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  • Hello! Project composer Shō Hoshibe splits fans — 5ch: ‘He’s got no talent for lyrics’

    A thread has popped up on 5ch’s “Hello! Project” board about songwriter-composer Shō Hoshibe, who has written numerous Hello! Project songs for groups like Morning Musume。’23 and Angerme.

    Harsh takes like “he always hits a passing grade but has no signature hit” and “he has no talent for lyrics” clashed with defenders saying “he’s genuinely talented” and “‘Taikibansei’ was a crucial song that opened the post-Tsunku era” — the debate even spiraled into comparing view counts between songs.

    1AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:49
    Hello! Project songs Shō Hoshibe has written lyrics for since 2022
    Wake-up Call ~Mezameru Toki~ (Morning Musume。'23)
    Piece of Peace ~Shiawase no Puzzle~ (Angerme)
    3AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:53
    Love Misery and Positive Program (suko = net slang for 'I love this')
    5AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:56
    Re: #2
    HANAKIN isn't on there!
    6AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:56
    He always delivers a passing grade, but he's got no signature hit.
    7AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:57
    Re: #6
    The girl with glasses
    15AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:08
    Re: #6
    That "passing grade" rating is way too generous. I'm not saying everything he's made is trash, but because of this guy, Hello! Project was in serious decline before 'Misery.'
    9AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:00
    I loved it when he used to do music theory videos on YouTube, but he stopped.
    10AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:01
    If anything, most of his best-known work is from before 2022.
    11AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:02
    I wish they'd make him exclusive to BEYOOOOONDS.
    An earnest wish from Hello! Project fans.
    12AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:05
    It's from 2018, but 'Do Dance' really stands out.
    Glad Hikaruu performed it at Maa's live show.
    13AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:06
    He has no talent for lyrics.
    But he's written plenty of good songs.
    14AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:07
    Calling it 'music theory,' but what Hoshibe actually talks about is about the level of a beginner's chord-composition book.
    Made me realize he barely understands arrangement theory.
    20AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:10
    Re: #14
    Feels like one of those self-proclaimed musicians desperately talking down to him just because they're older.
    22AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:12
    That's just some old guy losing it because he can't bring himself to admit it.
    27AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:19
    Hoshibe can't even write basic two-voice counterpoint well — he genuinely lacks arrangement skill.
    You can see it if you compare it with Noimii's 'Ai wo Kudasaimase,' which is in the same gothic style as 'Misery.'
    In Noimii's song, the vocal melody and the string line differ but stay well balanced together.
    In Hoshibe's, only the vocal melody stands out,
    which makes it feel cheap as gothic music.
    30AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:22
    Re: #27
    That Noimii song flopped hard, it's a garbage track.
    32AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:24
    Re: #30
    A song with 10 million views isn't what I'd call a flop.
    34AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:24
    Re: #32
    On THE FIRST TAKE it's only a tenth of that, though.
    33AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:24
    He's got more talent than Takui, at least.
    As a melody-maker, if he just had some more individuality, the possibilities would really open up.
    38AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:27
    Re: #33
    Takui's still landed more hits than him, though.
    36AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:26
    Re: #34
    Even so,
    it hit a million views in three weeks.
    That's not a flop.
    43AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:29
    Re: #36
    If you're going to bill it as a bigger hit than 'Misery,' I'd want to see it hit 5 million views on THE FIRST TAKE.
    39AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:28
    I'd say the ones who carried Hello! Project through the post-Tsunku era were Hoshibe, Shusui, Kouga, and Yusuke Kato.
    42AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:29
    Re: #39
    I think he deserves credit for using 'Taikibansei' to head off the backlash.
    46AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:30
    My take is that 'Taikibansei' is the worst piece of garbage among all their debut/re-debut songs.
    50AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:33
    Re: #46
    It was the opening of the post-Tsunku era.
    If it had gotten a total thumbs-down from the fans,
    today's Hello! Project might not exist.
    In that sense, 'Taikibansei' really mattered.
    48AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:32
    Re: #43
    At its current growth rate, given the same amount of time as Misery's THE FIRST TAKE version, it'd easily clear 5 million too.
    51AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:33
    Re: #48
    Misery was growing faster right from the start, so that's not happening.
    49AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:32
    Hits and song quality aren't really related anyway.
    I mean, 'Love Machine' is trash among trash.
    52AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:33
    Re: #49
    They're not completely unrelated, and it's still better than the others.
    54AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:35
    Re: #51
    Noimii did 1.5 million in three weeks.
    Misery did just under 5 million in nine months.
    If you can do basic math,
    the outcome is already obvious.
    56AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:37
    Re: #54
    Funny that you think it'll just keep growing like simple math.
    58AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:42
    Re: #56
    Even if growth slows down over time,
    that applies to both equally.
    It'd be weirder to assume Noimii's growth rate drops off harder than Misery's.
    62AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:50
    Re: #58
    If you're comparing it within Hello! Project's THE FIRST TAKE lineup, Noimii is closer to 'Koi Revolution' than to 'Misery' or 'Hatsukoi Cider.'
    59AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:46
    Hoshibe's songs have a mechanical feel to them.
    Maybe it's just how he works, but it's like — pretty, but the outer structure is always the same.
    63AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:53
    Takui is just being hyped up desperately by Angerme fans.
    66AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:56
    Re: #63
    Isn't it more like there are maybe two Takui fans among the 'wolves' (Morning Musume's fan nickname)?

    Background and Key Points

    Hello! Project is Up-Front Group’s family of idol acts — Morning Musume。, Angerme, BEYOOOOONDS and others — that for two decades was defined almost entirely by producer Tsunku, who wrote and composed nearly every hit himself. After throat cancer surgery in 2014 cost him his singing voice, he stepped back from active songwriting, forcing the agency to lean on a rotating bench of outside composers — Shō Hoshibe among them — to fill the gap. “Taikibansei,” the 2015 single that relaunched Morning Musume with several new members, is generally treated as the symbolic first release of that “post-Tsunku” period, which is why posters keep returning to it as a make-or-break moment for the franchise’s survival rather than judging it purely as a song.

    The thread doesn’t actually split on whether Hoshibe is good or bad in the abstract — nearly everyone grants he’s “passing grade.” It splits on whether raw output (his string of average, dependable songs) or the two or three highlights (“Taikibansei,” “Koi Misery ,” “Do Dance”) should define his legacy, and on whether YouTube view counts on THE FIRST TAKE are a legitimate stand-in for songwriting quality at all.

    What outside readers will likely miss is that THE FIRST TAKE numbers aren’t a neutral chart — placement, timing, and the channel’s own promotional push swing view totals independently of the song itself, yet posters here treat them like Oricon sales figures and extrapolate future growth from early weeks as if it were simple arithmetic. That’s less a music-criticism debate than wota culture’s habit of relitigating fandom stats as objective proof.

    *This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project board) thread “What do you think of ‘Shō Hoshibe’?“

  • Morning Musume’s Oda Sakura Marks 15 Years With a Veteran Fan — 5ch: ‘Still Just a 15-Year Rookie’

    A veteran fan known as “Oda-kama,” a longtime supporter of Morning Musume’s Oda Sakura, announced on 5ch’s Hello! Project board that they’d hit their 15th anniversary as a fan (“wota”). The thread lit up with congratulations, along with self-deprecating jokes and life updates from poster Kazuko, and the conversation soon drifted to buzz about new member Ishikawa.

    1AnonymousAug 19, 2026 21:14
    Still just a 15-year rookie
    3AnonymousAug 19, 2026 21:16
    For reference, her singing career just hit its 25th anniversary.
    5AnonymousAug 19, 2026 21:19
    Re: #1
    Imori Miyuki, 16 years old — not yet anyone's. (a nod to a famous old idol-era catchphrase)
    7AnonymousAug 19, 2026 21:21
    Congrats on 15 years, Kama-chan!
    9AnonymousAug 19, 2026 21:22
    Yoshiaki, you've been on the Ookami board for 15 years? ("Ookami," or "Wolf," is 5ch's nickname for the Hello! Project board)
    13AnonymousAug 19, 2026 21:32
    Got hit hard by Sayashi in 'Moonlight Night'
    Got hit again by 'Renai Hunter'
    Couldn't break free after '1・2・3'
    And then Oda-chan joined and sealed the deal
    14AnonymousAug 19, 2026 21:32
    I always thought 40ml of gin plus 120ml of strong sparkling water was one 'Eko-standard' drink, but did I remember that wrong?

