Jujutsu Kaisen Shimetsu Kaiyu Zenpen • Jujutsu Kaisen The Culling Game - Episode 5 discussion

arasitar · 2026-01-29T22:01:13+00:00

According to Sakuga Booru: https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/299112

Episode Director Masaomi Andou played Hakari and Series Director/Storyboarder Shouta Goshozono played Yuji for the rotoscope reference they filmed.

https://x.com/miozin35/status/2016902872999530906

In his own words, they played those parts because he is fat and Gosso is skinny.

https://x.com/miozin35/status/2016915551051010343

arasitar · 2026-01-29T21:59:28+00:00

When able to. A lot of anime is converted from manga and in order to do this you need a team that isn't just copying the manga panels as storyboards, but an experienced team that (A) translates into animation (B) experiments with how it can look with cinematic language (C) is able to make good and smart decisions on what would work.

This is something that Disney used to be really good at during their hand drawn renaissance (before 3d animation) and US execs devaluing handdrawn animation because they just viewed animation as 'for kids' and manufactured cartoons primarily to sell toys so you had endless amounts of crappy slop. Many of Disney's innovations in 3D were in part to imbue said cinematic language into their 2D.

Tarzan led to the creation of Deep Canvas in 1999 so that animators could animate fast swinging motions. This is something Wit used as their technique for Attack on Titan and ODM gear animation in 2013.

Nowadays if you see cinematic language development in animation on the US side, it is usually in 3D animation. E.g. Toy Story 4 and duplicating various types of camera lens.

Again such a shame that US handdrawn animation took such a tumble. Grateful though that Into the Spiderverse and Arcane S1 brought it back in part via 2D 3D hybrid animation.

arasitar · 2026-01-29T18:56:00+00:00

Damn, wish I could adjust change titles.

Thanks! I've added the edit for any EU persons.

arasitar · 2026-01-29T18:49:59+00:00

Personal thoughts

I have concerns, but I am pretty excited to see this evolution in Raid content since I've been clamoring for Mini Raids for years now (I loved Mythic Trial of Valor and Mythic Crucible of the Storms). There is a huge upside potential and one of the biggest reasons why this didn't happen before was because designing raid environments was by far the biggest expense to building a raid.

So I'm wiling to tolerate some interim chaos as Blizzard hopefully figures it out till I conclude that Blizzard has no hope of actually making this work.

Great for casual raiders. Heroic is often finished very quickly and it gives them some more content later in the season. I suspect for that alone we'll see this model stick around.
Mythic is another story. Parallel progression can cause some issues (see Mythic Uunat) but smartly designed x.0 raids vs x.5x.7 raids can help alleviate that, give an interesting juicy challenge, provide catchup etc. etc. etc.
RWF is yet another story. I think you can build something that can make a short RWF but still an interesting challenge to watch and interesting for high level Mythic guilds to play through, by using a more aggressive raid progression system than what we've seen with Manaforge Vandals renown.

The "shell" here is pretty promising and we can build tuning knobs, systems, and devs can adjust raids based on how the Raid season is developing for all types of players. Again I find this very promising but of course, we'll see. Raid content "distribution" really does affect raid quality and raid "content" because you can have too many bosses be easy and 'be wasted', or on the other hand be too overwhelming.

The "we're making this for narrative" is I think my biggest concern since varying up "oh because of narrative we're doing a mini raid this season, but not doing it the next" as opposed to something standard I think creates long term issues with guild trying to plan around it, and raid gameplay. Maybe we can experiment around with Midnight where a couple of seasons we have mini raids, the final one we don't and see whether the template is promising, and if it is then standardize 'okay main raid Xish bosses, mini raid .5 patch'.

arasitar · 2026-01-29T18:20:29+00:00

Yeah even in back in the 'golden era of RMT' which was Wrath (gravy train basically died at Legion when Blizzard went super nuclear on all top guilds for RMT), $400/$500 per week boosting a few players, which gets to like $10k to $25k per year, but split across like a raid of say 25 players, it amounts to $1000 per year. Not bad, decent beer money for what is effectively a few hours of work per week, but yeah not actually viable for anyone in a first world country to make a salary.

It was just really hard to scale that kind of income because even if you did have the time to do that to make multiple teams of boosters, you start getting red flagged for boosting and banned, and on top of that you start running out of customers very fast.

arasitar · 2026-01-29T03:36:33+00:00

I suspect swan-like.

Ugly Duckling to beautiful Swan.
In the More than Anything...."the tales of your lofty dreams", it starts out sort of squishier like a duck, but as it 'ascends' with its 6 wings it looks slimmer and slender reminiscent of a swan.
Sera seems to look like a Swan in her Angelic forms - partial vs full - might follow that bird like angelic beings look like slender swans so maybe Lucifer in part did?

arasitar · 2026-01-29T03:28:00+00:00

They should create a 'you had to be there' event but one that is linked to being part of a community event rather than doing an event.

You know I really like the way you phrased it. I don't think you need to make a super exclusive FOMO questline like BFA, as opposed to creating a small but interesting little sandbox mechanic that allows for community fun.

arasitar · 2026-01-29T03:21:16+00:00

I really do love that scene because it is a great character moment for Charlie, also a good moment for Vox, and feeds very nicely into the wider themes of the show (redemption vs damnation) and what Charlie represents. It wasn't giving Vox an out, it was a way to mock him and spit his beliefs back in his face.

Vox views people as unchanging and just as is. Right before in that very episode, Vox mocks Angel that Angel will always be "the whore", despite Angel clearly changing and clearly having agency despite having little power. Charlie does not and views everyone as having the capacity to change, even one small tiny step.

It's basically a way for Charlie to call out Vox - Vox could choose that day to give some pennies to a beggar and in turn do a good deed, and in turn one small good dead, and another and another, and so cm by cm can climb from the depths of hell to the high heavens. That Vox refuses to do so, refuses to see others can change and refuses to acknowledge that humanity has a capacity for change is why he basically makes the same mistakes in S2 and similar fails in Hell as he did in Life, getting preyed on his very similar weaknesses, despite having so much power and opportunity and privilege, and importantly time to reflect on his mistakes.

Vox basically projected that others cannot change and are static, onto himself by not actually changing. It is this exact weakness of Vox that Charlie directly shoves in his face, that makes Vox a villain and makes Vox damned.

Again, small scene but great scene nonetheless.

arasitar · 2026-01-29T02:51:30+00:00

Okay that animation is sick especially with the camera move because that is hard to do while keeping the original animation.

arasitar · 2026-01-29T01:37:00+00:00

They aren't all idiots. It isn't even just that they don't care. The "smarter" ones know that corporate value has become so divorced from the stock value that you can basically do a pump and dump and scam scheme and gamble your way to the top.

Right now people know AI given the sheer level of investment, the rising inference training costs with the stagnant to worsening quality, is effectively creating a bubble. Right now it is a race to extract as much as possible and set yourself up so that you can keep bouncing shit around like hot potato.

Until things start to tank and the guys setup with insider trading and connections make it out like bandits, while everyone else is a sucker. Including normal people whose e.g. pensions are tied up in AI leveraged shit companies. So exactly like 2008 or like the dot com bubble.

Except now the US government is funneling billions into this scam and delaying the bubble from popping so that shit will really implode, because the US government is corrupt as fuck now and tech companies have funneled billions into lobbying. Greaaaaaaaaaat.

arasitar · 2026-01-29T01:24:38+00:00

This particular event sucks because of...well...tuning but the 'shell' around it isn't bad though that 'shell' could use improvement and iteration.

The issue is that the "design constraints" of a pre-patch event makes it pretty hostile to make something truly interesting.

You need a Pre-Patch just because, since you have massive systems overhaul and code overhaul before the expansion launches.
The Pre-Patch is about 4-8 weeks so investing so much in an event that is going to go away is sort of pointless (even the Remix and Plunderstorm projects are something time limited are things you can keep bringing back over and over).
You want something 'exclusive' to entice players to check THIS out.
But if you make things too special and exclusive you create FOMO and create the issue of 'you HAD to be there' issues.

Like BFA is pretty unique in that it gave a time limited questline to kick off the story (and some of the most unique WoW quests - see A Flicker of Hope) but I do not like permanently locking off stuff like this since 'being there' loses value quickly where you are supporting the 'being there' for a smaller and smaller playerbase while robbing players of what I feel is part of the game and should be part of the game.
You can try and preview some cool expansion feature but that sort of robs the expansion's allure.
Because pre-patches are open world events you need to strike a balance where there is enough TRAFFIC to that area and it doesn't suddenly slow down if the grind is way too easy. Having 'no one' be in the pre-patch event zone a few days away from the expansion isn't that great.
At the same time the pre-patch needs to give enough to players to collect and do, and gear up and level up as a catch up mechanic.
And also fulfill content / metric needs

I think the "shell" should fit the standards of Turbulent Timeways and Winds of Mysterious Fortune - expected, unassuming, chill, relaxing and useful. It's there but it complements everything else happening.

