This is a classic problem for people who didn't grow up making 8-bit pixel art. Typing "pixel art" into Nano-Banana only creates the illusion of pixel art, which quickly breaks down under modest scrutiny, particularly at larger resolutions.

That's why you can see "smeared edges," "fringing," etc.

Even a basic nearest neighbor downscale/upscale would have squashed some of the higher frequency noise.

OP: Look into palette reduction and pixel grids. This is a decent start as a post-processing tool for this stuff.

https://github.com/jenissimo/unfake.js

yes. i am more perceptive of bad art vs bad code. seeing so much bad generated art...everywhere...makes me wonder how much bad code is being put out there. art isn't load-bearing, but code can be.