“Anime” art isn’t just desudesu

It annoys the heck out of me when I see people brushing off anything stylized as anime art that has no foundational skills or anything in it, as something that is completely generic. Sure, desu-art has no regard for foundations and such—I’ll admit that as much as the next person. But how can you put together Tite Kubo in the same pile as Doraemon? As soon as you elitists see something that doesn’t look 100% realism, you brush it into the animu category, and you say that it’s crap. But many anime styles have a very good grasp on anatomy, with a touch of STYLE. Which brings me to my other point— I’ve seen posts on here applauding photorealism artists for their skill while saying that the more stylized artworks aren’t individualized at all. But HOW CAN REALISM BE INDIVIDUALISTIC AND UNIQUE IF ALL WE’RE PROMOTING IS DRAWING EXACTLY WHAT WE SEE? Even the classical artists put their own style into it, whether it was the distorted Medieval or the dramatic Baroque. When I look at the quality artwork today with “anime features”, the figures are dynamic in both their pose and expression, their emotion or state of being much more emphasized than what a real model can do. And you know what? You can’t just brush that away as crap and stick an Archaic Smile on every artwork. Also. If you paint exactly what you see in real life and don’t add a touch of style, you’re not going to be going far today either. Where do you want to work? Concept artists have heavily stylized work, with torsos and limbs often distorted to fit the character or mood, and faces overly expressive the way traditional cartoons do it.
This confession/rant isn’t focused on shojo moe desu style anime, but on stylized manga/anime style artwork that clearly show skill—like the work from Bleach, Naruto, Deathnote—that are just thrown aside into a pile of “nope, these artists obviously don’t know anything about anatomy or color or form”. 

-anonymous