Midjourney's Niji V6 Model is Incredible for Anime

Many contemporary art styles have come and gone, but very few survived, and even fewer thrived with age. Anime is an anomaly. It's been a huge part of Japan's culture for the last century and has since become one of its largest industries.

AI image generators may have been amazing, but they couldn't mimic the intricacy and passion behind talented animators. Midjourney aims to capture that magic with its Niji model, and dare I say that they've already done it with Niji 6 a few months ago.

The only question is: how good are we talking?

Throughout this article, I'll be putting Niji through its paces with a variety of prompts based on different genres of anime. We'll explore its strengths and weaknesses, share a couple of tips for getting the most out of the model, compare it with its previous model and base V6, and showcase some of the amazing creations that only Niji can produce.

What is the Niji Model?

Niji is an AI art generation model made by Midjourney in collaboration with Spellbrush, an AI generative studio that specializes in anime. This newest model borrows heavily from Midjourney V6’s latest features, allowing it to understand prompts better and create understandable (but imperfect) text.

How Can You Use the Midjourney Niji V6 Model?

If you’ve used Midjourney in the past, then using Niji will be a walk in the park. You just need to attach the “--niji 6” parameter at the end of each prompt. Since it’s a strong model, you might also need to turn down the stylization to 250 or lower. For example, here’s an image of Luffy from One Piece at “--s 250” and you can already see that it has a stronger style even at 250.

Some Examples of Midjourney Niji V6

I’m not going to tease you any longer.

Here are some examples of Midjourney Niji V6, along with the prompts that created them:

Sci-Fi Anime

Base Prompt: an astronaut landing on an advanced moon base

Base Prompt: lush alien forest at night, bioluminescent plants, floating jellyfish in the sky

Base Prompt: a technologically advanced city built on the underside of a giant asteroid, inspired by cowboy bepop

Fantasy Anime

Base Prompt: eren from attack on titan

Base Prompt: a friendly ghost in the middle of a field, inspired by spirited away, studio ghibli, hayao miyazaki

Base Prompt: a woman protagonist who can control monsters based on the four basic elements, getting ready for a battle, epic anime scene

Horror Anime

Base Prompt: a creepy dimly-lit hallway, inspired by corpse party 2013

Base Prompt: a man watching an unknown spiral in the sky, unfathomable, junji ito

Base Prompt: a woman with blood on her face, inspired by perfect blue 1997, satoshi kon aesthetic, analog

Mecha

Base Prompt: A colossal and battle-scarred mecha emerges from the depths of a volcano, mappa animation

Base Prompt: Two sleek and futuristic mechas engage in a high-speed aerial dogfight, laser beams, interfacing

Base Prompt: A mecha and kaiju hybrid with electricity powers, mappa, rain, atmospheric, evening

With Text

Base Prompt: exterior, a coffee shop named "Kohi"

Base Prompt: yui hirasawa holding a sign that says "Good Morning", in the style of K-On!

Character Design

Base Prompt: a mage casting a rune, fantasy

Base Prompt: a beautiful blonde girl with one green eye and one brown eye, heterochromia, slice of life

Base Prompt: a woman with her basilisk, fighting stance, character design

Thoughts So Far

These are absolutely incredible. The prompts are more accurate, it has a deeper anime database so it knows who I'm talking about when I specify a character, you can do text, and it's expressive.

However, if I were to be nitpicky, I’d say that Midjourney really understated the strength of this new model. Even at --s 100, which should only be a tenth of its stylization power, it’s still really opinionated. My only hope is that they’d recalibrate the model in the future for a more accurate generation. 

Midjourney Niji can also sometimes mix up characters when you’re trying to put them together. For example, here’s one I created using a simple prompt: “a fight between Luffy from One Piece and Eren from Attack on Titan.

Luffy is pretty much accurate (which makes sense because One Piece has been an anime far longer than Attack on Titan) but Eren somehow turned into a fusion of him and Luffy. I would argue though that this shouldn’t be a dealbreaker considering that you’re likely not using Niji to use these characters, but take inspiration from them.

Direct Comparisons With The Niji 5 and the Base Model

In this section, I’m not going to generate the base model images with the same prompt. Instead, I’ll attach an “anime art” or something similar at the end of each base model for a better 1:1 comparison.

Sci-Fi Anime

Fantasy Anime

Horror Anime

Mecha

With Text

Thoughts So Far

Quality-wise, I’d say that Midjourney V6 and Niji 6 are pretty close. However, Niji 6 is more faithful to creating anime art, while V6 is broader and more flexible with art (as it should be). On the other hand, Niji 5 was great for its time, but after seeing them side by side, it’s pretty clear how big of a difference there is between these two Niji models.

Since Midjourney V6.1 was released last August, in my opinion, there’s really no reason why it shouldn’t be the model you use even when generating anime images unless you’re using real anime characters as an element to your prompt. It’s just so good. Here’s a quick comparison of V6.1 and Niji 6 using the same prompt:

The Verdict

This newest Niji 6 model is another great addition to Midjourney's already capable arsenal. While not perfect, Midjourney showed an ability to create anime characters, backgrounds, and scenes when prompted with the right inputs. The images are incredibly rich, faithful to the source material, and imaginative.

They do, however, have to improve their stylized parameters to be more accurate. But once they have that sorted, I struggle to see other areas of improvement for this model besides getting better at imitating certain styles, having enough nuance to differentiate between characters, and adding text.

Midjourney's Niji 6 model is amazing for anime artists, creators, and even just fans of anime in general. If you're not satisfied, I highly suggest reading our other articles on Midjourney. Have fun!