To someone unfamiliar with anime, anime characters look extremely similar.

I'm unfamiliar with anime, and I disagree. (Not that I'll be able to provide examples.) There's a generic anime look, but there are a lot of things that don't look like the generic anime look.

The My Hero Academia character art is very visually distinct from OG Pokémon, which is very different to the Sun & Moon version of Ash Ketchum.