Rigid Karate

There are so many variations of Karate that it isn't fair to lump them all together, but here's my gripes about Karate as a whole:

• Rigid Technique: In pretty much every other striking art, one does not try to stay flexed all the way through the strike, but rather relaxed, building up as much speed, structure and body weight as possible at the point of impact with the target. In general Karate tries to keep the same speed from the beginning of the strike to the end. 
• Rigid Movement: moving around super stiff is the ideal practiced in Karate Kata. This is practiced in almost no other arts outside of Karate, and for good reason - movement should be adaptable and fluid.
• Rigid Defense: Being stiff as a board makes strikes more effective against you, because you can't "roll with the punches" that way. Super stiff inside-outside blocks to block kicks? Probably going to get your arm broken against someone who knows what they are doing.
• Rigid Stance: Because most Karate doesn't spar with leg kicks, they get into a long stance that is terrible for fighting against sweeps, leg kicks, and grapplers (as in the case of Full Contact Karate.) It confines movement direction, makes the groin more vulnerable, makes the practitioner more vulnerable to circular strikes, opens the jaw to straight punches, etc. etc.
• Rigid Mindset: If you find karate that does spar with leg kicks, they often spar without any hand strikes to the head - you know, the most likely strike for you to be attacked by (as in the case of Knock Down Karate.)
• Rigid Strategy: The lack of head and leg targets is if you find serious karate into sparring, unfortunately stop and go "Karate Kid" style Kumite Point Fighting, not really continuous sparring at all but a strange game of useless tag that has no application to self defense to speak of, is what most Karate Schools do instead of doing any real sparring or fighting.
• Rigid Kata: Almost all traditional martial arts spend too much time on Kata and not enough time sparring, but Karate is extreme in this regard, especially since so many Karate styles are kumite point fighting instead of doing real continuous sparring.
• Rigid Application: Karate is notorious for its practitioners disregarding Kata as not relevant to fighting. This is almost always by karate people who are talking about kata not applying to Kumite Point Figthing - which no kata should, because Kumite Point Fighting is very unlike any kind of real fighting. It turns out that if you spar continuously, it is far easier to see the applications in kata... though on average, Karate kata are much more sanitized for political reasons than other martial arts with kata or forms.
• Rigid Philosophy: Karate was popularized in Japan at a time when they were trying to instill a very specific group of values into the young people of that era - Japanese Imperialist values - warrior codes that would later justify mass rape, murder and attempted genocide. The blind respect for authority they praise in Karate is the last thing you or your children should be internalizing.
• Rigid Ideology: Why do you think they tried to get the people they occupied (especially in Korea) to study Karate? Usually occupied peoples are not encouraged to do martial arts by their oppressors. Karate was, even more so than Aikido, first and foremost a way to teach a specific set of values, than it was to teach people how to fight. In fact Kumite Point Fighting was arguably created to make sure people didn't learn how to fight!

Or in other words:

The more a Karate style avoids the title of "Karate" (Kudo, Kenpo, Kyokushin, Enshin, etc.) the better of a martial art they tend to be. As Kumite Point Fighting in the Olympics in 2020 diminishes the reputation of martial arts as a whole and destroys the reputation of Karate, I encourage all practitioners of Karate that are truly serious about the martial arts allow their art to evolve beyond Karate: