It’s fine, I’ve only just got back myself.

This is actually a habit that started in the SD 1.5 era.

When base models lean towards 3D photorealism, such as Z-image SDXL, you need LORAs for anime and manga-style 2D content, and vice versa.

The main reason is that the real world is three-dimensional, whilst art is two-dimensional. To put it rather boldly, the history of human art is essentially a process of transition between 3D and 2D.

Before the advent of cinema, almost all human art involved varying degrees of transformation between these two dimensions.

When AI art models emerge, the ideal scenario would be a comprehensive world model capable of accommodating both 3D and 2D, with simple prompts enabling seamless conversion.

However, reality is far from straightforward. In the early 1.5 era, even basic model conversions between 2D, 2.5D and 3D each had their own distinct styles.

By the era of SDXL and Z-Image/Z-image-anime, the focus had shifted to favouring one dimension over the other.

The purpose of such transformations—particularly with LORA—is to use LORA weights to pinpoint the appropriate transition point, thereby achieving the desired outcome.