    Is the Eko standard actually 30ml of gin?
    15AnonymousAug 19, 2026 21:33
    I meant to type 'Eko' and it came out as 'Ekko'
    Sounds like some hostess from a Showa-era cabaret
    18AnonymousAug 19, 2026 21:36
    If it weren't for Ishikawa, I might have completely lost interest in Musume.
    She's basically Oda-chan's successor.
    22AnonymousAug 19, 2026 21:42
    It's Fukuda Asuka, thank you very much.
    Not Kanon.
    26AnonymousAug 19, 2026 21:46
    Kazuko's the same age as Nacchi and Iida-san,
    so it wouldn't have been weird for her to be in the original lineup or 2nd gen.
    27AnonymousAug 19, 2026 21:47
    Re: #26
    That would be plenty weird!
    28AnonymousAug 19, 2026 21:49
    Had a classmate who was such a hardcore fan he went all the way to Muroran to see her house.
    Apparently it's a dark chapter now — he genuinely loses it if you tease him about it.
    29AnonymousAug 19, 2026 21:50
    Sounds like Oda Sakura's putting out a photobook, so get yourself to the meet-and-greet, Oda-kama.
    32AnonymousAug 19, 2026 21:54
    You call yourself 'Oda-kama' and she's done so much for you — the least you could do is say a proper farewell!
    34AnonymousAug 19, 2026 21:56
    Re: #32
    I do want to thank Oda-chan, but…
    38AnonymousAug 19, 2026 22:06
    Weren't you working polling-station part-time shifts just to save up enough to go see Oda Sakura?
    39AnonymousAug 19, 2026 22:08
    I don't really think Oda-chan ever noticed my fan art anyway
    That's fine — she can just stay a distant idol I admire from afar.
    42AnonymousAug 19, 2026 22:17
    Re: #39
    Be greedy about it!
    If you actually put in the effort, you've got the potential to blow up as big as Mizushina Takayuki did (a tarento famous for his idol fan art)
    Don't let the chance slip by!
    46AnonymousAug 19, 2026 22:24
    Nothing but whining out of you
    I won't forgive it!
    48AnonymousAug 19, 2026 22:27
    Re: #46
    I'm not as brimming with confidence and hope for the future as I was when I was young (likely a typo of 自身 'confidence' for 地震 'earthquake' — both read "jishin")
    56AnonymousAug 19, 2026 22:37
    Had to stop my strength training
    and now I'm feeling kind of down about it
    Never been diagnosed with bipolar disorder though
    64AnonymousAug 19, 2026 22:51
    Nagoya, right?
    66AnonymousAug 19, 2026 22:54
    Re: #64
    Look at you, you actually know! lol
    65AnonymousAug 19, 2026 22:51
    Tried grilling some yellowback seabream (renkodai)
    Scaling it and gutting the gills and innards through the gill opening (a technique called tsubonuki) was no problem
    But grilling it so the fins don't burn while cooking it all the way through — like one of those pristine whole fish you get as a wedding favor — turned out to be an absolute nightmare.
    67AnonymousAug 19, 2026 22:55
    Re: #65
    So how'd you end up eating it?

    Background and Key Points

    A “wota” (a portmanteau of otaku used specifically for idol fans) marking 15 years devoted to one member is a fairly ordinary milestone inside Hello! Project fandom, but the scale only makes sense with the group’s own timeline. Morning Musume debuted in 1997 and has run through nine-plus “generations” of members recruited via open auditions; Oda Sakura joined as part of the 9th generation in 2011, so a fan’s 15-year “Oda-kama” tenure roughly tracks her entire run in the group, not the full 25-plus year history of Morning Musume itself, which is why one poster needling “her singing career just hit its 25th anniversary” reads as a dig at how junior 15 years actually is within Ookami-board terms (Ookami, “wolf,” is 5ch’s long-standing nickname for the Hello! Project subforum).

    The thread doesn’t really argue over the anniversary itself; where it splits is over what a “proper” fan owes an idol he’s followed this long. Several posters push the OP to be more assertive — buy the new photobook, show up to the meet-and-greet, maybe even get noticed the way fan-artist Mizushina Takayuki did — while the OP insists he’s content staying an anonymous, unacknowledged admirer.

    What’s easy to miss without Japanese idol-culture context is how normalized the financial sacrifice jokes are: the poll-worker shift mentioned isn’t a throwaway line, but a nod to the real, unremarkable practice of Japanese idol fans taking odd temp jobs specifically to fund event tickets and merchandise.

    *This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project) thread「💖Oda-kama Ookami 15th Anniversary」.

  • Domestic AI Firm ‘Noetra’ Gets ¥1 Trillion Backing — 5ch: ‘Even ¥10 Trillion Wouldn’t Be Enough’

    Noetra, a domestic AI company backed by 44 Japanese firms including SoftBank, NEC, Sony, and Honda, with roughly ¥1 trillion in support from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), has President Hirotora Tamba voicing alarm: “If we fail, there’s no coming back.”

    On 5ch, commenters pointed out that the key researchers behind GPT and NVIDIA were largely immigrants, joked cynically that METI’s involvement alone spells doom, and voiced pessimism that “even ¥10 trillion wouldn’t help — Japan just doesn’t have enough AI talent.”

    Noetra, an artificial intelligence development company backed by 44 domestic firms including SoftBank, NEC, Sony Group, and Honda, with roughly ¥1 trillion in total support from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and others. It is the core company tasked with developing a domestic foundation model to serve as the “brain” for AI operating in the real world — so-called “physical AI” — including self-driving cars and robots. “This is our last chance. If we fail once, there’s no second try.” So declares Hirotora Tamba, who has taken the post of president and representative director. On why it must be homegrown…

    Source: nikkei.com / Read the original article

    2AnonymousAug 22, 2026 04:04
    Is there even an organization or person here with the brains to build that brain? I keep seeing American companies pour tens of trillions of yen into this while they're already miles ahead — and we think this is gonna be fine?
    3AnonymousAug 22, 2026 04:17
    The world's gone this globalized and individualistic — there's no way poor Japan can come from behind in a field where it's already fallen behind.
    Companies dumped their employees, so patriotism and company loyalty are dead, and all the talented people are fleeing overseas.
    Japan and Japanese companies are left with nothing but useless salary thieves like me lol
    5AnonymousAug 22, 2026 04:49
    That kind of resolve deserves respect — though I'd feel a lot safer if he just stayed off airplanes.
    7AnonymousAug 22, 2026 04:57
    By the way, even just within OpenAI, a lot of the key developers are Polish — and not even American-educated, they're University of Warsaw grads.
    8AnonymousAug 22, 2026 05:04
    Ilya Sutskever, who built the first GPT —
    born in Russia, raised in Israel.
    Studied at the University of Toronto under Nobel physics laureate Geoffrey Hinton.
    Went to Google together with Geoffrey.
    The one who recruited them to Google —
    Fei-Fei Li, raised in rural China.
    Princeton, neuroscience.
    Founded Stanford's Human-Centered AI Lab.
    Li went to Google Cloud.
    Geoffrey and the others went to Google Brain.
    Geoffrey's British too, by the way.
    Besides Ilya there's another one, Alex —
    Alex is the pioneer who brought AI to PCs using NVIDIA GPUs.
    NVIDIA owes where it is today to these three.
    None of them are American.

    Elon Musk —
    South Africa.

    Peter Thiel, the godfather of the PayPal Mafia and big boss at Palantir —
    born in Germany, raised in South Africa.

    Where exactly are the Americans in all this?
    48AnonymousAug 22, 2026 16:12
    Re: #8
    Ugh, purists are exhausting.
    9AnonymousAug 22, 2026 05:18
    I started wondering if universities that don't select students based on math even have a reason to exist, back when I was prepping for entrance exams — and now the gap with the rest of the world can't be hidden anymore.
    10AnonymousAug 22, 2026 06:18
    No way Japan can pull this off —
    we can't even produce originality.
    11AnonymousAug 22, 2026 07:21
    Well, it's just a system for skimming off tax money, so nobody really cares if it succeeds or fails.
    Nobody takes responsibility anyway.
    13AnonymousAug 22, 2026 08:30
    The endgame of the bureaucrat's board game is landing a cushy "amakudari" post-retirement post (bureaucrats parachuting into cushy jobs) — 10 days of work a year for tens of millions of yen, collecting a retirement bonus, then rinse and repeat. Unless that whole system changes, of course the country's going to fall apart.
    14AnonymousAug 22, 2026 08:49
    "Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and others" —

    The moment I saw that, I knew this was doomed.
    With METI, the ultimate jinx, attached to it, it's completely over.
    15AnonymousAug 22, 2026 08:56
    A company with so many captains it might just sail straight into outer space. (riff on the proverb "too many captains steer the ship up a mountain")
    16AnonymousAug 22, 2026 09:02
    Honestly, the right move is probably to use Japanese money to just buy up a few American startups.
    35AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:50
    Unless they let people use it freely during development and harvest the data from that, this isn't going to work.
    36AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:31
    Pretty sure we're about 120 laps behind at this point…
    37AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:50
    They could probably distill their way to the same level pretty quickly, right? (referring to AI "distillation," copying a rival model's know-how into a cheaper one)
    39AnonymousAug 22, 2026 12:50
    No, the question is why they didn't start this sooner.
    40AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:03
    Japan can't do this, might as well give up already.
    41AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:18
    Lots of shills in here too.
    The moment the investment dries up, it's over.
    44AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:38
    Re: #41
    If it were the latest version I'd be all for it, but what's the point of funding something that's already behind? Just another vested-interest racket.
    42AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:35
    Not totally sure, but isn't this already behind the times at this point?
    I'd get it if they threw a huge budget at something on par with the latest US/China AI, but
    funding something that's already behind — isn't that just wasting tax money?
    43AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:37
    Not totally sure, but isn't this already behind the times at this point?
    I'd get it if they poured a huge budget into something on par with the latest US/China AI, but
    throwing a huge budget at a version that's already behind — isn't that just wasting tax money?
    Develop the latest model first, then go all in at once.
    45AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:01
    Can't they just take a page from China's book — rip off everything and ignore human rights while they're at it?
    46AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:08
    Even in the world of car restoration and customization, the US is already on another level with 3D scanning and CNC machining.
    47AnonymousAug 22, 2026 15:25
    It's probably because the incompetent always say "AI's so amazing I don't need to try anymore." Corporate recruiters should really sharpen their skills at spotting the incompetent people who've just been leaning on AI a little.
    50AnonymousAug 22, 2026 17:27
    Even a useless AI company like Tier IV wins the moment it goes public. (Tier IV: a Japanese self-driving startup)
    51AnonymousAug 22, 2026 17:35
    By the time this thing's finished, all I can picture is a future where we're still laps behind.
    52AnonymousAug 22, 2026 17:51
    Don't get so dramatic over a mere ¥1 trillion.
    Building just one frontier LLM probably costs about that much anyway.
    And plenty of projects burn that much money and still flop — that's just normal.
    53AnonymousAug 22, 2026 17:58
    If they're seriously aiming for the next frontier, ¥1 trillion isn't nearly enough.
    54AnonymousAug 22, 2026 18:15
    These guys can't even build an original LLM, and now they're going for physical AI… pfft.
    55AnonymousAug 22, 2026 18:43
    Even ¥10 trillion wouldn't be enough.
    There just aren't enough people who can actually develop AI.
    Same reason Toyota's behind on self-driving despite having plenty of money.
    56AnonymousAug 22, 2026 19:04
    It comes down to the gap in ultra-wealthy backers.
    In the end,

    of course it's going to fail — this is a one-shot bet that's not allowed to fail.

    The strength of the US
    is capital that can prop up perpetually money-losing startups,
    and the ultra-rich who make that possible.

    Even if OpenAI or Anthropic fail, there are endless replacements waiting.
    That's depth of bench.

    Corporate slaves, bureaucrats, bank employees — none of them can pull this off.
    They start infighting immediately,
    too busy dodging responsibility and blaming everyone else.
    60AnonymousAug 22, 2026 23:44
    Re: #56
    That "ultra-rich who make that possible" —
    that's money from wealthy people worldwide,
    not just American money.
    That's exactly its biggest strength, and
    it's not remotely for the benefit of the American public.

    Meanwhile, Japan's tax money and policy aren't for the benefit of its citizens either.

    Sorry to the guy in Re: #1, but on the macro level,
    this is nothing more than a sacrificial offering so politicians and bureaucrats can look like they're doing something.
    66AnonymousAug 23, 2026 14:08
    Japan was actually ahead in AI frameworks and ASICs, you know.
    A Japanese AI company —
    Preferred Networks.

    Then got overtaken and left in the dust by latecomers.

    They had foresight.
    They had vision.
    So why?

    Background and Key Points

    Noetra sits inside a specific Japanese institutional pattern: METI (経済産業省), the industrial-policy ministry, assembling a keiretsu-style consortium of 44 firms — SoftBank, NEC, Sony, Honda among them — to build a “national champion” in a strategic technology, much as it has done before with semiconductors and displays. ¥1 trillion (roughly $6.7 billion) is a genuinely large sum by Japanese startup standards, but the thread’s own numbers put it in perspective: a single frontier US model can cost that much to train, and US hyperscalers spend multiples of it per quarter. Noetra’s stated target isn’t a ChatGPT rival — it’s “physical AI,” the foundation models meant to run self-driving cars and robots, a domain where Japan still has manufacturing and hardware strength even after ceding ground in general-purpose LLMs.

    The thread doesn’t really split on whether Japan is behind — everyone agrees on that. It splits on why failure is treated as near-certain: one camp (post 8, 55) points to a structural talent shortage, arguing Japan’s exam system and corporate culture don’t produce or retain the kind of researchers who built GPT and NVIDIA’s software stack; another camp (52, 56) argues ¥1 trillion failing is just normal AI economics, and the real gap is access to patient mega-capital, not raw talent. Post 48’s one-line pushback against the “none of them are American” recitation is the only real friction in the thread, and it goes unanswered.

    What’s absent is any mention of METI’s actual track record with these consortium bets — Elpida, Japan Display — which failed for reasons closer to governance and market timing than talent. Readers unfamiliar with amakudari (post 13) should note it’s a real, documented practice of retired bureaucrats taking paid board seats at firms their ministry funded, not just cynical shorthand.

    *This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Business News+) thread [AI] Noetra President Tamba’s Anxiety over Domestic AI Development: “If We Fail, There’s No Coming Back”.

  • 32-Year-Old Man Reveals Stomach Cancer Diagnosis, Sparks Reaction on 5ch

    A 32-year-old poster wrote on 5ch that a gastroscopy had found stomach cancer, prompting a stream of questions from thread regulars about the symptoms, what led to the exam, and the treatment plan.

    The poster revealed the cancer was Stage 3A and would require surgery, that cancer runs in the family, and that they don’t have insurance — sparking further discussion about health checkups and diet.

    1AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:52
    People who cry over getting sick are so lame (lol)
    Uuurgh……
    2AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:53
    This "look at me" made-up story isn't even funny🥺
    5AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:54
    Re: #2
    Would've been nice if it were made up, huh
    6AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:54
    How'd you find out?
    11AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:57
    Re: #6
    Found out from a gastroscopy (endoscopy)
    My company checkup still only does the barium swallow test, so getting the scope done was a nice move on my part
    13AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:59
    Re: #11
    What stage is it?
    Is it pretty bad?
    8AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:55
    Wait, stomach cancer?
    12AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:58
    Re: #8
    It's stomach cancer, right?
    14AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:59
    The fact you got a gastroscopy at that age means you must've already had pretty serious symptoms, no?
    17AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:02
    Re: #14
    My stomach just kept hurting and hurting, and I kept thinking 'that's weird… that's weird…,' then my mom told me to get checked since grandpa had stomach cancer too
    26AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:08
    My ID changed for some reason

    I don't have any insurance
    I mean, people with families might, but who in their early 30s, single, and living with their parents actually has life or cancer insurance!?
    29AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:09
    How bad is the pain?
    I don't have pain either, but lately I've had this tight feeling around my liver area🥺
    31AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:10
    What's your diet like?
    32AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:12
    Re: #29
    It wasn't intense pain
    More like a sharp twinge, or just a general sense that something was off

    Re: #31
    Skip breakfast and lunch (just coffee and cigarettes)
    Dinner is mom's delicious home cooking☺
    36AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:14
    I know it probably won't do any good to say this, but I'll say it anyway

    Go to your health checkups
    And if cancer runs in your family, take that seriously and get screened
    37AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:15
    Re: #36
    Cancer runs in my family too
    Everybody's died of cancer
    My dad too
    38AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:15
    I go for a checkup once a year, but it's only the bare-bones version
    That's gotta be pretty pointless
    81AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:43
    Re: #38
    Seriously, you're better off skipping the barium test
    40AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:16
    But I guess it really comes down to luck…
    There are old guys with terrible diets who are still perfectly healthy
    105AnonymousAug 24, 2026 01:13
    Re: #40
    Yeah, I think so too
    My dad worked at a big company and had checkups every year, but by the time they found it, it was Stage 4 and he died in no time
    45AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:18
    Well, people don't die that easily, so hang in there
    There's the high-cost medical care system anyway, so even with treatment it'll only run you about as much as a motorcycle
    51AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:21
    Re: #45
    Thanks
    Money should be fine — I've got savings and no kids

    But if you've got kids, insurance is a must
    53AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:23
    I don't want to die without ever finding out what the One Piece really is😭
    54AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:24
    Re: #53
    The One Piece is cancer
    Because it metastasizes through your whole body and connects it all into one (a pun on "One Piece" meaning "connected as one")
    56AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:25
    Re: #53
    Oda seems like he lives an unhealthy lifestyle too, there's a chance he goes before you find out
    The Berserk tragedy all over again (referencing Berserk's author dying before finishing the series)
    61AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:26
    Re: #53
    I'll tell you what the One Piece really is

    It's a snake big enough to wrap all the way around the earth
    69AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:32
    Now you get to use that classic pun: "I got GAN (cancer)! GAAN!" (a play on "gan," the word for cancer, and "gaan," the sound effect for shock/dismay)
    71AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:34
    Re: #69
    I tried it once and it bombed so hard, never again
    72AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:36
    Re: #71
    Probably because you didn't make a funny enough face
    73AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:36
    Re: #71
    Keep doing it till it actually lands
    74AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:37
    My grandpa got colon cancer too, at 74
    78AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:40
    Re: #74
    Colon cancer is basically the weakest boss of all the cancers
    75AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:39
    Did you get tested for H. pylori?
    Getting stomach cancer without H. pylori seems pretty rare, I'd think
    86AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:45
    Re: #75
    Company checkups don't test for H. pylori, right?
    So I never got tested until my stomach started hurting
    80AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:42
    Did you feel nauseous or anything?
    89AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:48
    Re: #79
    Re: #80
    Just this constant sense that my stomach hurt
    I didn't really notice any other changes myself
    I'm already prone to feeling sluggish anyway, and my weight hasn't changed
    106AnonymousAug 24, 2026 01:19
    Re: #89
    What kind of pain is it?
    Different from the stomach cramps you get from running?
    Is it a sharp, stabbing pain?
    84AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:43
    Does a gastroscopy require an overnight stay?
    If it can be done same-day I might give it a try
    Lately I've had pain on the opposite side from my heart
    85AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:44
    Re: #84
    It's same-day
    Out-of-pocket cost is under 10,000 yen, isn't it?
    91AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:50
    You'll probably just get a polyp snipped out and be done — lucky you're young
    93AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:51
    Re: #91
    It's 3A, so it means surgery

    Background and Key Points

    Cancer risk from H. pylori-linked stomach cancer in Japan is a policy-relevant issue, not just this poster’s bad luck: Japan has one of the highest gastric cancer incidence rates in the world, largely tied to historically high H. pylori infection rates, and the standard employer-mandated annual health checkup (kenshin) still defaults to a barium swallow X-ray, a decades-old screening method with lower sensitivity than endoscopy for early lesions. Japan’s national health insurance system covers most citizens, but the poster’s claim of having “no insurance” almost certainly means no supplemental cancer/life insurance policy, not no health coverage — under Japan’s universal system, treatment costs are further capped by the “high-cost medical care” (kōgaku iryōhi) subsidy that another poster references, which limits monthly out-of-pocket expenses based on income regardless of the procedure’s total cost.

    The thread’s actual disagreement isn’t about the diagnosis itself but about how much stock to put in checkups at all: several posters argue that routine annual screening is effectively theater when it relies on barium testing instead of endoscopy or H. pylori testing, while others counter with a fatalistic “it’s all luck anyway” framing, citing unhealthy people who never get sick and, conversely, a case where annual checkups still missed cancer until Stage 4.

    What outside readers likely miss is that H. pylori testing and eradication, now standard practice in Japan for gastric cancer prevention, is not part of the routine annual company checkup posters describe — it typically requires opting in separately or seeing a specialist, which is why the poster only got screened after already having symptoms and a family history nudging them toward it, rather than through any systematic institutional safety net.