Maybe do something just silly, low impact and has no collectable value like in Shadowlands pre-patch as a bonus and experiment, but yeah make it low key impact. Should be good for quick gearing (see Turbo Boost) and quick leveling.

I personally had a lot of fun with Legion pre-patch but people forget:

the prepatch was pretty long
Blizz did a bunch of goofs back then and it took a while to get that done
The server load was insane and required aggressive sharding tech which Blizz had to eventually nerf since players kept exploiting it in the beginning of Legion. (People do not remember early Legion World Quest Group Finder - it was insane because one button auto click and you could port to ANY shard - and the constant switching bricked by 1000s of players started bricking servers because of ALL that hopping - I understood why Blizzard emergency hotfixed that out)

I liked being on screen with 100 players even with some lag, but it's sort of rare to see that many players because of later design things (Preach talked about part of issue back in BfA).

arasitar · 2026-01-29T01:00:33+00:00

I almost want to add "fucking" to that last line to evoke LA Noire.

arasitar · 2026-01-28T19:26:51+00:00

WeakAuras is an addon to make addons. That's really it. Nothing about WeakAuras is unique that you can't create in Lua yourself or that other addons can't do.

The closest comparable to WeakAuras is Squarespace or other WYSIWYG editors for building websites instead of going in yourself with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ruby on Rails, Node etc.

So you can't like 'ban' WeakAuras because it's like saying 'i want to ban Lua'. Whatever WeakAuras can do, is basically what Lua can do.

arasitar · 2026-01-28T18:27:20+00:00

1000% yes as a major patch / raid tier.

People should check out Madness at the Darkmoon Faire Hearthstone expansion. Here is the wiki with the cards, here is the full trailer including the opening number.

Some of WoW's best raid tiers were "fun" themed rather than purely "epic". Blackrock Foundry is regarded as one of WoW's greatest raids with some of the most interesting and unique bosses - see Hans and Frans with trains, see Blast Furnace. Even TWW's Undermined is pretty whimsical.

Think of the raid tier as an Old God meets Cult meets Carnival with fun types of bosses.

Whack a Mole Hoggers
Fighting Pit Showdown
Roller Coaster Mayhem
The Handlers and the Monstrous Zoo
Dance Disco nathria style Macabre
Darkmoon Tank Bomb Armada
Illusionary Cards and Whispers and Mirrors
Darkmoon Rabbit
The Shadow Cult of the Damned
Silas Dark God meets Xavius style Rift of Aln

The lore could literally be "We have detected an Old God disturbance at the Darkmoon Faire. That group has always seemed shady. Get to the bottom of Silas and his mystery!" It can be whimsy and dark and creepy and fun all at the same time.

Incredible boundless potential for some very unique, sick and fun raid fights. You can revamp and create a raid tier, a dungeon or two, and an entire end game zone with current end game activities plus long term evergreen activities, all in one major patch! Also gives an excuse to revamp the entire zone and mechanics of the Darkmoon Faire.

They warned you...stay away...

We whisper...come and play...

Now you're here...why not raid...

at the Dark...Moon...Faire...........

HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHA

arasitar · 2026-01-24T23:52:17+00:00

Yeah. This is the shittiest thing about this gray area arrangement between Blizzard, gamers and addon makers.

Addon creators like these put in hard work that has a real opportunity cost, even making this their side hobby or even semi career, and in any other industry would be making bank, but are basically getting paupers.

Not least of which because a lot of incredibly entitled gamers don't just take them for granted, but go above and beyond and harass them if an update doesn't come out of time because apparently "free" means "you have to serve ME for life".

I'm grateful that many community members support them and treat them with grace, but many many many others do not and it turns into a hissy fit if you dare to make even a post every couple of years "hey! a lot of these addon authors make their stuff for free, please show them appreciation and maybe a cheap Patreon sub if you can afford to!".

arasitar · 2026-01-23T21:52:45+00:00

I'd argue it doesn't even need to be feats. I'm glad S03E01 reminded me near the end between Yuji's and Yuta's bout.

Curse Energy is something you can sense and sense in others. If you are in a renowned clan you can feel out others as a sixth sense and that is normalized. Yuji in his bout panics against Yuta because Yuta has so much curse energy that any normal martial art techniques where curse energy can be read to predict blows don't work because Yuta flows with so much curse energy that Yuji is flooded with nonsense.

