This is a very 5e D&D player facing argument.

The point of tolkien races in the books is that they are their own thing and you discover their history and traditions and weirdness. Like someone from america going to europe and seeing all those bizarre castles that meant something at some point but now are either trash on the side of the road or a fancy tourist trap. And you can spend a lifetime learning about their history or judging how they are used now, any take can be fun for you.

Animal race lacks all of that. It's just a flavor to jumpstart your role play. It is just a human with exagerated traits and you can play a human with exagerated traits. They bring nothing to the world. When a japanese property tries to find a middle point between both things they end up with
>the fox people are japanese
>the dragon people are chinese
Not only they still might as well be people, but you're making the setting less interesting by making it just like real life but every nation has a single personality type.

Now, people tend to play 5e this way. They pick a cool race, maybe one that gives them cool buffs, and at most add a single personality trait vaguely related to the drawing they saw. Even WotC thinks this way when they add races with no justification of what they are, how the behave, where they come from or what's their deal; like their take on plasmoids. No take.

It's like character creation in an action game. Actrion games are fine, playing in a way that is fun for you is fine. But no one wants to spend time making a game where the lore is whatever, weirdos exist and it doesn't affect anything. That's something an illustrator does, not a game designer or module writer. That's why you don't see it in games or modules.

mermaid mech