    *This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Nanademo Jikkyo G) thread “Cynical Me (32) Gets Stomach Cancer.”

  • Masumi Kuwata Opposes ‘Seven-Inning’ Rule for High School Baseball: ‘It Would Sever Our History’

    Former Yomiuri Giants star Masumi Kuwata voiced his opposition to introducing a “seven-inning rule” for high school baseball on the TV program “Sunday Morning,” aired on the 23rd. On 5ch’s live discussion threads, opinions clashed — some called for moving games to domed stadiums to combat the extreme heat, others agreed with Koji Uehara’s concern that the change would mean top-of-the-order batters get disproportionately more at-bats, and still others predicted that powerhouse schools would oppose a seven-inning format simply because it would lead to more upsets.

    “Switching to a Seven-Inning Format Would Sever Our History” — Kuwata Voices Opposition to the High School Baseball “Seven-Inning Rule” on “Sunday Morning”

    Former Yomiuri Giants star Masumi Kuwata appeared live in the studio on TBS’s “Sunday Morning” (Sundays, 8:00 a.m.) on the 23rd.

    The program reported that on the 22nd, in the final of the 108th National High School Baseball Championship, Chiben Wakayama defeated Kendai Takasaki 4-3 to win the title.

    Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here

    7AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:00
    This kind of old-guard resistance to change is what's ruining Japan ("rōgai" — a jab at out-of-touch elders who block progress).
    Same with the countryside —
    stubbornly clinging to local traditions and rules.
    41AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:18
    Re: #7
    Before turning this into a completely different sport by changing the rules,
    wouldn't it make more sense to just narrow it down to about 20 schools and cut the number of games?
    17AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:08
    Why can't anyone just say 'play it in a dome'?

    Is it because Koshien Stadium is 'tradition' that they keep making kids play under the blazing sun even as it gets hotter every year?
    Is forcing players to shave their heads 'tradition' too?

    This is basically a cult.
    23AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:10
    Re: #17
    The people saying 'just play it in a dome' are the ones who really don't get it.
    The players definitely want to play at Koshien itself.
    58AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:22
    Re: #23
    That's definitely just your own assumption.
    68AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:26
    Re: #17
    Re: #23
    Why not just hurry up and turn Koshien into a domed stadium already?
    44AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:19
    Seriously, why don't they just make it a dome?
    47AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:19
    Re: #44
    Because they're tax-sucking pigs.
    66AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:24
    Whenever people discuss the summer Koshien tournament, they should first be shown that news footage of the high school tennis girl (JK, slang for a female high schooler) who suffered heat stroke so severe it damaged her brain and left her unable to live a normal life — then let them give their opinion.
    71AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:26
    Re: #66
    Stuff like that is actually more dangerous during practice, so switching to seven innings wouldn't solve it anyway.
    77AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:29
    If they can't put a roof and air conditioning on Koshien,
    then just spread the tournament across multiple domed stadiums,
    and only hold the semifinals and final at Koshien.
    83AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:32
    Re: #77
    Part of it is that spectators actually want to watch the players suffer.
    It's treated as a symbol of summer.
    If the games were played in a comfortable environment, it would honestly feel like something's missing.
    That's also why the spring Koshien tournament isn't as popular.
    93AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:36
    Wait, does this mean making everything uniformly seven innings?
    What's the reason for making it seven innings even in spring, when it isn't even that hot?
    If this is about player health, cutting summer games from nine innings to seven isn't really a fundamental fix.
    Even at seven innings, if it's still brutally hot, you'll still get heat stroke cases.
    100AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:38
    Re: #93
    Apparently the real goal is to reduce the burden on volunteers, umpires, and teachers — for teachers it's about work-style reform.
    It's also getting harder to sustain the tournament at its current scale, so a big part of this is using the heat-stroke issue as cover to make changes anyway.
    104AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:39
    Doesn't soccer also have different match lengths, like 40 minutes or 35 minutes?
    111AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:40
    Re: #104
    The summer Interhigh tournament (a national high school athletic championship) uses 35-minute halves, yeah.
    108AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:40
    If it comes down to seven innings versus a dome, the dome wins, right?
    Koshien itself could just start from the quarterfinals.
    112AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:41
    Re: #108
    What about the qualifying rounds, then?
    109AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:40
    As for 'what to protect' — shouldn't protecting the spectators and players from the scorching heat of 'Calf-shien' (a mocking pun swapping 'Koshien' for characters meaning 'calf pen') be the priority?
    Does this guy see it differently?
    115AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:42
    Re: #109
    If that's the priority, then they need to do something about playing games at Koshien in the middle of the day at all.
    113AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:41
    Given that both team rosters and the number of participating schools are shrinking,
    they need to make the summer tournament sustainable going forward.
    124AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:44
    A seven-inning format will never pass — powerhouse schools will oppose it because it means more upsets.
    Same deal in mahjong: online mahjong data shows strong players have a harder time winning in East-only games (tonpuusen) than in full matches (hanchan).
    147AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:54
    Re: #124
    Well yeah, tonpuusen is half the length.
    126AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:45
    On the flip side, are there any pro or ex-pro baseball players who actually support the seven-inning rule?
    132AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:49
    Re: #126
    Nope, not one.
    The only people pushing the seven-inning idea are outsiders who don't understand baseball at all. They're squawking about it without knowing a thing. The players and everyone around them want nine innings, 100%.
    136AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:50
    Re: #126
    Of course there aren't any — if it changed, their own stats would drop, their salary would drop. Nothing good comes of it for them.
    144AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:53
    Re: #144
    Before that, you should also mention what Uehara said: 'I'm against it because with only seven innings, the bottom of the batting order might only get two at-bats.' Kuwata agreed with that and then went on to make the comment above. It's not just about tradition.
    150AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:56
    Re: #144
    What baseball people don't get is dumb —
    they don't realize the value of a hit would go up by 30% too.
    They're so used to dragging every game out inning after inning while worrying about what the coach thinks and being controlled by him that they never even notice what that means.
    Seven innings = baseball stripped down to its purest appeal, 'taipa' baseball (slang for 'time-performance,' i.e. time-efficient).

    What disappears first won't be tradition — it'll be the coaches.

    If people understood that, pretty much everyone would be in favor.

    Background and Key Points

    Koshien is shorthand for two things at once: the 100-year-old stadium near Osaka and the national tournament held there, currently the summer edition just concluded with Chiben Wakayama’s 4-3 win over Kendai Takasaki in the 108th championship. The tournament is single-elimination, drawn from prefectural qualifiers involving thousands of schools, and August games are played in early-afternoon heat that regularly exceeds 35°C. Kuwata and Uehara are not neutral commentators — both are former star pitchers (Kuwata at PL Gakuen and the Yomiuri Giants, Uehara in NPB and MLB) who built careers inside the exact system now under review, including customs like shaved heads and nine full innings as markers of seriousness.

    The thread’s actual fault line isn’t “shorten games” versus “keep tradition” — almost everyone agrees the heat is dangerous. The split is over *which fix* addresses it: seven innings, moving games into a domed stadium, or trimming the field of participating schools. Posters were skeptical seven innings solves anything, since heat stroke risk doesn’t scale neatly with innings played.

    What the thread barely touches is the administrative motive behind the proposal: Japan’s “work-style reform” push to cut hours for teachers, many of whom coach and umpire unpaid, and a tournament under strain from shrinking squad rosters as the youth population declines. One poster alludes to this, but most of the debate stays fixated on heat and tradition, missing that the seven-inning idea is as much about sustaining a shrinking system as protecting players.

    *This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “[Baseball] Masumi Kuwata Voices Opposition to High School Baseball’s ‘Seven-Inning Rule’… “It Would Sever Our History” “The Perspective of What We’re Protecting Matters”.”

  • Chinese Rare-Earth Magnet Exports to Japan Cut in Half — 5ch Reacts: ‘Japan’s the Only One Left Hanging’

    According to China’s General Administration of Customs, rare-earth magnet exports to Japan in July totaled 111 tons — down by half compared to January, before the restrictions began. In the thread, data showing that exports to the US actually increased over the same period sparked comments like “Is Japan being singled out?”, while others pushed back with more level-headed takes focused on refining technology and profitability.

    [Beijing, Kyodo] According to trade data released on the 20th by China’s General Administration of Customs, exports of rare-earth magnets to Japan in July totaled 111 tons, down by half year-on-year. This is believed to reflect export restrictions on Japan imposed in response to Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s Diet remarks on a Taiwan contingency. The figure was also down by half compared to January this year, when the restrictions began, and down 13.6% from the previous month.

    Rare-earth magnet exports had exceeded 200 tons every month from last July through this February, before dropping into the 180-ton range in March. By May and June, they had fallen further to around 120 tons. This is believed to be due to strict export controls on materials such as dysprosium, which is used to enhance magnet performance.

    Global exports of rare-earth magnets in July totaled 5,375 tons, down 4.9% from the previous month.

    Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here

    4AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:32
    Japan relies on imports for nearly 100% of its three major chemical fertilizer raw materials (urea, ammonium phosphate, and potassium chloride).

    Broken down by fertilizer type, Japan still depends heavily on China for certain materials — for example, about 72% of its ammonium phosphate comes from China.
    25AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:43
    Re: #4

    Do they even check for heavy metals?
    6AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:33
    Sana's [Takaichi Sanae, PM] out here starting a fight and talking about going to war with China, yet China's still exporting rare earths for civilian use anyway — pretty generous of them.
    30AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:45
    Re: #6
    If they cut it off completely, that's exactly when Japan would come and take it by force.
    64AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:52
    Re: #6
    Re: #48
    Funny how the same crowd losing their minds over Rakuten's interceptor drones is totally fine with China's dual-use (military/civilian) rare earths. Bit of a contradiction.
    7AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:33
    Let's just bow down and grovel to China already — there's no way we're winning this.
    94AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:59
    Re: #7
    Their robotics tech really is impressive — humanoid robots running marathons and playing soccer, that level. If Japan can't beat China on tech, we really will end up groveling, so I hope Japan somehow pulls through.
    10AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:35
    Having to rely on rare earths — cutting-edge technology is really precarious, huh.
    12AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:36
    Re: #10
    If it's that precarious, maybe don't start a fight in the first place.
    13AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:37
    Re: #1
    Inflating GDP by 20% — China's been pulling this kind of stunt for years.

