[claudiawerner]

The ethnographic research into the consumers of the people who watch such animations would disagree with you; for them, the more unrealistic the representation is, the more desirable. See the work of Patrick Galbraith and Mark McLelland, who are both respected researchers in Japanese culture studies. It is not clear that a desire for the cartoon form extends to the desire for real child pornography, just as it is not clear that playing violent video games extends to the desire to kill people in real life, or reading erotic Harry Potter fanfiction extends to wanting to haves sex with Daniel Radcliffe.

[wruza]

>more unrealistic

Some* booru owners complained that realistic 3d tags gained a significant share and views in recent years. I don’t remember if they posted exact percentages.

* not going to post it here, but it’s not hard to figure out

[claudiawerner]

Unrealism doesn't necessarily mean just form of the character in the image, it can also mean what's shown in the image - is something unrealistic happening? Nevertheless, I don't doubt that realism is a significant aspect for some people, but those aren't the same people as the lolicon community, and the people who really do believe in the "2D > 3D" meme. I'd also wager that a good portion of recent stuff tagged with 3d isn't loli or shota, and could be in part explained by the popularity of SFM/Blender porn of 3D games like Overwatch.

In any case, it stands to reason that people who would enjoy real child pornography would also enjoy simulated porn (and likely, the more realistic (3D) the better), but it doesn't therefore follow that the majority of people who enjoy the less realistic content (which by far outstrips the 3D content) have the same tastes.