I just watched some 3DS videos of an anime based on kid icarus. Right off the bat, I feel the ‘anime’ approach taints kid icarus. It’s the same as if there was a Commander Keen anime (I know there are chibi-styled keens in mods and fanart, and that’s all well and good, but imagine a realistic-styled anime of keen, and there were entire episodes of it).

The first episode I saw was… surprising. Pit and Palutena are planning dinner and she sends Pit off to gather vegetables. Pit complains and wants hamburgers instead, which I found extremely offputting since it’s supposed to be in a classical Greek setting, and Pit shouldn’t know about stuff from the future. I’ll let it slide, sense in a moment the cartoon loses all pretense of taking itself seriously. This one-eyed sentient carrot starts throwing knives at Palutena, and then an army of carrots start attacking her. Then she’s at war with legions of vegetables and i barely comprehend what’s happening. She orders pit to gather warriors to bring back to battle the vegetable menace. At some point they conjoin to become a giant vegetable godzilla monster, but when it steps into water, the vegetables turn back into normal, non-living vegetables. “The water washed off the rejuvination potion!” she says. Oh, the veggies are alive because of some potion? The veggie godzilla collapses, but then some giant green pumpkins jump her from behind. Pit arrives with the soldiers to find Palutena with a pumpkin for a head. She smashes off the pumpkin, and ends the episode with this closing line: “Pit, we’re going out for dinner.” It didn’t make an attempt to be part of a serious story arc or make sense. It was idiotic, surreal, silly, and I couldn’t understand what was going on. Like it was straight out of an 80’s cartoon. But it’s an anime. The art style and the kind of story it’s telling don’t mesh together. I know the game was made in Japan, but that doesn’t mean a cartoon based on it has to be anime. They never tried to do that with Super Mario Bros. (actually, they did make an anime movie of Mario bros., but Mario looked like what he was supposed to be and it felt natural. Except Luigi. He was wearing blue for some reason) The other thing that’s wrong with this is the episode was mostly about the goddess Palutena, and Pit himself was more or less a background character. Imagine if the first episode of the Mario Bros. cartoon you saw was all about princess toadstool and Mario was barely in it. It would be kind of disappointing, because you want to see Mario and his adventures. There was another short clip, which was basically an adaptation of the game itself. It was really cool! I do have complaints though, about Medusa. She doesn’t look like what she’s supposed to be. She should be a fat, green, ugly monsters with snakes for hair. In this she was a thin woman of light skin tone. Some exposition tells us she’s the goddess of darkness. What? Since when? And she doesn’t have a real motivation for taking over the sky world. Just because she’s EVIL, and that’s what EVIL people do. Sure in the game she was a 1-dimensional villain, but in a professional looking presentation like this I was hoping for more depth. I’ll close my rant here.

It was idiotic, surreal, silly, and I couldn’t understand what was going on. Like it was straight out of an 80’s cartoon. But it’s an anime. The art style and the kind of story it’s telling don’t mesh together.

On this point, I have to disagree with you. Anime has a considerable history of serious art style + craziness, and if you take the 3DS series as an omake (extra) rather than a stand-alone storyline all itself, it’s actually pretty typical of Japanese animation and humor. The fact that the anime is a supplemental side-story also explains why Palutena (who we don’t see much in-game) is the main character, compared to Pit, and why there’s a minimum of characterization all around.

It’d be one thing if the series had been intended to stand alone, but since it wasn’t/isn’t, a lot of your criticisms don’t apply.

I do have complaints though, about Medusa. She doesn’t look like what she’s supposed to be. She should be a fat, green, ugly monsters with snakes for hair. In this she was a thin woman of light skin tone. Some exposition tells us she’s the goddess of darkness. What? Since when?

Since Uprising. This wiki article explains things.