It looks uncanny

Has anyone seen a serious explanation as to why it exists? Personally, I don't find it weird, it makes sense as a way to show the mouth's full breadth of expressions from the side, but it does look kinda jank especially when it's disonnected from the lips.

>>55864
I'd assume because of the first point you made to how you can ignore it. Also as a cost cutting and skill compensating measure that doesn't require good animation of a full side profile.

>>55861
It'd probably look weird if the characters were drawn more accurately, but because anime art tends to be very loose, IMO it usually works.

>>55864
From a practical standpoint, it saves a ton of time and money. An actual accurate profile mouth would require redrawing a decent chunk of the head for each mouth position, especially on cels, which is what they would've been using back when they first came up with the technique.