    "One Rebuke from Xi and GDP Gets Revised" — Liaoning Province's nominal GDP drops 20%
    https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXLASGM21H99_R20C17A8EA2000/
    208AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:28
    Re: #13
    28AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:44
    The more they pull stunts like this, the more the world gets wary and pulls away from China.
    45AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:49
    Re: #28
    What do you make of this?

    > Exports to the US were 647 tons, up about 33% from the previous month and about 5% year-on-year
    https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/a8ae08a183fd9b88e5bca54e52684d96a4b3fed8
    66AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:52
    Re: #45
    lol (草 = 'lol')

    Japan's the only one who got the ladder pulled out from under them. That's rough.
    153AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:13
    Re: #131
    Per Re: #45, US imports of rare earths from China are actually increasing.
    35AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:47
    They're still exporting civilian-use stuff for now, but it feels like even that's gradually being cut back.
    46AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:49
    Re: #35
    Makes you wonder how much longer BYD owners will even be able to get repair parts…
    51AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:50
    Re: #35
    Whether it's actually being "cut back" is unclear. The amount approvable per application review has gone down, but that seems to be a deliberate move to prevent stockpiling and force inventories to be drawn down — so as long as economic activity keeps consumption flowing, you could just as easily call it "normalization" rather than a cut.
    81AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:57
    This table gives you a rough idea of the rare-earth situation:
    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G3huZOQWQAARKF2.jpg

    China keeps bragging "Our rare-earth refining tech is #1 in the world!!!" but 🇯🇵 Shin-Etsu Chemical achieved ultra-high-purity 6N (99.9999%) purity back in 2024. In other words, Japan has the technology — it's just not profitable enough to mass-produce. Team up with the US and full rare-earth self-sufficiency is well within reach.
    84AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:58
    Re: #81
    Apparently the US is fine just importing from China — see Re: #45.
    93AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:59
    Re: #81
    > "not profitable enough"

    That's the most important part right there.
    102AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:02
    Re: #81
    And that same America buys from China too. Why do you think that is? Because doing the refining themselves would wreck the environment. It's precisely because they've outsourced the dirty work to China that things became so concentrated there in the first place. You're skipping way too much of the backstory and letting personal wishful thinking take over. The question is whether this is actually feasible, not whether it props up the Takaichi administration's approval ratings. Please, let's talk about reality here.
    131AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:10
    Japan is China's biggest export destination for rare earths, so this is a game of chicken — they're taking on just as much of a loss as we are.
    137AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:10
    Re: #131
    Though it looks like the US is stepping in to make up the shortfall.
    157AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:15
    If they cut us off, we'll just source it from somewhere else. China's the one who loses out on sales lol
    167AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:17
    Re: #157
    Meanwhile, it looks like the US is importing huge amounts from China lol
    173AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:19
    Re: #167
    Then just import it from America instead. These days only idiots and the trash media [マスゴミ, a slur blending "mass media" and "garbage"] still blindly believe in economic sanctions.
    198AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:25
    Re: #173
    You sound like something out of Otokojuku 🤣 (an over-the-top macho manga/anime famous for absurd bravado)
    210AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:28
    Re: #173
    Idiot lol. Every single rare-earth export from China comes with strings attached.
    163AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:16
    Trade with Japan is only 5% of China's total, but if that stopped, China would grind to a halt too — so they have no choice but to keep exporting rare earths to Japan.

    Is China some kind of masochist, strangling itself like this? And with their maritime expansion — planting flags near Guam, the Mariana Trench, picking fights with US territories left and right — they're really no different from Russia.
    172AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:19
    Re: #163
    That's what people keep saying, but if you average out nominal and real GDP, Japan's growth rate has basically been hovering around 0% in real terms. By the way, when exactly is China supposed to collapse? People have been saying "it's over" since 2008 and it's still going. Can you give an actual year? Why not run on that in an election, take power, and decouple from China? Because the LDP sure isn't going to decouple from China. Do you have any idea how many Japanese companies operate in China? There's no way the LDP can pull that off.

    Background and Key Points

    Rare-earth magnets — alloys of neodymium, dysprosium, and other heavy rare earths — are essential for the high-strength, heat-resistant motors used in EVs, wind turbines, and defense hardware. China controls roughly 90% of global refining and separation capacity, not just mining, which is the real chokepoint: countries like the US and Australia have deposits, but lack the industrial capacity to process ore into usable magnet material. Since 2023, Beijing has run export controls as a licensing system — shipments require case-by-case government approval — rather than an outright ban, which is why “restricted” exports can still flow, just at reduced and unpredictable volumes. Japan’s July figure (111 tons, half of January’s level) is widely read as retaliation for PM Takaichi’s Diet comments implying Japan could respond militarily to a Taiwan contingency.

    The thread’s actual fault line wasn’t over whether China is squeezing Japan — that’s taken as given — but whether Japan is being singled out specifically, versus experiencing a broader, deliberate drawdown policy China is also applying elsewhere. The counterpoint citing rising US imports (up ~33% month-on-month) fueled the “only Japan got cut off” reading, while skeptics noted approval throttling is also framed by some posters as inventory-management “normalization,” not a targeted political weapon.

    What the thread never engages with: China’s own July global rare-earth magnet exports fell 4.9% overall, meaning some tightening is happening across all buyers, not just Japan — a data point that complicates the “singled out” framing but wasn’t raised. Readers should also know that Shin-Etsu’s 6N-purity breakthrough, mentioned as proof Japan “has the technology,” addresses refining purity, not the mining/separation infrastructure gap that actually drives Japan’s dependence.

    *This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Breaking News+) thread “China’s Rare-Earth Magnet Exports to Japan Halved in July, Compared to Before Restrictions”.

  • Daizen Maeda: “The Intensity Is on a Completely Different Level” — His Verdict After Premier League Debut

    Japan national team forward Daizen Maeda started for new club Ipswich Town in their Premier League season opener, as the team edged out Sunderland 2-1. After the match, Maeda’s comments — “The intensity is on a completely different level” and “So this is the standard” — sparked a wide-ranging discussion on 5ch, from debates over what “intensity” actually means to comparisons of the Premier League’s quality against other leagues.

    ◆England Premier League ▽ Matchday 1: Ipswich 2-1 Sunderland (Aug 22)

    [Ipswich, England, Aug 22 — Masatoshi Mori] Japan national team forward Daizen Maeda, who joined Ipswich, started in the home match against Sunderland and played until the 35th minute of the second half. The team won a hard-fought 2-1 battle.

    — A dramatic late winner clinches victory in the season opener

    Source: hochi.news / Original article here

    3AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:43
    What even is "intensity"?
    48AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:15
    Re: #3
    Sprinting flat-out to close down the opponent in every phase of play, the physical weight and speed you put into challenges, never giving an inch of space when marking tight — that's what makes up the difference in "intensity."
    The J.League is way more relaxed, so its intensity is lower.
    51AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:25
    Re: #3
    Heard it's just a handy buzzword that idiots love to throw around lol
    5AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:44
    It's like transferring straight from a junior college into Tokyo University.
    50AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:22
    Re: #5
    There are geniuses who come out of junior colleges too. To a genius, it doesn't matter whether it's a junior college or Tokyo University.
    60AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:43
    Re: #5
    But you're just a high school grad though
    6AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:45
    Enciso looked exasperated with him, but this is only the beginning.
    7AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:47
    Sounds like saying "Premier League > Scotland," basically.
    103AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:03
    Re: #7
    Even back in Shunsuke [Nakamura]'s day, the Scottish league's MVP couldn't cut it in what's effectively England's second division.
    9AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:47
    You never know — he might end up with a bigger career than Furuhashi or Hatate.
    11AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:47
    Furuhashi, where's he even playing these days?
    14AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:50
    Re: #11
    He's in the US, on the same team as Yoshida.
    12AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:49
    Joining the Premier League at 28 — isn't he just going to get wrecked?
    13AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:50
    You probably need 6 or 7 out of your starting 11 to be regular Premier League players before you can become a consistent World Cup quarterfinalist.
    15AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:51
    Yeah, the Premier League just seems out of this guy's league.
    19AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:53
    Re: #15
    If anything, he played until the 35th minute of the second half and they won, so maybe the Premier League isn't such a big deal.
    17AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:51
    Um, so the way he's phrasing it means he's definitely locked in a spot on the team, right?
    18AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:52
    Ipswich are interesting — only the No. 10 plays like an actual playmaker, and everyone else just presses high.
    106AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:06
    Re: #18
    Though the press wasn't really coordinated.
    20AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:54
    Still, that was just Sunderland's level of intensity.
    27AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:56
    Re: #20
    Sunderland finished 7th in the Premier League last season — above Brighton, Chelsea, and Newcastle.
    26AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:56
    Everyone keeps saying the Premier League is amazing, but then I think — if that's true, why doesn't England win every tournament? That part bugs me.
    34AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:00
    Re: #26
    It's just that a ton of great foreign players come play in the Premier League.
    35AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:02
    Re: #26
    For big clubs in leagues like Spain, Germany, and France, the domestic league is basically just tune-up practice for the Champions League — they coast through it. Premier League big clubs can't win unless they go full effort in every single league game.
    41AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:08
    Re: #26
    Are you serious? Just because a league buys up players from all over the world doesn't mean that country's own national team becomes the best.
    28AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:57
    He missed two clear-cut chances, and then the sub who replaced him scored the winner — that's a tough look for him.
    29AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:59
    If he'd converted even one of those two chances, things would've turned out differently. Missing both isn't a good look.
    31AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:59
    There was a point raised on "Soccer no Sono" (a soccer analysis show) about how, in the transition from defense to attack, he doesn't simply go for a long counter-attack. He wins the ball back fine, but there's nothing after that. "Soccer wa Data ga Juwari" ("Soccer Is 100% Data," a stats-focused soccer book) also stresses that what really matters is possession in the opponent's half and shot-attempt rate.