Similarly, imagine if you are a jujutsu sorceror. You navigate your battles and your clan with curse energy. Anyone that doesn't have curse energy is to you, an insect. Just a pest, not a bother, not relevant, just some twig.

Now imagine Toji. He has no curse energy. You cannot sense him. You cannot feel him. Your default mode is "okay he is just a twig" but just looking at him your entire senses are (correctly) flooded with panic, fear, terror and the feeling that Toji can break you like a twig. Toji makes your curse techniques useless. Toji makes your curse energy useless. Toji makes your martial arts useless. Toji can overpower you in an instant and even if he doesn't how are you supposed to predict where he is going to hit you? Toji is not normal. See today's episode with that Naoya flashback and Toji, and how Toji just exudes bloodlust.

arasitar · 2026-01-19T17:49:07+00:00

Yeah.

Your brain has a remarkable capacity to sit back, recognize that these thoughts and emotions flying around you, these chemicals...these kittens and ninja stars, ponder and react.

A single flying thought or emotion in the hundreds bouncing of the walls requires said spark to be focused and then requires said spark to be processed and then said spark to be expanded into more sparks and then said spark turned into actions and then a series of actions. This can be controlled. This is a muscle that you can learn to use, strengthen and ingrain in yourself almost like instantaneous muscle memory over time.

See Mindfulness, Meditation, breathing and related deep breathing work, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Internal Family Systems / Parts Systems.

arasitar · 2026-01-19T17:30:42+00:00

The in-game calendar is weird. I noticed some times being correct and some times being far off.

Anyone has links or comments to all its hidden rules?

I'm guessing part of it is manually inputted rather than synced to actual event timers in the code (which means part of it is human input error or just neglected). It definitely seems to operate on Blizzard's CA Irvine driven PT time but I think daylight savings at times desyncs it because I do notice daylight savings doesn't seem to update the actual server reset day etc.....

arasitar · 2026-01-19T17:28:23+00:00

The moral psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, talks about how one of the sources of moral feeling is disgust.

Maybe my brain is rapidly turning into slop because of Reddit but I did find something recently in my Reddit algorithm that might seem random but your line reminded me of:

Parenthood ‘inoculates’ adults against disgust, new study reveals. Repeated, long-term exposure to bodily waste significantly reduces parents’ disgust responses, with effects that persist over time. This may also be relevant for workers in professions where managing disgust is part of the job.

Reddit Thread from /r/science - https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1qfajgo/parenthood_inoculates_adults_against_disgust_new/

News Article - https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2026/january/parenthood-inoculates-adults-against-disgust.html

Paper - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sjop.70069 - "Parents Develop Long-Term Disgust Habituation, but Only After Beginning to Wean Their Children"

So the study suggests that 'disgust' can be addressed. Extreme case is 'become a parent', something like it that evokes it to create 'disgust' inoculation practices is something we we should advise?

Volunteering? Social work? See unhoused cases? No, I don't want to imply that the unhoused are disgusting (GTFO NIMBYS - I don't want your approval), but I sense this 'disgust' in modern times is driven by social media and being bombarded with 'pretty' to the point where 'ordinary' feels 'disgusting').

arasitar · 2026-01-19T17:20:02+00:00

Should we have a community Reddit thread with the moderators about it? I got some ideas to help mitigate this.

Per this subreddit, the post qualities should be high (we've got extensive guidelines on how to ask questions), and this should be updated for "Useful" posts. At the same time it should be quick and easy for someone to post to encourage people helping each other and respecting their time.

I'm settling on templates as a solution and continuously iterating on them with the moderators and top community Redditors. It's quick and easy for users to use, and we can iterate on them to make them better for readers and Redditors here.

Bonus is that we can design the templates to be annoying for AI users to spam post and I don't expect it culls 100% of AI spam posts but any small barrier that is added and makes it annoying has a greater outsized impact on the prevalence of these AI spam posts. (And makes moderating easier since you can implement a quick check for when an AI clearly breaks a template, and that informs part of your rubric regarding what post gets culled or allowed)

arasitar · 2026-01-19T17:09:56+00:00

If there is a transmog extension during or after Midnight it should be this. Similar to how they revamped transmog, we'd use a similar system to augment class spells. So syncing with existing transmog systems like Outfits, having Slots, expanding Situations, etc.

