Illusory Aniimo: How to Get the Gradient Name in Aniimo

The gradient name on an Aniimo means it is an Illusory Aniimo: you reach Soulmate, 4,500 Affinity, with one friend, keep interacting daily until the game rolls the chance of making you Illusory Friends, then tap Aniimo Illusory on their card and each pick one Aniimo to pair. Aiueo paired his Irisalis with a friend’s on 2 November 2026, by the in-game date, and filmed it, with a plain verdict at the end: it is a cosmetic and changes no stat.

Soulmate is the part you can count. The Illusory Friends roll is the part you cannot: the game’s text says only that daily interactions have a chance, and the figures are not in the client’s tables. Aiueo and his friend Aeris reached Soulmate and became Illusory Friends about a week after reaching Soulmate, which he calls lucky. Figures below come from the game’s own data files as shipped with the 29 October 2026 update (1.1 Part 2), checked on 2 November 2026.

How do you become Illusory Friends in Aniimo?

Illusory Friends is a perk of the Soulmate tier, so it starts in the Friends Tree. Open the Friends menu, tap the friend, choose Friends Tree, and push your Affinity with that one person up to Soulmate. You can do it even when you are not in the same channel, Aiueo says at 0:25. The perk then has two halves, a roll and a pairing, and the six steps in order are:

1. Open the friend’s Friends Tree from their card in the Friends menu.
2. Reach Soulmate, 4,500 Affinity, and keep playing with the same friend.
3. Interact every day until the card announcing Illusory Friends appears.
4. Tap Aniimo Illusory on the friend’s card to send an invitation.
5. Each of you picks one Aniimo that is not in your active party, and confirms.
6. Check the Aniimo’s name tooltip in Aniimo management for the friend and the date.

Aiueo’s one warning, at 0:39, is the one that costs people weeks: reaching Soulmate does not unlock the coloured name by itself. The client’s own line for the perk is the reason.

Soulmate: what 4,500 Affinity means

Soulmate is the sixth and last friendship tier, and it begins at 4,500 Affinity. The tiers and their ranges are in the client’s friendship table, and the exchange rule the game prints for each tier shows what the lower ones already give you.

Tier	Affinity	What the game prints for the tier
New Friend	0–99	Swap: no Aniimo can be exchanged yet
Good Friend	100–499	Swap: Common, Lumin Stage, Basic Form, potential up to 8
Close Friend	500–1,199	Swap: Common, Basic Form, potential up to 8
Trusted Friend	1,200–2,499	Swap: Common and Umbral, region or weather forms, potential up to 9
Best Friend	2,500–4,499	Swap: Common and Umbral, region or weather forms, potential up to 10
Soulmate	4,500–9,999	Aniimo Illusory, Friend Prefix, and a Wild Surge share that “grows significantly”

The Soulmate row lists the three perks the game gives only at that tier. The Wild Surge one is the one the site has already measured: joining a friend’s Wild Surge raises your own world’s Prismatic Energy “significantly” at Soulmate, as our Prismatic Energy guide shows. The Trusted Friend swap rule is quoted in our Mysterious Aniimo Egg guide. The range tops out at 9,999, so there is no tier above Soulmate to chase.

How much Affinity can you earn in a day?

100 a day, and no more. The Affinity Info screen prints the running total as Affinity Earned Today, and the help text caps it at 100 points. Divide 4,500 by 100 and the floor is 45 full days from zero. That is arithmetic on the cap, not a measured time: a friend who is already at Best Friend starts from 2,500 and needs 20 more days at the cap. At 4,500 the clock stops mattering and the roll takes over.

The sources, with the limits the game prints for each:

Source	Affinity	Daily limit on that source
Visit their Home	20	20
Friend chat	10	20
Use emotes	20	20
Defeat an Alpha or Omega as a squad	20	60
Complete a multiplayer mode as a squad	40	40
Send a Gift of Encounter	10	none printed
Send a Gift of Affection	30	none printed
Send a Gift of Celebration	99	none printed

Add the capped sources and you reach 160, so the 100 ceiling is what binds, not any single line. Aiueo’s shortcut is the Gift of Celebration, bought at the Mementos shop for Glimmer (1:00): 99 Affinity in a single press, the biggest line in the table. The shop prices and the weekly limit per friend are in our gifting guide. For the free route he names the Holo-Battle Interlink and Elite Training as places gifts come from; that is his claim and we have not traced it. The game does not say whether a gift counts against the 100.

Two of the daily lines are things you do anyway. Visiting a friend’s Home is 20 Affinity once a day, and a Homeland worth visiting is the point of our Homeland guide. A multiplayer clear is 40, the largest single line apart from the gifts, and the squad lines only pay when you play them together.

Why is Soulmate not enough for Illusory Friends?

Because Illusory Friends is a roll, not a threshold. The Soulmate perk reads: “Daily interactions have a chance of making you Illusory Friends. Once you become Illusory Friends, you can pair your Aniimo with theirs to cuddle and become Illusory Aniimo.” Until the roll lands, the friend’s card carries the message “Not Illusory Friends yet.” Aiueo says there is a low chance of unlocking it each day (1:17) and that patience is the cost.

