the weird animal-half-human character design in anime/manga

So basically, I just wanted to talk about the half-human half-animal character fetish in anime and manga...

I feel like morphing characters into having cat ears or having a tail etc is low-key gross, but I’m not trying to judge in any way for those who do like it. I respect your likes and dislikes and I’m not trying to be an asshole about it!

BUT I think there’s a small aspect to the concept that makes me feel a bit triggered. There’s no doubting it, mostly a lot of female characters & so-called “ukes” (from the genre yaoi) are sexualised into having animalistic features— such as having bunny/cat/dog ears, wearing tails or behaving in animal-like ways. I feel like these types of characters are always degraded into animal-like roles to convey their submissiveness, which is, undoubtedly, super messed up. But then again, these types of gender imbalanced issues have been thriving in manga and anime ever since the start. I understand that this concept is popular due to the Japanese culture and how it is apparently “cute” to have animal features— but this still doesn’t validate it healthily. It’s still fetishisation and immortalised sexualisation :/

Pls don’t hate me for expressing my opinion lol