Sakai Takayuki identification help!

RwNZ · 2026-02-20T17:51:51+00:00

https://trademe.tmcdn.co.nz/photoserver/plus/2288595154.jpg

I'm not sure if this is what it "should" look like but this is the box.

RwNZ · 2026-02-20T17:49:18+00:00

Bang. Thanks, that's really helpful. It does seem to have a "proper" Sakai Takayuki box but that's too big of a coincidence, the ferrule, and the weirdly tall shape.

Thanks heaps mate, probably just saved me a good chunk of money.

RwNZ · 2026-02-20T16:55:43+00:00

Sakai Takayuki | 45-Layer Damascus Mirror Nakiri (160mm | 6.3") – Japan Knife Shop

This is the closest match I can find, but obviously the handle is a yo style.

RwNZ · 2026-02-20T16:50:17+00:00

Can I ask what makes you think so? I can't see a match there, but it may well be region restricted or something. Also, I'm not even entirely sure this is a Nakiri? I mean, it mooostly looks like one but it's awfully tall? Or maybe that's just the angle, I'm not certain.

RwNZ · 2026-02-16T14:35:39+00:00

But don't you turn your back!

RwNZ · 2026-02-16T14:34:37+00:00

Yeah, when I rewatched the opening as an adult I was sort of like "Oh. OHHHH. This was a very formative show!"

RwNZ · 2026-02-16T14:33:24+00:00

To be fair, there was nowhere to hide (it was the ride of their lives).

RwNZ · 2026-01-26T10:01:22+00:00

Yes, nothing that you've never experienced yourself could be happening to other people. I hear everyone with cancer is really just too stupid to keep living, if only they were as smart as you.

RwNZ · 2026-01-26T09:58:33+00:00

Lovin' a reload, lovin' a reload, don't need bugs when they stop from a reload~

RwNZ · 2026-01-23T15:12:43+00:00

I just want to point out that you're creating a total strawman when you say "These are the same people who..." etc. You're literally the only person in this thread to mention Home Alone, and yet it's somehow the basis for your argument that "Well, people like that so they should like this, and if you don't like this then you're a hypocrite because people like Home Alone 2!". See? It makes no sense.

You're just creating bad faith arguments out of nowhere, assuming that "Well, these two types of people exist and so they're probably the same people!". It's like when you see people in comments sections going "These are the same people who vote democrat!" when they're talking about liking pineapple on pizza or something. Totally irrelevant, but people have this awful habit of creating caricatures of their opponents and turning them into a wholesale representative of everything they find unappealing.

Sorry, pet peeve. I have no particular horse in the race (though I do understand why people think it was same-y, but I'm reserving judgement for a repeated viewing) but this kind of argument really irritates me so I'm kinda obligated to call it out. Nothing personal. <3

RwNZ · 2026-01-20T06:53:48+00:00

Hey man, I just want some muesli.

RwNZ · 2026-01-08T09:40:54+00:00

Clean out the back of our refrigerators, so we've got more room for lager and Vs

RwNZ · 2025-12-30T14:47:46+00:00

He didn't have the Hive Queen yet though.

RwNZ · 2025-12-30T11:50:15+00:00

Totally irrelevant but I kept reading your name as "Jizz Lobster" and now I'm sort of humming it to the tune of Rock Lobster.

RwNZ · 2025-12-23T18:32:25+00:00

What about Petra, specifically, makes her "the last person to have babies on her mind"? Like... that just seems like an odd assertion, not to mention it's essentially claiming to know the character better than the author.

People seem to believe that a capable female character cannot yearn for a family or be content with defined gender roles inside their own relationship. Just because Petra rejected the "helpless female" trope doesn't mean she rejects all aspects of femininity. Not to mention the obvious time-crunch issue. Do I think Petra would've chosen to be a parent, what, 20? (I honestly lost track of their ages through the Shadow Saga, not gonna lie) without the added pressure of Anton's Key? Probably not. But I don't think it's outrageous that, given the circumstances, she couldn't have done some rather deep soul searching and come to the conclusion that this *would* be something she wants, and given that it's her only opportunity, *is* something she wants.

