An update:
MIN_OUTLIER, as a vr_base (and further as a by_run_vr_base) works incredibly well. Rick and Paul win this one. The noise is high, but MIN_OUTLIER also succeeds in finding a reasonable target nevertheless.
The edits I made, to use mean images does work well and makes nice clean images to inspect however its not as beneficial as I had hoped.
I have concerns that alignment to anatomy would benefit from a mean image (after volume registration) but thats a separate issue. I am also curious how even noisier data would work - perhaps the editing would be needed - but for now, AFNI and the AFNI crew claim another victory.