Pointless ramble

I'm by no means an expert on the topic (despite my efforts thus far,) but it seems like the recognizably furry artstyle evolved out of a mixture of mainstream western cartoon animals (Disney, mascots, etc.), 80s anime (imported and tape-traded in the CFO days, which led to heavy overlap in the early funny animal fandom and early American otaku community,) and underground comics (Fritz the Cat comes to mind as an obvious reference point, but I think there was bigger influence from lesser-known and less documented comics, the kind that ran in zines, were distributed hand-to-hand, etc.) (About that last point, when I went through the 1980s AD&D Dragon magazine scans, the fan-submitted artwork resembles early furry art styles a lot, and I think they were both stemming largely from the same source, that being amateur comics from young adult nerds.)

I’m even less well versed in kemono subcultures, but I think it’s safe to say that the continuous bleedover from modern anime aesthetics is why it looks the way it does (and has the same kind of unique manifestations, such as kemono utaus and v-tubers in more recent years.) (That latter example's a thing, right? I don’t keep up with this much.) It’s kinda like two branches on an evolutionary tree - the Western furry community was heavily influenced by 80s anime but hasn’t taken much anime/manga influence since (no doubt there’s some, but it’s fairly minimal. It’s essentially a closed-circuit culture that’s influenced mostly by itself until it stabilized in its current, very distinctive aesthetic that’s proven surprisingly resistant to change in the last 30 years.) The kemono culture is what would have happened if they never diverged and the influx of otaku influence just kept on going unabated in the decades since, with all the recent anime artstyles and surrounding culture having their influence. (I would quite like to know more about early kemono communities though, especially their influence or connection with western furry communities. Was there any, or was it just convergent evolution? I'd imagine there was some degree of both but I have no evidence here. ("source: dude trust me"))

I don’t know where I’m going with this, I think I just wanted to bring up Nagabe because while obviously rooted in kemono aesthetics, his style is very different and doesn’t look much like anything else really. I’m curious where he’s visually influenced by because it doesn’t look much like most kemono or furry art at all and resembles nothing quite as much as some 1910s western anthro art. I was going through old scans and got thrown for a loop because the lanky human proportions/realistic animal features and clean linework on some pieces really did look like his work to a surprising degree.

(Pointless ramble, might update into something with some degree of value if I come up with any non-inane observations on the topic.)