I got this thing to work.

Instead of just pasting the weapon sprite on top of the battler, this lets you customize the use animations to anything you want. Using the same names for Directions / Attacks section lets the engine automatically play the correct animation and use the correct sprite when using equipped weapon, but you can add more if you want something like movement animations outside battle (use normal sprite instead of battler lets you do that).

Often you want the same animations but different sprites for similar weapons (different bladed weapons, etc.). Just use the parent option in the database like before.