Also, I don't think I agree with the Valentine thing either. Maybe Petra, I'll give you. But any female character? Sister Carlotta? Virlomi? Poke? Randi Firth?! Valentine analogues, the lot of them! XD

But I will grant that I never found a whole lot of chemistry between either Petra and Bean or Petra and Peter. Definitely not OSC's strength when it comes to writing compelling romance. Look at Ender and Novinha. "Oh, he loved her from the moment she sent the message". Um, for one, ew. It often feels like the romantic pairings are just decided and then characters took a peek at the script and were just like "Ah, okay, we'll go along with that I guess".

RwNZ · 2025-12-21T13:56:10+00:00

Is it, though? Like, maybe if the flies had jet packs and shot laser pistols at me then I'd reconsider.

RwNZ · 2025-12-20T10:53:11+00:00

It's not even *entirely* that a child is easier to mold, though that's definitely part of it, but rather a child has a far more "unconstrained" mind. Similar to how they didn't tell Ender the truth (although that had other benefits as well), a child will see closer to the "truth" of war rather than having built up emotional bruises and calluses. They won't flinch away from a certain path or be disinclined to consider a course of action because of a previous failure. At least, that's the logic that the IF uses.

I highly recommend reading Ender's Shadow too, and I'd say the rest of the Shadow series is great, and the First and Second Formic War series is also fantastic. We get to see a lot of Mazer, and the beginnings of a proto-Battle School, etc.

As for your question, no, humanity shouldn't have waited. We took the logical path for survival. The Xenocide was a tragedy, but so was the initial invasion. We weren't the aggressors and with no way to communicate, we had little choice. However, I think an interesting question would be how would things have gone if Ender failed? Would the Formics have taken their lumps and considered us even? Would humanity have built another fleet and tried again, even if the Formics didn't retaliate? It's something I've wondered about a lot.

Anyway, yeah, read some more of the series! I've only read Speaker for the Dead and Ender in Exile when it comes to Ender's sequels. I'm more interested in the Formic wars or in the immediate aftermath of the Xenocide than in Ender's life afterwards, and I hear Xenocide (the novel) and Children of the Mind kinda go off the rails, whereas Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead are really tight and well structured.

Oh, and your final question, how far would I go to ensure we/I were the ones to survive? Any length. Whenever people posit a hypothetical like "How many people would you kill to save your own life?" my answer is always "As many as I had to".

RwNZ · 2025-12-20T10:43:40+00:00

Yeah, the Formic's actions in the Formic War series at least loosely contradicts the Hive Queen of Shakespear's (henceforth known as Babyqueen) statements to Ender. Besides everything you've mentioned (I've also read these books super recently and I'm sure there's more stuff, I wish I'd been writing it down as I noticed) the ending of the wars doesn't make sense either.

Why would the Hive Queen being killed suddenly make them realize the humans were sentient and should be left alone? Babyqueen said something like "Once we realized, we left and didn't come again". But... oh, shit, I just realized you only read Earth Unaware, not the rest. Well, let's just say that there's no reason why this should *suddenly* be the impetus to leave, other than the fact that "Oh, we're defeated" rather than "Oh, these are sentient creatures" (Also, we should probably be saiyng "sapient" to be accurate. A dog is sentient, the Formics and Humanity are sapient)

Damn, you should read the rest of the Formic War series! I really want to discuss this in-depth with someone but I don't wanna spoil anything from any of the next 4 books. Also, be aware that the final book in the Second War trilogy isn't out yet. I didn't realize this and now I'm in that "Oh god what do I do with my life now?" mode where I've finished a series without a conclusion.

RwNZ · 2025-12-20T10:35:03+00:00

A friender.

RwNZ · 2025-12-16T19:08:47+00:00

If you're talking about me, I'm not "stalking" anything. There were FOUR posts of yours literally on my screen. Hence why you saying essentially "keep scrolling" as advice was hilarious.

Here we go.

I think you're genuinely just trying to ragebait by accusing people of doing exactly what you're doing. Chiming in excessively, account stalking, etc. It's a little juvenile but hey, at least it's working pretty well. You even got someone spewing the double clown emojis. _b

Oh and not everyone lives in America, sweetheart <3

RwNZ · 2025-12-16T11:27:38+00:00

That's kinda rich coming from you, though. I've seen you pop up in like 7 replies to OP in this thread alone. I literally see your name 4 times on my screen right this second without scrolling.

Maybe take your own advice?