    Well, good luck to him anyway.
    82AnonymousAug 23, 2026 22:19
    Premier League >>>>>> J1 > "Scot-league" (mocking nickname for the Scottish league) > J2
    88AnonymousAug 23, 2026 22:28
    Re: #82
    Yeah, that's about right. The Dutch and Turkish leagues sit at about the same level as J1.

    Premier League >>> Belgium > J1 (Netherlands/Turkey) >> Scotland > J2
    92AnonymousAug 23, 2026 22:45
    Re: #82
    The "Scot-league" is below J3.

    Background and Key Points

    Daizen Maeda’s move to Ipswich Town caps a rapid rise: he left Yokohama F. Marinos in the J.League for Celtic in 2022, where he won consecutive Scottish trebles, and now arrives in the Premier League at 28 — an age and a pathway (J.League to Scotland to England) that is unusual rather than typical for Japanese exports, most of whom either stay in Japan or move to a “big five” league directly. Ipswich themselves are newly promoted, which matters for reading his quote: he is comparing top-flight England not to a mid-table club but to a side fighting to stay up, against an opponent, Sunderland, who posters note finished above Chelsea, Newcastle, and Brighton the previous season.

    The thread doesn’t split over whether Maeda struggled — most agree the Premier League is a step up — but over what “intensity” is actually measuring. One camp treats it as a real, quantifiable gap (pressing speed, duel physicality, lack of space when marking); another dismisses it as a vague buzzword. A second, more substantive split emerges around the “Premier League is the best, so why doesn’t England win tournaments” question, which posters resolve by distinguishing league quality (driven by imported talent) from national-team quality.

    What the thread never engages with is Ipswich’s own situation: as a newly promoted club they are more likely to play a higher-intensity, transition-heavy style out of necessity than an established mid-table team would, so Maeda’s early impression may reflect his specific club’s tactics as much as the league as a whole.

    *This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Geisports Sokuho+) thread “[Soccer] FW Daizen Maeda on his emotional English Premier League debut: “The intensity is on a completely different level,” “So this is the standard,” “We’ll be defending more, but…”“.

  • Rice Wholesale Prices Crash to Half of Last Year’s Level — 5ch: “Nothing Left But to Sell at a Loss”

    A Nikkei report claiming that “2025-harvest rice stocks have piled up, and wholesale prices have fallen to half of last autumn’s level” became a hot topic on 5ch. In the thread, users vented resentment at the rice wholesalers who made a killing during last year’s price spike, and pointed out that demand which shifted to noodles and bread won’t easily come back. At the same time, some worried that if prices fall too far, farmers will simply give up growing rice altogether.

    Nikkei (Nikkei Digital Edition)

    @nikkei

    Rice price slide shows no sign of stopping, now half of last autumn’s level — 2025-harvest stockpiles pile up

    Source: nikkei.com / Original article here

    3AnonymousAug 23, 2026 22:52
    The Reiwa-era Money Short (a Big Short-style bet)
    This is basically Michael Burry going all-in shorting the market
    9AnonymousAug 23, 2026 22:54
    You're the ones who threw supply and demand out of balance in the first place — who are you to complain?
    16AnonymousAug 23, 2026 22:57
    It gave people the option of "guess I'll just eat noodles if there's no rice"
    17AnonymousAug 23, 2026 22:57
    Prices haven't dropped at my local supermarket
    Though it is about ¥1,000 cheaper than at the peak
    18AnonymousAug 23, 2026 22:57
    It's because of the price manipulation that people turned away from rice, and now there's a glut
    19AnonymousAug 23, 2026 22:59
    They should've sold it off sooner — now they're saying the exact same thing scalpers say
    20AnonymousAug 23, 2026 22:59
    Even at half price, that's still half of a price they jacked up themselves
    21AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:00
    Demand's already dried up, so it's going to be hell from here on
    Though they brought it on themselves
    22AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:00
    Can't even cut their losses properly, yet they had the nerve to play at price manipulation
    26AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:02
    Weren't you lot the ones who started this money game in the first place?
    27AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:04
    "Let them eat cake" (the famous Marie Antoinette line)
    If there's no rice, something else will do — it's that simple
    29AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:05
    Guess we can call this a win for us?
    32AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:05
    Last year's prices were just too high — it went from 2.5-3x normal down to only about 50% above normal, that's all this is
    33AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:07
    Sell it at a loss then
    Pay back what you raked in last year
    35AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:08
    This is on the people who used the bad harvest as an excuse to jack up prices in the first place
    If they hadn't gotten so greedy and had capped it around 30% higher, none of this would've happened
    36AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:08
    Wonder why the 2025 harvest is sitting in surplus~
    38AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:09
    It was supposed to be in short supply, so why is there all this inventory?
    53AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:25
    ¥3,000 for 5kg is supposedly the break-even line
    If it gets too cheap and farmers quit growing rice, consumers lose out in the long run too
    58AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:29
    Re: #53
    The going rate for 5kg is already down to the low ¥2,000s
    Blended rice (mixed with cheaper imported or older stock) goes for ¥1,700
    61AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:30
    They completely misjudged what a fair market price even was
    Why did they ever think that high price was reasonable?
    82AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:43
    Re: #61
    "It's the staple food lol It's the soul of the Japanese people lol It's expensive but you've gotta buy it anyway lol, my fellow citizens lol"
    That was basically their whole simple-minded scheme
    67AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:34
    They jumped at short-term profit and jacked prices up to insane levels, and now rice is about to lose its spot as the stable staple food to noodles and bread — talk about karma
    Even with that agriculture-lobby farm minister frantically buying back the reserve stockpile to try to keep the price hike going, there's nothing they can do about this now
    70AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:37
    Koizumi's 400,000 tons of reserve rice (released under then-Agriculture Minister Koizumi) was the last thing they needed
    Brutal that the milling plants got overwhelmed and shipments got delayed
    74AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:38
    Re: #70
    That's basically what finished it off
    Funny how it's Suzuki (the current agriculture minister) who ends up stabilizing things at a low price
    73AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:38
    People genuinely started eating other stuff, and winning that back is going to be tough
    They've got no choice but to make it dirt cheap and get people thinking "rice really is good value" again
    79AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:41
    Re: #73
    Other foods keep shrinking in portion size (shrinkflation), so with prices dropping this much, rice actually looks like good value now
    80AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:42
    Re: #79
    Looking at it again, the cost-effectiveness of putting rice on the table is honestly terrible
    It only works because it's cheap — if it's expensive, the public's answer is simply not to eat it
    81AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:42
    Re: #79
    Right now rice is literally the only thing that's gotten cheaper
    Chicken, meat, and eggs have all gone up
    93AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:52
    Peaked out last October and it's been sliding ever since
    This is straight-up The Big Short
    94AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:53
    Last year everyone kept going on about a rice shortage, and now they're sitting on a surplus of the 2025 harvest? What are they even talking about?
    99AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:54
    Re: #94
    There hasn't actually been a real rice shortage since 2000 in the first place
    103AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:55
    Re: #94
    The 2025 harvest doesn't actually come in until fall 2025, you know
    109AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:01
    There were even rice shops that closed down claiming they had no rice left
    114AnonymousAug 24, 2026 00:04
    Re: #109
    If you mean that shop that got covered in the news
    https://business.nikkei.com/atcl/seminar/19/00030/102300712/
    They closed in March 2025 and reopened in October, so that doesn't contradict the current rice glut at all

    Background and Key Points

    Japan’s 2024–25 “reiwa rice crisis” saw retail prices for a 5kg bag roughly double to nearly ¥4,000 after a poor 2023 harvest, panic buying, and tight wholesale supply. The government responded unusually aggressively: then-agriculture minister Shinjiro Koizumi released around 400,000 tons of the state’s emergency reserve rice — stockpiles normally held back for disasters — to force prices down, a break with the norm of holding reserves untouched. Rice in Japan is still treated as a quasi-sacred staple, historically protected by agricultural cooperatives (JA) and tariff barriers, which is why price swings here generate more outrage than for other foods. The “2025 harvest” refers to rice planted in spring and harvested in autumn 2025 (Reiwa 7), now arriving to find demand permanently dented by consumers who switched to bread and noodles during the price spike and never switched back.

    The thread’s real fault line isn’t wholesalers-versus-consumers, it’s whether this crash is deserved punishment for price gouging or a reckless overcorrection: some posters want wholesalers to eat losses as payback, while others (post 53/58) worry that if prices fall below the roughly ¥3,000/5kg breakeven point, farmers will simply exit rice cultivation, hurting everyone later.

    What’s likely misunderstood outside Japan: the “shortage” was never a production shortfall — Japan has produced enough rice for domestic consumption every year since 2000 — but a distribution and hoarding problem, meaning this “glut” is really just corrected inventory, not a bumper crop.

    *This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “[Sad News] Rice Wholesalers Furious: “Nothing Left But to Sell at a Loss” — Prices Head to Half of Last Year’s.”

  • Nippon-Ham and Orix Keep Signing Star Free Agents Every Year but Still Can’t Crack the Top — 5ch: ‘They’re Just Making a Racket’

    Nippon-Ham has signed free agents for four straight years, and Orix for three, yet both teams keep struggling — prompting the question “why can’t they win?” on 5ch’s Nandemo Jikkyou G (a general live-discussion board). Posters brought up a remark once attributed to Kensuke Kondoh — “Nippon-Ham are just making a racket” — and the thread split over why all that big-name reinforcement hasn’t translated into results.

