# NijiGAN: Transform What You See into Anime with Contrastive Semi-Supervised Learning and Neural Ordinary Differential Equations

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.19455 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.19455/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 18 of its 23 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Dec 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00667/) (2022)
- [Neural Ordinary Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.07366/) (2018)
- [Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04958/) (2019)
- [Multimodal Unsupervised Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.04732/) (2018)
- [Generative Adversarial Text to Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.05396/) (2016)
- [Contrastive Learning for Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.15651/) (2020)
- [Unsupervised Image-to-Image Translation Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.00848/) (2017)
- [A Review on Generative Adversarial Networks: Algorithms, Theory, and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.06937/) (2020)
- [StyleSwin: Transformer-based GAN for High-resolution Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10762/) (2021)
- [On Robustness of Neural Ordinary Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.05513/) (2019)
- [Dual Contrastive Learning for Unsupervised Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.07689/) (2021)
- [Exploring Patch-wise Semantic Relation for Contrastive Learning in Image-to-Image Translation Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.01532/) (2022)
- [Advancements in Generative AI: A Comprehensive Review of GANs, GPT, Autoencoders, Diffusion Model, and Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.10242/) (2023)
- [Scenimefy: Learning to Craft Anime Scene via Semi-Supervised Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12968/) (2023)
- [Latent Transformations via NeuralODEs for GAN-based Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14825/) (2021)
- [Contrastive Learning for Unsupervised Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.03117/) (2021)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks for photo to Hayao Miyazaki style cartoons](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.07702/) (2020)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Generative AI has transformed the animation industry. Several models have been developed for image-to-image translation, particularly focusing on converting real-world images into anime through unpaired translation. Scenimefy, a notable approach utilizing contrastive learning, achieves high fidelity anime scene translation by addressing limited paired data through semi-supervised training. However, it faces limitations due to its reliance on paired data from a fine-tuned StyleGAN in the anime domain, often producing low-quality datasets. Additionally, Scenimefy's high parameter architecture presents opportunities for computational optimization. This research introduces NijiGAN, a novel model incorporating Neural Ordinary Differential Equations (NeuralODEs), which offer unique advantages in continuous transformation modeling compared to traditional residual networks. NijiGAN successfully transforms real-world scenes into high fidelity anime visuals using half of Scenimefy's parameters. It employs pseudo-paired data generated through Scenimefy for supervised training, eliminating dependence on low-quality paired data and improving the training process. Our comprehensive evaluation includes ablation studies, qualitative, and quantitative analysis comparing NijiGAN to similar models. The testing results demonstrate that NijiGAN produces higher-quality images compared to AnimeGAN, as evidenced by a Mean Opinion Score (MOS) of 2.192, it surpasses AnimeGAN's MOS of 2.160. Furthermore, our model achieved a Frechet Inception Distance (FID) score of 58.71, outperforming Scenimefy's FID score of 60.32. These results demonstrate that NijiGAN achieves competitive performance against existing state-of-the-arts, especially Scenimefy as the baseline model.