I don’t have any art background so I can’t really describe why the (non-clan based ones) feel so overly artificial. I think the color choice has a lot to do with it though-- way too many lime greens and oranges for me. Plus some of them are based on letters from the latin alphabet, which almost seems like a reverse weeb thing, ie “western letters are so cool guys!” Not that most of the kana ones are much better-- it’s hard to make lettering on a flag look good.
Maybe the vexillology community would be able to describe it better.
edit: I mistook the comment I replied to as a reply to my comment below, but I’ll leave this up as an explanation into why I find the Japanese flags strange
I can see where you’re coming from (in regards to Japanese prefecture flags) but I still think a lot of them look really good. At least the nicest thing is that they’re all consistent, but still a bit distinct from each other. And a symbol on a blanket is waaaay better than the american seal on a blanket in my opinion :)
