Warning, i go on a rant so skip this if you can't take criticism about anime.
It's not limited to realistic vs anime. The problem with anime is it's the same exact style copied over and over. Western cartoons at least have their own styles. I thought about it and can't find western cartoons made by different people that are the same animation style. For example:
everyone is, for better or for worse, doing their own style.
Anime isn't. You could take a character from Pokemon, Digimon, (looks up anime pics)
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=anime+pic&t=ffsb&iax=1&ia=images
any of these and interchange them. They're all done with the
same formula (accented upper eyes, ovaloid irises and pupils, minimal to no nose, poorly defined mouth that can become whatever shape the expression needs, horizontally elongated head head, spiky style hairs, skinny bodies only emphasizing the defining gender traits rather than showing proper muscle groups or proportions.
And in that it's an very cut-corner figure style. The expressive parts of the face are enlarged without regard to proportions, sometimes the head is actually blow up or shown with expression bubbles (like a water drop) instead of learning to draw expressions.
as an artist, I find this lazy. It's a cut-corner excuse for learning facial features.
The same goes for anime bodies. They usually have no idea how muscle groups or the human body moves.
Anime has stunted artistic development because people think it looks good. It's a very poorly developed style of figure drawing that people need to get over and actually learn to really draw.
This in addition to the widespread copying of the style really bugs me. Cartoons and figure art are at a stand still for many young artists and animators because of it.