>>832106
>>832109
Personally I don't need the face to be entirely human. A suitable art style is usually enough to keep it cute, even before taking into account the effect of expressiveness and mannerisms. As far as I'm concerned, there isn't a very big qualitative difference between a feature like a snout and something like a monoeye. Both have the potential to be creepy, uncanny, or just ugly (and given the importance we put on eyes I'd say the monoeye even more so than the snout), but they can also turn out fine.
Besides, "would I fuck it" is far from the only reason to want interesting races in fantasy or sci-fi. The so-called "Tolkienesque" races are ubiquitous and painfully generic, but how often do you see a faction of birdmen play a major role? More kemono would help break the monotony of "human, but-" races.
Too bad anything like that is so unlikely compared to "generic high school SoL with animal people".
>>832112
>for some reason, it's been spared a large chunk of the autism that plagues western stuff
A large part of that is that most western stuff isn't actually about the characters or designs, it's about cliques and identity shit. It's less a "plague" than a congenital defect. Its core is ecelebs and normalfag drama with a different coat of paint, and is just as worthless. That's why the exceptions that are actually reasonable, like some of what crops up on /tg/, feel so different from the usual sparkledogs; they exist for a fundamentally different reason. As far as I know kemono doesn't have the same kind of community bullshit, so it actually exists for its own sake, and lacks the inherent cancer of its western counterpart.