Anime is garbage

By Yermaw · 2026-07-04 00:49:24

It is by my view that anime as a medium is sometimes a poor one. Often, its stylistic choices are in bad taste-- by removing the detail and thus the importance of many human features and overly dramatizing the emotions that are shown by anime as opposed to regular humans; would demean humanity.

Take the most common stylistic choice; anime as a whole does this- they remove the detail of the nose, often replacing what should be a clearly defined nostril, ridge and other important details with a few lines- which oversimplifies the features of the human form. It'd be like abstract art in a way, it would be showing a disfigured person, as if to say noses were unimportant to the human face; to human expression and overall, to humanity.
This does not give off a positive, pro-human or pre-rational sense of life. This is needlessly chopping off parts of the human form without reason-- This is removing a part of humanity.
It's whimsical, horrific and in some cases annoying. The foolishness of a talented artist making an immense effort in shading, style and shape just for said character to look like a plastic doll without a nose. Just for it to look stupid, and foolish.
Why would you make such a choice?

Secondary to this, another stylistic choice most common in anime is to make the facial structure un-naturally sized. this is seen by looking at the face of the anime characters as a whole- you will see that they have a structure that is made from simple shapes, colours and is infact most commonly seen to by modelled after a cats face from the side, and with having large eyes that connotate cuteness. it'd be fine if that cuteness were for an actual reason, like if a character was a literal child- but its used incorrectly; for "adult" characters too. In the case of adults, It strays way to far from human form, it makes a supposedly 20 year old guy look like a 7 year-old. Can we say that such infantilisation is good? Should we strive to look like little kids?
All of which would mean that the medium as a general; would be to say that man are not to be taken seriously. That all of humanity is some sort of sissy, or a child, instead of any serious species. Does that scream pro-human?

There is good to be seen in anime obviously, what I am critiquing is the general-- given the poor state of a lot of anime nowadays being just slop with a side of sperg, they don't tend to actually put much effort into the look of the characters.

Majorly, It isn't so important that anime is simplified, that alone is not a bad thing- and is a virtue intellectually with how simplification would allow to see the emotions of a person more easily, thus allowing for greater narrative impact and help communicate to the viewer. It is important is that anime can allow for a reasonable amount of simplification as to not interfere with what makes us human-- but some companies do not do this. instead of an anime using simplicity for emphasising essence, it would be using that process to undermine the overall power and meaning of a piece-- removing the meaningfulness; thus weakening the fundamental weight of the human form, removing what is important about humanity. Simplification is a virtue, but over-simplification is not.

I am going to give a few examples of such bad anime designs and then a few good examples:

'Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid' has many examples of poorly thought through, horrible character design. Kanna Kamui, the little kid; is most relevant. In this character all of what I have talked about is most relevant, zero nose, huge eyes, and used for the sake of being practically an emoticon. for being what is supposed to be a really old being, (a heckin 9000 year old dragon~!) there is a lack of wisdom, knowingness, or pretty much anything other 'ohhh big eyes es so qute o algo.'
'No Game, No Life', Shiro. The Platelets from 'Cells At Work', Umaru Doma from 'Himoto! Umaru-chan' and most annoyingly Yui Hirasawa from 'k-On'
There is many good examples of bad anime design (I am ignoring the lore or any form of story or characterisation of these anime outside of looks.)

However a brilliant example of what an anime character would be is the main character from 'Solo Levelling' Sung Jinwoo. the way the face is built is elegantly simple, which contrasts the oversimplification of the many other characters I have mentioned previously, shadows are applied realistically, and a nose is shown.
The face is overall; human. It helps to accentuate the emotions and visuals of the character and the simplicity shows the essence of what is happening, and doesn't remove important details. His design also respects the age of the character, being a young man; he has largely developed traits with few infantilisations. this, overall makes it a good looking character. You can look at this and not be disguised or horrified.
Similarly, Roland Wimbledon (funny name), has a clear amount of effort placed in the details of the face that allow for the complexities of man to be shown. The eyes, (while larger than normal,) is of a reasonable size, which allows the face to be meaningfully expressive without oversimplification, and is without the horror of not having a nose.

To reiterate, Sometimes anime looks disgustingly horrific, over-expressive and "soy". But sometimes It can achieve great balance, allowing it to show expression effectively, while retaining human charm and upholding rationality.