He calls it “the next friendship level”, which is not quite what the game does. Soulmate is the last of the six tiers and the range ends at 9,999; Illusory Friends is a separate state on top of it, with its own notice. When it fires you get a card on screen: “You and Aeris are now Illusory Friends! Illusory Friends can pair up one of their own Aniimo with one of their friend’s to create an Illusory Aniimo. Now, go make your mark together!”, under a Friends Forever banner and an Open Friend Profile button.

What nobody has published is the odds. The client’s tables carry the tiers, the daily limits and the text, but no figure for this roll, so any “X per cent per day” in circulation is a guess. Aiueo’s own report is one week of daily play after reaching Soulmate, one friend, one success. It is a data point, not a rate. The only rule that follows from the text is the obvious one: stay at Soulmate, interact every day, and the chance gets its daily turns.

How do you pair your Aniimo as Illusory Friends?

Open the friend’s card and tap Aniimo Illusory. It sits first in the grid of buttons, ahead of Visit Home, Profile, Friends Tree, Team Up and Chat. Aiueo says the option is coloured once you qualify; before that the game answers “Not Illusory Friends yet”. Tapping it sends an invitation, and the invite window reads “You can perform Aniimo Illusory now.”

Then both of you pick one Aniimo from your own box. The header on the selection screen reads “Aeris, Illusory Target”, and an hourglass in that header turns into a tick once the selection is made. There is one catch, and Aiueo hits it on camera at 1:52: an Aniimo currently in your combat or exploration party cannot be chosen. The tooltip says so, the toast “Illusory interrupted” appears at 1:55 when he leaves the screen, and the fix is to take that Aniimo out of its party, off swimming, flying and combat duty, then choose it again. The game’s generic refusal is “This Aniimo cannot be selected.”

Once both of you have pressed Confirm Selection, a countdown starts from 3. Either side can still back out with Deselect, and if the friend does, you see “The friend has canceled Illusory.” Aiueo chose Irisalis, a Lv.70 Aniimo with Perfect potential. If you are choosing which one deserves the name, our Irisalis fiche and Irisalis build guide show why that one is easy to want to keep on the team.

The game tracks how many you can hold. A counter reads “Illusified Aniimo: x/y”, and when you are over it the game warns: “You’ve reached your Illusory Aniimo limit. Choosing this Aniimo to illusify will revert your Aniimo to its original form. Continue?” The two numbers are filled in by the game at runtime and are not in the client tables we read, so we give none. The warning’s second half is the part to note: the new pairing costs you an older one.

What does the gradient name look like, and who sees it?

The Aniimo’s name turns from the default plain text to a pink and violet gradient, and the Aniimo gets a record of who paired it and when. At 0:15 the Aniimo management panel shows Irisalis in that gradient, as in the first picture on this page. In the world at 0:10, the same Aniimo carries a pink name above it, and under it a blue bar reading “’s Aeris” with Aiueo’s player name below.

Aiueo says other players can see the coloured name too, “if I’m not mistaken”, and that is the right amount of hedging: the video never shows a second player’s screen, so treat it as his belief. The bar reading ’s Aeris is a second thing to explain, and the last frame of the video, shown below, helps: each player’s Aniimo carries the other player’s name. The Soulmate perk list has a Friend Prefix, a Designation Prefix cosmetic you receive from this friend, and the bar may be it; the video does not say. Treat that link as our inference, not a confirmed fact.

The record is the confirmed part. In Aniimo management, tap the name and a tooltip opens: “Illusory Aniimo. Illusifying Friend: Aeris. Illusification Date: 11/02/2026.” The date is printed month first, which for a video uploaded on 2 November 2026 is that day.

Cosmetic only: the numbers did not move

An Illusory Aniimo has the same stats as before. Aiueo’s closing point at 2:29 is that being Illusory Friends gives no extra stats, combat power or abilities, only the gradient name. The two screens bear him out. On the selection screen at 2:05 Irisalis reads HP 15,040, BREAK 440, ATK 884, M.DEF 415, P.DEF 396, REGEN 460 and CP 4234; after the pairing, the tooltip frame at 2:47 shows HP 15,040, BREAK 440 and ATK 884 again. The game’s perk text never mentions a stat either.

So do not pick the Aniimo for what it will become. Pick the one you want everybody to see next to your name. The name is the whole reward, which is also why the roll feels slow: nothing about it makes the next fight easier.

What the video and the game leave open

Three things are not answered. The first is the odds of the daily roll, absent from both. The second is the cap on Illusory Aniimo: the counter exists on screen, its value was not shown. The third is whether gifts count towards the daily 100; the table above lists no limit for them, and the cap text does not say. A fourth is smaller: the game has an Unset Illusory Friends action, and we do not know whether using it also clears the name.

One risk is in the game’s own words. Blocking a friend ends the friendship and resets Affinity: “If they were a friend, the friendship will be terminated and Affinity points will be reset.” That would drop a Soulmate back to zero, so do not block someone you are 40 days into.

There is also no matching badge. We checked the achievements list for an entry on Illusory Aniimo or Soulmate and found none, and no friendship goal of any kind. For the rest of the friends and Companion Mode rewards, our Companion Handbook guide and the dailies and weekly caps table are the places to plan the daily 100.