Why some users will never want photoreal and some users find anime 'empty' — both sides explained, plus how to make either work.
I watched two camps argue on Discord once.
Realism camp: "Anime is drawings, not women." Anime camp: "Realistic ones are factory-line faces with no soul."
Both are half right. This post isn't picking a side (okay, slightly), but it lays out why each camp thinks what they think, and at the end I'll tell you how to make either side work on AI.
I assumed anime fans were the ones who "couldn't accept real people." Talking to power users showed I was wrong, badly.
They like anime for real reasons:
1. The purity of designed faces
Real faces are genetic lottery output. Anime characters are intentionally designed — every line is a choice. Eye size, hair color, how personality shows through appearance — all curated.
It's like looking at art vs looking at a passport photo. One is expression. One is record.
2. Stylized "amplification"
Anime can amplify "gentle" to a degree that doesn't exist in physical reality. Make "contradictory cute" combos that are logically impossible. Realistic images can never do this — they're bound by what real human bodies can express.
3. No "she actually exists" weight
Many anime fans actively don't want photoreal — because realism makes them think "what is she doing right now in real life / would she ever like me." Anime characters explicitly don't exist, so the emotional projection has no weight.
4. IP and story scaffolding
One realistic image is just an image. A specific anime character has 30 episodes, 200 manga chapters, 15 years of fan culture behind her. Information density is orders of magnitude higher.
If reading those four made you go "oh damn that's actually me" — you're probably more in the anime camp than you realized.
The realism camp's reasons go deeper than "can't handle anime."
1. Realism is irreplaceable for biological response
Skin texture, pores, hair detail, sweat, the way light scatters on a body — these are the signals your brain uses to identify "this is a real person." Anime triggers an aesthetic response. Realism triggers a physiological response. Two different circuits.
If your need is the second one, anime doesn't deliver.
2. The "she could exist in this world" illusion
Realistic images let you imagine running into someone like that at a cafe, on the subway, at work. That possibility itself is attractive.
Anime explicitly can't exist in physical reality (which is, again, why the anime camp likes it — see point 3 above).
3. Real-world complexity in detail
Realistic images have tons of "meaningless but real" detail — unimportant background objects, random skin moles, hair not perfectly arranged. Your brain subconsciously scans these for "this is a real scene." Anime is drawn, every stroke deliberate, which paradoxically reads as "too clean."
4. Continuity with reality
Every woman around you is photoreal. Every person in movies, TV, your social feed is photoreal. Your "aesthetic database" is calibrated to photoreal. Realistic images plug directly into that database.
The realism camp thinks: anime fans are reality-avoidant loners. Wrong. Anime fans are usually highly self-aware people with their own coherent aesthetic system. They're not "settling because they can't get real women" — they're actively choosing a different aesthetic.
The anime camp thinks: realism fans have shallow tastes, just looking at body parts. Also wrong. Plenty of realism fans have very fine taste for light, composition, and expression — not just any realistic image satisfies them. "Realism is just looking at faces and bodies" is an arrogant oversimplification.
We default to realism via bigASP v2.5. But we have anime users too.
Realism camp on ximages: drop-in. bigASP trains on photoreal adult photography — its home turf.
Anime camp on ximages: needs adjustment. bigASP isn't great at pure anime, but it can do semi-realistic (think Cyberpunk Edgerunners style, or anime facial features on realistic skin).
Anime-leaning template on ximages:
young japanese woman, anime-influenced face, large expressive eyes,
small refined nose, smooth skin, casual outfit, indoor setting,
soft natural light, semi-realistic style, anime portrait style
Don't add anime, cartoon, illustration to negative — the default negative includes these and you'll need to counteract them in your user negative field (or switch to a FLUX-based provider).
For pure anime — honestly, we're not the best choice. You should use NovelAI, Animagine, or SDXL + anime LoRA stacks. Anime via bigASP always has photoreal "gravity" pulling it back.
I have no problem with either camp, but personally I prefer semi-realistic — not as heavy as photos, not as weightless as pure anime.
Semi-realistic lets you look at "almost-real people" through "fantasy eyes." Half of each world.
This is why our default prompt templates lean toward "realistic but with slight idealized softening" — intentionally keeping a hint of anime in the photoreal substrate. Not fully one way, not fully the other.
Try this:
Your answer is right there.
A lot of people end up somewhere in the middle — which is exactly why semi-realistic is having a moment right now.
There's no "right" camp. Both needs are real, they're just different.
If you read this far still unsure which camp you're in — you probably have a foot in both, in which case use both. AI makes this kind of flip-flopping free. One evening photoreal, next evening semi-anime, no one's stopping you.
Related: 60-second AI girlfriend guide · bigASP vs FLUX vs RealVisXL (covers which provider to use for pure anime) · AI girlfriends vs OnlyFans honest comparison