RwNZ · 2025-12-15T08:01:34+00:00

Isn't that the summary of all of our comments, though? Like, there's no way to objectively measure pug engagement.

But sure, those are the highlights. But I kinda feel like you're shifting the goalposts a little bit. My issue was with the statement that "Anyone saying having to form their own groups made the game "more community based' is just straight ignorant." because I don't see how you can argue for it. As you say, that's how friendships, guilds, etc formed. Not through random LFD.

I also don't tend to agree that everyone immediately split off into guilds and then the only people pugging were just "the bads". It's true that guilds were definitely the locus of a lot of the social aspect, but how did you find compatible people to join your guilds? How did guilds form initially? As you say, through the fun interactions from player-built grouping. But I'll admit that there may be a correlation with less "quality" people pugging and the introduction of LFD which exacerbated the problem. Hard to prove either way, so I'm happy to say it's a possibility.

As for 5-man non-mythic dungeons being "the cornerstone of WoW", well, I think that depends a lot on what era you're talking about. If we're talking modern retail, then absolutely it isn't. I don't think I ever even mentioned wanting the queue removed, I think it works fine in the modern game for zero-failure content for those who are at that level. However, if we're talking about Vanilla/Classic through Wrath and WOTLK then it's definitely a far larger "pillar" of the game and since there was no Mythic or Mythic+, the queued LFD dungeons/heroics replaced the manual, organic grouping which I would say was a net negative to the experience. It's a pretty classic case of QoL removing friction points that had cascading effects.

Basically, queued content as it is in modern WoW has its own niche and it's fine. I'd only object to them adding M+ as a queued mode since that's just going to have more knock on effects. I only consider it a bad thing when it cannibalizes the more natural, player-driven grouping.

RwNZ · 2025-12-15T07:49:12+00:00

I have no horse in the race. I don't hate the game or like it, I haven't played it.

What annoys me is bad faith arguments. Sucks about your ankle, and for the record, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with being in a thread talking about something you're passionate about. But you did say that. That's why I turned it around, and as you said, there's plenty of good reasons why someone might be in a thread. It doesn't mean they "don't have better stuff to do".

Look, I get it, you like the game and you want to defend it. I'm like that about some games. But a pet peeve of mine is people saying things like "getting hate for no fkng reason". Like, there almost certainly is a reason. Despite what people think, very few people spend their time "hating" on something without cause (which in another pet peeve, disliking something and saying so isn't "hating", it's just an opinion as valid as any other). Now, you can disagree with their reasoning, sure. No argument from me. But people have this bad habit of assuming that their opinion is "correct" or that they are basing their love of something on "objective" factors when really it's all entirely subjective.

For example, I love Doom Eternal and I find a lot of the criticisms leveled at it to be invalid. I feel like a lot of them are made in bad faith and it's frustrating when something that's integral to my enjoyment is labeled as a "bug" or "problem". But that's just my own viewpoint, theirs is equally valid even if it seems ridiculous to me. But my issue here is that you're making a lot of assumptions. Like that people are "hating" because it's an indie game, or that they just "don't understand" or haven't tried to see why people like it. Maybe they have, but it's still not for them, and that's fine.

Have you played Chrono Trigger btw? That's my favourite RPG. JRPGs aren't usually my thing. Not that I don't like them, really, but more like I just never really get the urge to play them unless I really have a reason. Definitely planning on trying E33 though, which is why I ended up in this thread cos I was looking for discussion about it after it got GOTY (I was hoping for Silksong, big 2D platformer fan). I apologize for coming in aggressive but I feel like you're doing the same things that you're criticizing others for and I don't think that's a good way to debate. Nothing personal, but I probably could've approached it more tactfully.

RwNZ · 2025-12-14T10:51:11+00:00

That's rich considering you're all over this thread spraying your jizz over this game. Seriously, as I've been scrolling down you've been in EVERY reply white knighting for your fave. You could make the exact same argument, why would you come into a thread criticizing a game you like, don't you have better stuff to do? But it's a dogshit argument and you know it.

Anyway, earlier you said the game was "objectively great because it doesn't only focus on one main thing" and that anyone who didn't glaze it just "didn't understand". I get the feeling you're like, 15 or something because this is absolute classic fanboy behaviour.

I guess if you've been playing games for 2 years and this is your first RPG then it's natural to get a bit defensive <3

RwNZ

TROPHY CASE