The images I picked are all clumped at the bubble boobed end of the spectrum to make a point. She doesn't look like a little girl because she's anime, she looks like a little girl because she looks like a little girl. Although yes, the more modern anime seems to be especially neotonic compared to its predecessors.
80sanimewasbetter,nowIcan'tjustsayIlikeanimeIhavetospecifyspecificerasorspecificartistsbecauseofallthisdopeyloliconartworkrantrantrantrantrantrantI actually work in a department store jewelry section and I see different types of women all the time. There's definitely a lot of attractive women that don't have enormous boobs or that don't fit into a standardized bodyshape. I would even say that I especially like real-life petite women, what with the anime-babe being a work of fiction. It would definitely be another thing if this were a game with several women to choose from, but when there's only one woman in the entire universe, you're basically saying "this is the ideal female" and I'm saying "not my ideal, buster". And after the opening, I was expecting the orcs to deliver something like an elegant elf babe or growling goblin girl or wild cat woman, not an extra from K-On. Again, it's like you're saying "in a universe of infinite possibilities, this little girl is exactly what I wanted".
And as you say, when you're making cartoons (anime or otherwise) you're dealing with a simplified form, you have less tools available to make your characters look matured or attractive or whatever, so you really need to use the tools you've got, even if it makes them look unrealistic. And also, since you can make cartoon babes look like anything you can imagine, you're expected to exaggerate at least a little. Exaggeration is a part of cartooning, you want to pick a feature that makes a person stand out and really highlight that feature in the character's design. Also, a point that a lot of artists don't get, is that just simplifying or stylizing a subject
automatically exaggerates certain features of the character, often a sense of flatness or inorganicness, and in the case of anime and most american toon styles, a sense of neoteny, so if you don't want the character to come across as a flat, plastic, little kid, you need to compensate for that, so being purely realistic is actually not that realistic.
But, if we are making the argument that this is supposed to look realistic, here's some real-life teen/petite porn for comparison:
Spoiler (click to show/hide):
