Midjourney creators introduce --sref 3438423518 for 80s dark-fantasy manga

• Midjourney creators are circulating --sref 3438423518 as a reusable shortcut for an 80s-90s dark-fantasy manga look, with Artedeingenio's post describing a mix of seinen linework, post-apocalyptic grit, and influences associated with Miura and Fist of the North Star.
• The outputs in the sample set lean on heavy cross-hatching, battered armor, skull-strewn wastelands, and selective color accents, which makes the code read less like generic anime and more like printed dark-fantasy illustration.
• Other creators shared adjacent style references this week, including a retro-futurist sci-fi code built around French bande dessinée influences and a classical engraving code for monochrome heroic figures.
• Prompt-library accounts are also packaging more cinematic looks, with Promptsref's trending post framing soft-focus film aesthetics as promptable systems rather than one-off images.

The new code is being presented as a style reference for gritty manga illustration, not a broad fantasy preset. In Artedeingenio's examples, faces are etched with dense pen texture, armor is rendered with metallic scratch detail, and the scenes sit in red-black skies or barren landscapes. One image pushes a Berserk-like armored silhouette; another pairs a ruined car, rifle, and skull with a desert backdrop. The common thread is harsh ink structure plus muted color, with bright eyes or red fabric used as the main contrast.

That makes the code useful for concept sheets, key art, and story beats that need “printed manga gravitas” fast, without prompting every material and shading choice from scratch.

Alongside the dark-fantasy code, creators also posted --sref 2509259129 as a European retro-futurist sci-fi look. That reference points to Moebius-adjacent bande dessinée, with sun-bleached deserts, yellow-blue vehicles, brutalist transit structures, and contemplative sci-fi framing. It lands in a very different register: cleaner skies, brighter palettes, and architectural detail over menace.

A separate thread from Promptsref highlights a “retro dreamy soft-focus” style built around halation, diffusion, film grain, and saturated-but-hazy light. Their linked guide PromptSref library and a similar orange-gold cinematic breakdown orange-gold guide show how creators are turning sref discovery into categorized look-development workflows. Even the engraving-style post fits that pattern: a single code attached to a tight visual grammar instead of a vague mood board.