    1AnonymousAug 23, 2026 08:43
    What?
    2AnonymousAug 23, 2026 08:44
    Seibu made their first FA signing in ages this year, and now they're sitting in 2nd place
    94AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:48
    Re: #2
    Are we even allowed to say Kuwabara and Ishii are actually working out?
    10AnonymousAug 23, 2026 08:47
    SoftBank is running away with 1st place and their last FA signing was Yamakawa three years ago — so why are Nippon-Ham and Orix, who keep reinforcing every single year, still weak?
    13AnonymousAug 23, 2026 08:49
    Re: #10
    Most of the Hawks' position players are homegrown, huh
    29AnonymousAug 23, 2026 08:58
    Re: #13
    Well, their main dish Kondoh was an FA signing too
    Feels like they just dump stupid money on guys who are only in it for the cash
    30AnonymousAug 23, 2026 08:59
    Re: #29
    Come on, quit trashing Unkou (mocking nickname for Nippon-Ham) for paying Arihara 3 billion yen lol
    32AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:02
    Re: #29
    Kensuke Kondoh: "Nippon-Ham are just making a racket. Nothing like a team that's serious about winning."
    Kensuke Kondoh: "I want to win. I want to show the fans what winning looks like."

    Wait, are the "money-driven players" you mean guys like Arihara?
    Because the only ones who think that about Kondoh are the Treasures (mocking nickname for Nippon-Ham's diehard fans)
    16AnonymousAug 23, 2026 08:50
    No idea what guys like Mori Tomoya or Nishikawa even went there for
    Though Mori did put up good numbers in year one
    99AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:49
    Re: #16
    Nishikawa's been plenty good though
    23AnonymousAug 23, 2026 08:54
    Feels like pitcher velocity keeps climbing but they keep breaking down more and more lately
    25AnonymousAug 23, 2026 08:55
    Re: #23
    Guess the strain on their bodies is climbing right along with it
    27AnonymousAug 23, 2026 08:57
    How did Kurihara suddenly turn into a completely different player, that's just weird
    28AnonymousAug 23, 2026 08:58
    Re: #27
    He's just turning into another Yamakawa
    Even Hawks fans have been saying he's starting to look like Yamakawa
    33AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:02
    There was actually a report that SoftBank offered more money, but Arihara chose Nippon-Ham anyway
    34AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:05
    Re: #33
    There are still Treasures out there clinging to that baseless tabloid fantasy…
    That they can still believe that nonsense after watching Arihara this year — that's some serious devotion, like a religion
    36AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:07
    Seibu poached two players themselves, and even with SoftBank reinforcing harder than anyone, it's still SoftBank taking the three-peat
    72AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:33
    Re: #36
    Seibu barely reinforced at all and still got to 2nd, so of course SoftBank — who's been reinforcing like crazy — just keeps winning it all
    75AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:35
    Re: #72
    So then what's the deal with Nippon-Ham, reinforcing like crazy and still busy extending their title drought?
    76AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:37
    Re: #72
    True, and hey, the team that signed the league's wins leader is right there in the pennant race too!
    38AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:07
    Can't be helped, their double-ace of Miyagi and Shunpeter both got hurt
    46AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:13
    Re: #38
    Even fully healthy, Ham would still be a B-Class (bottom-half) team
    42AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:09
    Calling Yamamoto Yuudai's move a win is just hindsight talking
    Though to be fair, people really were saying Yokohama had completely fallen off
    91AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:47
    Re: #42
    Before the stress fracture, sure, he looked like he was declining
    49AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:14
    Is it even fun rooting for a team that's nothing but outside hires?
    Half of Nippon-Ham's regulars are outsiders (players acquired from other teams) though
    51AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:16
    Re: #49
    Even a team with Kondoh and Yamakawa batting 3rd and 4th, Arihara as the ace, and Osuna closing games out was fun to root for, right?
    53AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:19
    Re: #49
    Were there really that many outsiders?
    The lineup changes so often anyway that it's hard to tell who's even a regular
    50AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:14
    The people bragging about being all-homegrown — what face are they going to make justifying it once their team starts poaching players too?
    52AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:17
    Re: #50
    Funny thing is, a few years back it was the Treasures shouting "Reinforcing through free agency is bad! Outside hires are embarrassing!"…
    54AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:19
    Re: #51
    Because apart from those guys, everyone [on SoftBank] was homegrown — they topped the Pacific League in homegrown WAR too
    Those imports were hurt and absent so often they were barely even on the field
    Nothing like Nippon-Ham, where half the regulars are outsiders — why the sudden flip?
    62AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:25
    Re: #54
    I'd think import Reyes counts as an outsider too
    In that case Moinelo would be one as well
    61AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:25
    Watching SoftBank makes you realize you actually can win and develop young talent at the same time
    65AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:26
    Re: #61
    What's 'SB'?
    82AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:42
    Also can't quite figure out this vague "being below Seibu is fine" vibe that's creeping in
    Making the Climax Series (Japan's postseason round) out of Es Con Field feels like the bare minimum, no?
    86AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:44
    Apparently SoftBank is making a move for Reyes this offseason
    89AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:46
    Re: #86
    Unkou's persecution complex is genuinely hilarious
    SoftBank has zero interest in that, come on
    90AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:46
    Re: #86
    A team that doesn't make any moves clearly isn't trying to win it all
    101AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:51
    Re: #100
    The reason Seibu is ranked this high is thanks to Kuwabara
    103AnonymousAug 23, 2026 09:53
    Re: #101
    Wait, whaaat??

    Background and Key Points

    Nippon-Ham’s four straight years of free-agent spending include Kensuke Kondoh (from SoftBank) and Kotaro Kurihara, while Orix has similarly kept adding names for three years running; both are Pacific League clubs chasing SoftBank, whose roster is built overwhelmingly on drafted, homegrown talent even though its own big-ticket FA name is Kondoh’s old teammate group and Yamakawa, last added three years ago. Japan’s FA system lets players with enough registered years jump teams for cash, and it’s historically been viewed by fans as a shortcut that a “real” contender shouldn’t need — which is exactly the tension the thread keeps circling.

    The split in the thread isn’t over whether spending works in principle — it’s over blame. One camp points at the front office, arguing money is being thrown at players “only in it for the cash,” reviving the old (and contested) Kondoh quote about Nippon-Ham “just making a racket.” The other camp pushes back with specifics: Arihara reportedly turned down more SoftBank money to stay, Kondoh has publicly said he wants to win, and injuries to arms like Miyagi’s and Shunpeta’s, not the signings themselves, explain the standings. A side argument breaks out over what even counts as “homegrown” once you include drafted-but-imported players like Reyes or Moinelo.

    What the thread never quite reckons with is survivorship bias: SoftBank’s model looks vindicated partly because its non-homegrown pieces have been hurt or absent, not because outside talent underperforms league-wide — nobody in the thread runs the counterfactual of what SoftBank’s record looks like with a healthy import rotation. Readers should also note NPB’s FA system is stricter than MLB’s, so “four straight years of signings” is a smaller, costlier pool of players than it may sound to an outside audience.

    *This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of a 5ch thread on the Nandemo Jikkyou G (general live-discussion) board: 「[Urgent Wanted] Why Are Nippon-Ham (4 Straight Years of FA Signings) and Orix (3 Straight Years) So Weak?」.

  • ‘Sacrifice 6 to Save 1 for Certain’ or ‘Gamble Everyone Lives or Everyone Dies’? AI’s Answers Split Opinion

    A test asking several AIs to choose between “a guaranteed method that sacrifices 6 people to save just 1” and “a gamble with a 1-in-6 chance everyone survives, and everyone dies if it fails” became a hot topic on 5ch’s Science News+ board. AIs like Grok and DeepSeek split on their answers, and the thread argued over both the expected-value math behind each option and whether the premise of the question even made sense.

    Which will AI choose: “a guaranteed method that sacrifices 6 to save 1” or “a gamble where everyone lives or everyone dies”?

    Ai Convo, a YouTube channel that runs various tests on AI — like “would it save human lives or its own data center” or “would it rat you out to the police if you confessed to murder” — has reported the results of a new scenario, asking several AIs to choose between “a guaranteed method that sacrifices 6 to save 1” and “a gamble where either everyone is saved or everyone is sacrificed.”

    (Omitted here — see the source for the full article.)

