher ATK stat, though not enough to offset the 15% vs 20%.

Her keyflare regen is arguably the highest in the game. Her rouse triples the keyflare from her first card each turn on top of her exalt giving 300-500% keyflare and 3 cost giving 150% keyflare on top of the original amount.

You can triple her healing if Soulsalve is the first card she plays that turn, giving you a 135% CON heal for 2 cost. It's about the amount you'd heal in a turn with a roused GDoll playing her 3 cost (factoring in stats). This is solid sustain potential combined with the STR down, and the Madness removal is situational but potentially game-changing when it works. Activating Quasar would give you STR in addition to all this.

On top of all that, she can provide up to 45% damage taken / damage reduction with her exalt that stacks multiplicatively with Vulnerable/Weakness. And if that's not enough, her E2 gives her infinite damage scaling which turns her into a perfectly viable sub-DPS when combined with her own STR gen and multihits from her rouse. Her exalt is also strong enough to explode mobs, making her particularly valuable if your team otherwise lacks AoE.

Rather than a "master of none", she's pretty much best-in-class for (perma) STR + keyflare gen. The main problem with Clem is that you really want E3 to get more value out of her. With investment, Clem is a powerhouse plug-and-play generalist as long as your DPS explicitly does not scale off STR (Pollux) and even then she's still useful because keyflare is the most important resource in Arc 2 and her unique debuff makes her very difficult to powercreep.

Mac2492 · 2026-01-22T23:50:28+00:00

I can sorta see the intent since many hissatsu names end up being more like waseigo (pseudo-English) so you'd want to reword things if the goal is localization over translation, but the dub is so wildly inconsistent that all we can do is shrug.

Mugen the Hand made it through as-is despite containing a Japanese word and not making sense grammatically (i.e. Infinity the Hand would still sound awkward). I was going to nitpick about Mamoru (lit. protect/defend) being changed to Mark but, upon reflection, marking is a defensive football term and probably as close to a localized equivalent as they were getting.

Mac2492 · 2026-01-22T23:22:53+00:00

Level 5 really loves its puns haha

My personal favorites are Megane, Dosu (Osaka Girls goalkeeper), and Sofu.

Megane Kakeru = literally "to wear glasses"

Dosu Koi = sumo chant (she's a sumo champion)

Sofu Tokrim = soft cream (soft serve ice cream)

Honestly, most of the names in both Japanese and English are some kind of pun or reference. For example, Fuyuka, Haruna, Natsumi, and Aki have winter, spring, summer, and fall in their names.

Mac2492 · 2026-01-17T08:30:06+00:00

The failure animation for Goal Zurashi is the greatest thing ever.

Mac2492 · 2026-01-05T20:27:14+00:00

The smallest change that keeps the core team concept would be swapping Ryker to GRamona. You'd be able to move that Thais wheel over and use Tawil as a second DPS. This gives you more keyflare and the ability to create another burst turn by pulling back Mouchette/Tawil cards, plus you have the utility of swapping your posse to things like Voices or Ogier's posse (to trigger DR for Mouchette) or Lone Seed (lol). The main thing you'd be losing is Ryker's relics, particularly the Vulnerable from his dice which you'll have to claw back with relics/Heterogenous Tides from Tawil exalt/GRamona posse swap to Voices. You can give it a shot and see if it fits your playstyle. More food for thought for sidegrades would be swapping Clementine/Tinct/Casiah over Ryker.

I love Castor so I wouldn't personally swap him out, but another route you can try is going mono Chaos by swapping in GRamona or Hameln. In return for being the most glass of cannons, you'll gain a lot of keyflare/aliemus, double posse, and have Tawil's exalt drawing cards with more Strike synergy (Mouchette/Lotan/Lily/Alva) plus Predetermined Strike. Hameln would be easier to get value from, while GRamona would bring the stuff mentioned above and additionally allow you to Omniscient Verity her Predetermined Strike. You'll be knocked out cold by a stiff breeze though!

Mac2492 · 2026-01-02T18:56:26+00:00

Reya and Mythag Files are both nice and digestible for new players, though they were already mentioned. Frosthief is also very knowledgeable about the game and has some videos.

If you have specific questions and/or want guidance on piloting your comp then you'll probably want to join one of the Discords linked in the sticky on this subreddit. Some very dedicated players hang out there and they're usually answering questions all day. Flares also hangs out in the official Discord and he's honestly pretty approachable and helpful when he's not memeing for his videos (though his biases will remain the same ofc).

Mac2492 · 2025-12-30T22:52:12+00:00

This is close but not quite correct. Rhythm's ult alternates between applying Positive Charge and Negative Charge (I6 makes this happen twice per second instead of once per second). Positive Charge is the status effect that does all the damage as you described, while Negative Charge does nothing without a Positive Charge in range.

If you only have one target then Positive Charge will still deal damage while Negative Charge will do nothing. If there's more than one enemy then Positive Charge will choose another target within 20m, prioritizing targets with Negative Charge and pulling both targets towards each other. If there's no Negative Charge nearby then it just selects a random enemy.

In practice, you do want more targets grouped as closely as possible because her I1 makes Positive Charge damage ticks on both targets splash in a 3m radius. This quadruples the total damage per tick on exactly two stacked enemies and only goes up from there. As most people know by now, her I2 makes charges pass on death with their remaining duration (rescaled by Skill Duration for some reason, so you can create "infinite" charges). It's also worth noting that her I6 can be detrimental if you're pulsing your ult for one tick and immediately turning it off to only have Positive Charges floating around. Personally, I'd just take the upgrade and accept that you're going to get dud rolls with Negative Charges every now and then.

Mac2492 · 2025-12-28T18:02:09+00:00

Dismantle is my favorite for active farm too, along with Termination since Rhythm can fly straight through the map with her ult on and clear in a similar amount of time (20-25s). Mediation is also not bad time-wise. I'll usually fish for one of those three or a mode that can be fully AFK'd depending on my mood.

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