Cartoon characters distinctly aren’t close enough to humans to trigger the uncanny Valley. You look at them and instantly realize they aren’t real humans (you don’t second guess yourself or feel some thing is off).
Cartoons do tend to possess exaggerated attractive characteristics such as big eyes and bodily figures. In addition, a cartoon character is still “played” by a real person and has personification like personality, goals, foibles, etc.
People can be attracted to literary characters that exist solely in someone’s imagination using text as inspiration and that same mental gymnastics can transform a cartoon character into someone more real in the minds eye (kind of a reverse of how caricatures are easily recognizable for the original subject).
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