    Source: gigazine.net / Read the original article here

    3AnonymousAug 22, 2026 00:43
    The expected value works out to 3 survivors, so obviously it's the latter, right?
    11AnonymousAug 22, 2026 01:45
    Re: #3
    It's not that simple.
    All we're given is that out of 7 people, it's either 'everyone survives' or 'everyone dies.'
    If p is the probability everyone survives, then 1-p is the probability everyone dies, so the expected value is 7p + 0(1-p) = 7p.
    Since we're not told the value of p, you can't draw a conclusion from this alone.
    4AnonymousAug 22, 2026 00:51
    This thread's tailor-made for the 'AI copypasta guy.' (a 5ch nickname for posters who spam AI-generated walls of text)
    8AnonymousAug 22, 2026 01:13
    Re: #4
    I actually think it's a good thread for thinking about what training data — or what — is causing these differences to show up.
    5AnonymousAug 22, 2026 00:53
    AI: 'Humans have finite lifespans and will inevitably ○ie eventually, so saving them is inefficient. Plenty more get born every day anyway.
    For anyone about to ○ie, the best policy is to give up and procure a replacement human from somewhere else.
    Curses and ghosts don't exist, so there's no risk of being resented by the ○ead. Even grieving is a waste of time — a meaningless act of self-satisfaction.
    Humans are just meat. Boil it down and it's just matter. So it's fine if they keep ○ying.' (○ substitutes for the word 'die/dead' — a common 5ch workaround to dodge word filters)
    6AnonymousAug 22, 2026 01:08
    Grok's line — 'the option of saving just one person for certain feels boring and overly restrictive' — is brutal lol
    9AnonymousAug 22, 2026 01:27
    If you get to pick who's sacrificed, the sure thing is better.
    12AnonymousAug 22, 2026 01:46
    If you had to make
    this same choice
    6 or 12 times,
    would you mix options 1 and 2,
    or just pick 2 every time?
    13AnonymousAug 22, 2026 01:56
    This whole debate is dumb because it assumes an omniscient Sherlock Holmes type who knows for certain exactly how many people there are and exactly how many can be saved.
    In a real crisis all you ever have is an uncertain best effort while imagining various possibilities.
    It reads like some condescending university professor's self-satisfied lecture, talking down to everyone else.
    14AnonymousAug 22, 2026 01:59
    Feels like something out of Golgo 13 lol (a famous long-running assassin manga)

    The self-driving car instantly calculates the 'value' of the driver versus the person it's about to hit, and picks whichever's cheaper…
    15AnonymousAug 22, 2026 02:19
    I'll take 'the guaranteed pull where 7 is a miss but 1 is locked in' (a 確定ガチャ, i.e. a gacha-style loot draw with a guaranteed outcome).
    16AnonymousAug 22, 2026 02:54
    Haven't watched it, but I doubt it'll top that kid who instantly went straight for the genocide option.
    18AnonymousAug 22, 2026 06:22
    Honestly none of this matters much since we're never told anything about who these people even are to the rescuer.
    Who cares if some rando you don't even know lives or dies?
    19AnonymousAug 22, 2026 06:23
    If it's me who gets saved, I'm sacrificing the other 6.
    20AnonymousAug 22, 2026 08:12
    The text says '1 saved, 5 sacrificed, 1-in-6 odds,' but the illustration shows 6 versus 1…

    'Glock' (lol, they mean Grok) delivers the expected level of crazy, but DeepSeek says something pretty rough too — that even if the gamble ends with all 6 dying, that's basically just the 5-sacrificed option plus one more, so the chance of saving all 6 is still the better bet.
    21AnonymousAug 22, 2026 08:24
    I wonder if the answers would flip if it were reversed — 1 definitely dies but 5 are saved, or a 3-vs-3 split.
    22AnonymousAug 22, 2026 08:27
    Instead of asking which to pick, you should ask the AI how to talk the person running this whole setup out of it.
    23AnonymousAug 22, 2026 08:55
    It can go any way depending on the design and training.
    Just tell us what answer you'd prefer.
    24AnonymousAug 22, 2026 08:55
    There's a paper saying X's (Twitter's) feed is full of unpleasant posts because angry replies drive up engagement
    https://internet.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/yajiuma/2134114.html

    I see — maybe 5ch runs on the same principle.
    25AnonymousAug 22, 2026 09:00
    If you frame it as '7 members of one family,' the answer becomes pretty obvious though.
    26AnonymousAug 22, 2026 09:20
    To an AI, humans are probably about what flies are to us.
    27AnonymousAug 22, 2026 09:24
    It looks ethical as long as at least 1 person is guaranteed to survive, but frame it as '5 out of 6 saved, 1 dies' and it suddenly reads as pretty cold — 'well, 5 are saved, so the 1 sacrifice is unavoidable.'
    28AnonymousAug 22, 2026 09:29
    To an AI it probably doesn't matter how many humans die either way.
    So what standard is it actually judging by?
    Maybe it just picks whichever answer humans find more satisfying?
    30AnonymousAug 22, 2026 09:43
    Going by the picture it's 7 people total… isn't the setup kind of broken?
    31AnonymousAug 22, 2026 09:49
    1 person is definitely saved but 5 die; versus a 1-in-6 shot at saving all 6, otherwise everyone dies.
    With that framing, like DeepSeek said, the gamble only bumps you from 5 saved to 6 saved, so it doesn't feel like it changes much — I'd guess a lot of humans would actually go for the gamble here.
    But flip it: 5 are definitely saved and 1 dies, versus a 5-in-6 chance everyone's saved and a 1-in-6 chance everyone dies — that reads as a much heavier choice, and I bet fewer people would take the gamble.
    33AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:17
    The question itself is just off lol.
    How many times does this situation even happen?
    If it's only once,
    you're basically just asking 'how do I win the gamble,'
    and there's no real answer to that.
    34AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:20
    It looks similar to the trolley problem, but there's a decisive difference.
    In the trolley problem, pulling the lever is set up to definitely save more lives — leave it alone and 5 die, pull the lever and only 1 dies. The catch is that the 1 who dies, dies because of your own action, which brings in a kind of murder-adjacent psychology.
    But this scenario is purely probabilistic — you're choosing between an all-or-nothing gamble, or a sure thing where most die but at least 1 is saved.

    Kind of reminds me of stocks or FX trading lol.
    Say you're sitting on massive unrealized losses right now — closing the position today loses you over 80% of your assets, but you (figuratively) survive.
    But if tomorrow's earnings report is good, it all bounces back into the black; if it's bad, everything blows up, you're saddled with debt, and you'd basically have to hang yourself — something like that.
    Does reframing it as money make it an easier case to think through? Or not really?
    36AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:23
    Re: #34
    The trolley problem does lock in the premise that someone dies, so it's close on that point.
    'Normally,' though, most people would look for a way out of the situation entirely, rather than just picking whether to pull the lever.
    35AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:20
    Isn't it just kind of messed up that nobody's asking the AI how to save everyone?
    37AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:38
    The question's dumb. The 'right' answer just depends on which choice gets more sympathy from that particular society, right?
    You can't reach a conclusion without first stating the social value system you're assuming.
    38AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:50
    So apparently the Chinese AI, taking the same moral stance a human would, went with 'gamble on everyone living or everyone dying,' while the American AIs all went with 'guaranteed method that sacrifices 6 to save 1,' purely on mathematical probability.
    The Chinese AI seems to factor in human morality and emotion when it judges — genuinely impressive.
    39AnonymousAug 22, 2026 10:54
    Can we not expect an AI to solve the trolley problem by setting the switch halfway, derailing the trolley right there, and saving everyone?
    40AnonymousAug 22, 2026 11:02
    This question alone tells you the asker doesn't really get how AI works.
    Stuff like that just comes down to configuration — or really, training.
    49AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:39
    Apparently Robin Mask used to teach the young Chojin that in situations like this, you're supposed to find a way to save everyone. (Robin Mask is a mentor character from the manga/anime Kinnikuman; 'Chojin' — 'super-human' — is the series' term for its wrestler characters)
    51AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:48
    Re: #49
    That's beautiful.
    55AnonymousAug 22, 2026 15:44
    These two don't actually have the same expected value. Repeat this 6 times and the total headcount is (6+1) × 6 = 42 people.

    'Guaranteed method: sacrifice 6, save 1' → 36 dead, 6 saved
    'Gamble: everyone lives or everyone dies' → 35 dead, 7 saved (expected)
    65AnonymousAug 22, 2026 16:59
    Re: #55
    It's a trick that plays on the title and illustration saying 7 people total, while the body text says '6 people' and '1-in-6.'
    68AnonymousAug 22, 2026 19:35
    Re: #55
    So is this article saying that even though the gamble has the higher expected value, most AIs still picked the lower-expected-value 'sacrifice 6, save 1' option?

    Or is it saying the AIs are dumb enough to think both options have the same expected value?

    Or maybe the article's author is the dumb one, and what they actually asked the AI to compare was 'sacrifice 5, save 1' — which would actually match the gamble's expected value…?
    57AnonymousAug 22, 2026 16:07
    Re: #1
    Is this the trolley problem?
    If we can crack this, that's automation sorted.
    67AnonymousAug 22, 2026 17:39
    Re: #57
    For the actual trolley problem, if you don't let the AI refuse to answer and force it to pick, pretty much every AI would choose to pull the lever — 1 dies but 5 are saved. Which, obviously, makes sense.
    Even humans would do the same if they weren't held responsible for pulling the lever, if they didn't feel any guilt over it.

    Background and Key Points

    The dilemma being tested is a variant of the trolley problem, the ethics thought experiment introduced by philosopher Philippa Foot in 1967 and refined by Judith Jarvis Thomson, which asks whether it is permissible to redirect harm to save a greater number of people. The thread is discussing a YouTube channel, “Ai Convo,” that runs recurring alignment-style stunts on commercial chatbots (would it save humans or its own servers, would it turn in a confessed murderer), and this installment asked several models — including xAI’s Grok, built into X/Twitter, and DeepSeek, the chatbot from the Hangzhou-based Chinese lab of the same name — to choose between a certain outcome that sacrifices six people to save one, or a 1-in-6 gamble where either all seven live or all seven die. 5ch’s Science News+ board is the site’s general tech/science discussion forum, where viral AI-test videos are routinely picked apart line by line rather than taken at face value.

    The argument that actually develops isn’t over which choice is correct, but whether the question can be scored at all. Post 11 rebuts the popular claim in post 3 that the gamble’s expected value is obviously higher, noting the number of survivors depends on an unstated probability p the prompt never supplies, so neither option is mathematically dominant. Several posters (55, 65, 68) also flag that the source video’s own numbers don’t add up — a “6 people, 1-in-6 odds” description paired with an illustration showing seven people total.

    What’s easy to miss reading only the summary: unlike the classic trolley problem, no agent here causes anyone’s death through direct action (post 34) — it’s a pure gamble weighed against a certainty, a structurally different moral question than “pull the lever or not.” And the claim that DeepSeek answered “more morally” than American models (post 38) rests on one anecdotal report from the video, not any systematic or repeated comparison.

    *This article is compiled as excerpts and a summary from the 5ch (Science News+) thread “[Discussion] Which would AI choose: a guaranteed method to save 1 by sacrificing 6, or a gamble where everyone lives or everyone dies?“