"The
uncanny valley is a concept which holds that when human replicas look and act almost, but not perfectly, like actual human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The "valley" refers to the dip in a graph of the comfort level of humans as a function of a robot's human likeness."
Anime is definitely not an exception to the concept of the uncanny valley, and both 2D and 3D animation has cases where people show negative responses to the depiction of people if they reach a certain level of realism.
I opened this topic after an epiphany as I dove into the discussions in MAL, Animesuki and 4chan about the premiere of Aku no Hana. I discovered that I feel uncomfortable in watching anime series whose character designs are too realistic (the only item in my Anime List that I dropped is BECK, which had a realistic character design, although it is a bit simplified). I forgot about this concept in anime for some time until I stumbled upon the character designs for Aku no Hana. It was there that I fully accepted the concept.
How about you guys? Are you just as affected as I am when it comes to the uncanny valley in anime to the point of dropping or not enjoying the series? I'd also like to learn about how character designs in general affect the viewer's insight of the series.
As a sneak peek, here are the designs for the Aku no Hana manga (left) and anime (right).