What is Midjourney's Niji Mode, and how do you use it?

If you’ve been frequenting the Midjourney Discord server often enough, or you occasionally visit anime forums, you may have run into a feature of the AI image generator called Niji Mode. But what’s it doing, exactly, and how can you take advantage of it yourself?

What is Midjourney’s Niji Mode?

Essentially, Niji Mode puts an anime spin on all of the images you produce using it. It’s a collaboration between Midjourney and an indie game/AI developer called Spellbrush. Translated from Japanese, niji means “rainbow.”

Midjourney tends to skew towards photorealism or Western art styles by default. If you’re hellbent on creating anime, say for a profile image or mobile wallpaper, Niji Mode is a way around that — the results can look like something out of a Hayao Miyazaki movie.

How to use Niji Mode in Midjourney

Getting started, we’re going to assume that you’re already subscribed to a Midjourney plan and have a verified Discord account. Midjourney subscriptions start at $10 per month or $96 per year. If you have yet to join, the service has a quick start guide.

With that done, here’s how to use Niji Mode:

• Join the Midjourney Discord server, then head to any #General or #Newbie channel. The Midjourney Bot won’t generate images anywhere else, except on third-party Discord servers that have the bot invited.
• If you want to use Niji Mode in a one-time request, add –-niji 5 as a parameter to the end of an /imagine image prompt. For an example, you might try /imagine Dante’s Inferno set in Texas –niji 5. Optionally you can include reference photos, as well as additional parameters including aspect ratio.
• When you want to use Niji Mode for several requests in a row, set it as your default via the /settings command’s menu options. You can switch the mode off the same way.
• Use the V buttons to generate variations of your art, and the U buttons to upscale for higher resolutions.

If you want to add a twist to its default look, Niji Mode supports several exclusive –style parameters that you can add to the end of an /imagine prompt:

• –style original reverts to the original incarnation of Niji Model Version 5, which was replaced in May 2023. This isn’t necessarily much different than the current one, and may even produce non-anime images.
• –style scenic tends to create a more cinematic look, putting extra emphasis on backdrops.
• –style cute is largely self-explanatory, and may exaggerate some features on people and animals.
• –style expressive aims at a “sophisticated illustrated feeling.” Generated images might seem at home in a storybook.