MidJourney Can Make Stunning Anime Artwork With This Model, Here’s How to Use It

MidJourney is arguably the best overall AI image generator currently on the market, and it can handle almost any type of request wth aplomb. However, you might not have known that it has a special alternate mode specifically for anime and manga style illustrations—Niji.

Meet the Niji Model for MidJourney

Niji is an alternative model to the standard, general-purpose MidJourney model. It’s been trained and tuned specifically to create the best anime and manga style art it can. As I write this, the latest model of Niji is V6, which is the same number of generations as the main MidJourney model. While Niji has always been good at creating anime-style images, with the V6 Alpha its taken a similar leap in consistency, prompt adherence, and quality as its mainstream sibling.

Can Standard MidJourney Do Anime?

Since the standard MidJourney model is general-purpose, it can definitely produce anime-style images. However. Niji has specific knowledge of anime art styles, compositions, dynamic action, and everything else that makes anime and manga so distinct as a total body of work. While this becomes more apparent as you attempt anime-style images on both models, here’s an example of the same prompt run through both models.

First the standard MidJourney model for “Male anime style warrior swordsman.”

Then, the Niji V6 model for the same prompt.

Even though the prompt specified an anime style, only Niji produced something that’s immediately recognizable as anime or manga style illustrations. There’s nothing wrong with the images that the standard model produces, but it’s just not tuned for this specific aesthetic. Whereas if you want anime-style illustrations consistently, then Niji will deliver them almost every time.

Switching to Niji

MidJourney will default to the standard model, which means you have to toggle a switch in order to get to Niji. Luckily, it’s easy to switch back and forth.

If you’re using Discord to interface with MidJourney, then simply type “/settings” in the chat box and send that command to the MidJourney chatbot.

You’ll see a settings window pop up, where you can choose Niji from a drop-down list. Choose the latest version, or the latest non-Alpha version if you prefer.

If you’re using the MidJourney web interface, then click on the settings icon, which looks like a set of three horizontal sliders, and then under the “Version” drop-down select the Niji model of your choice.

Until you change it back, all of your subsequent images will now be run through Niji. To get back to the standard model, just repeat the same steps.

Making Cool Anime Art With the Right Keywords

If you ask Niji to generate something without specifying that it should be anime style, you’ll get similar results to the main model, if not slightly worse. What you ask for in your prompt is still quite important. As an example, here are some important things to include in your prompt depending on what you want:

• The words “anime” or “manga.”
• The era of anime.
• Specific show names if you want to emulate that style.
• The gender, race, or job of a character. E.g. “elf”, “warrior”, samurai. etc.
• The actions or poses characters are taking.

This is, of course, just a start, but to show you what I mean, here are some example images with their prompts.

Prompt: “An 80s anime style mech walking through a jungle.”

Prompt: “70s anime male elven archers wearing light armor”

Prompt: “Modern anime style female cyborg character with blue hair and visible body panels.”

Prompt:”90s anime male vampire warrior dark and gothic.”

You can run the gamut of characters, styles, and scenarios. The more you know about the medium of anime overall, the more you’ll know what types of prompts are likely to fit the style best. Although sometimes the most fun can be had by pushing your prompts into areas where anime and manga don’t usually fit, but I’ll leave that up to your individual imaginations.