>>96928847You know there was a pretty good panel of "Understanding comics" that I think put this into perspective.
See: when a character design is more simplistic, cartoonish or "stylistic" then we, as an audience, can insert details that we are familiar with and percieve the character as "our own" essentially.
You know how people say "why do anime characters look white"? Well you tell a Japanese person that and they just look at you like you're saying nonsense because anime characters look Japanese to them. Because where details are vague, undefined or abstract you insert your own personal biases into them.
You'll notice that when there's a "white" or "black" person in anime or manga they tend to be drawn with more detail and more like a characature akin to what you're describing. This has the property of making them seem alien, opposite or "removed" from us. They're foreign, in other words.
Now wether or not this is a good or a bad thing is really up to you. Personally I don't find the notion of highlighting someone's "foreign" nature to put yourself in the perspective of a person who might find them unfamiliar to be all that bad an idea.
But if your character is going to be a mainstay and a friend or associate then it's probably best to make them as artistically relatable to the audience as possible.