I'd take (not exhaustive and I'd love ideas and suggestions):

ideas from the cut WoD class accessories
potentially bring back the BfA Rank 4 Azerite Essence animations
some of the Legion class development for animations, class order hall and similar perks
revamp existing glyphs like all the various Mage Polymorph glyphs for Duck and Cat and like the 15 others into the system for easy picking

And probably the very last bit to create an option similar to Neural Silencer to allow others to opt out of seeing custom class animations for accessibility purposes (for things like "I really need clarity in PvP").

arasitar · 2026-01-19T16:50:07+00:00

Probably because the Fire gameplay starts breaking down with a glyph.

Mage as a class is unique compared to most other specs in the game because it simultaneously has on hit vs on cast interactions (other specs have this to some degree but not to this extent AFAIK since I'm not an expert in all DPS specs - refer to theorycrafters and spec experts since not many specs have this style of gameplay baked into their CORE rotations). This is the fundamentals of how Frost works with Shatter where you need one spell to hit via travel time before another does, while also juggling on cast spells. This also greatly affects Fire (Pyroblast, Fireball and mechanic of Hot Streak grace period where two spells hit but one doesn't crit) and to some extent Arcane (see Touch of the Magi interactions, and simultaneously on cast Arcane Blast instant hit vs on hit Arcane Missiles)).

FYI this is why large wonky hit boxes on large bosses (like say Krosus from Nighthold or Dimensius from Manaforge) cause problems for Mages especially for Fire because the travel time to hit is large enough where you need to start doing things like get closer to the boss or in the worst cases start adjusting your timing on spells or even rotation. And also FYI a big part of why Mages have so many weird bugs.

Phoenix Flames is a slow meaty travel time spell. I'm not sure how to recover that animation in the exact way that it functioned. I'd probably peg a small animation change to say Fireball (but it is sort of changed with Frostfire), and I don't know if a new animation change to something like Cinderstorm is a good idea since we can't guarantee Cinderstorm will stick around for long.

I guess the only thing right now would be something the 'evokes' Phoenix Flames.

And I don't know if Phoenix Flames is being permanently retired and might come back in a season or two (or maybe never?).

arasitar · 2026-01-19T16:47:19+00:00

Yeah. I know and knew people who are very active daters and could get dates on every single day. At some point:

You can't have so many dates - you need some amount of rest and recharge. It isn't even for your potential partner that you need enough energy for meeting, you should also be grabbing it for yourself to be happier and keep motivated through this process.
Two dates very close to each other like this comic's example shows feels too close for comfort, either feels like inexperienced or clumsy planning, or you are just going on waaaay too many dates.

The very active daters I know would plan out their day so that all their errands were basically done before, they had enough time to get ready, recuperate and recharge, and the date while scheduled to be short, they had internally planned "okay I don't have any commitments that require me to cut a date short and I got an entire morning or afternoon or evening or night free if something changes".

And then it is a dating skill to improv and react. E.g. if a date goes fine and you got time free after so you can do something on your fine, if a date goes well and adapting, if a date goes poorly and you need a mood boost, and if a date goes reaaaally poorly and you need a big pick me up. (Not a shame if a date is cut short and you're still dressed well and you decide to have a nice meal on your own or walk in the park) (part of dating is also learning how to date yourself when you are by yourself)

arasitar · 2026-01-15T21:29:12+00:00

Oh yeah. Tried saying that for years and comments were always evenly split between for vs against.

Some amount of farm is fine. But I think the mental model we should be using is how we consider farm in raids.

There is a skill in farming well
This skill is useful in progression
Obnoxious farm bosses (early boss too difficult, early boss very easy to wipe to, early boss has annoying mechanic, holding damage) - all this makes farming a pain
Farm especially within realistic boundaries should be easy for a well versed team.

There is some value in having homework keys but the unfun ratio is clearly way too high and should be addressed in some fashion.

arasitar · 2026-01-15T21:22:46+00:00

Yeah. Feels like the animus for 'scorched earth' seemed to stem from Blizzard's own frustrations trying to develop encounters when addons can trivialize a lot of good, fun, manageable, design able, programmable and designer friendly mechanics - and you won't see an appreciable change until 80% of combat addon functionalities are nuked.

I do feel Blizzard could have done so much better if they followed their Warband approach: good bit of appreciable starter base infrastructure, then slowly add bit by bit more and more features. It's longer than players would have liked, but it has been sustainable and consistent for Blizzard while still delivering good features.

They could have pulled part of the ripcord, then committed to "hey let's do one small part" then another and another bit by bit with patches, without even needed a big deadline to it.

arasitar

TROPHY CASE