Yeah except hiragana and especially katakana both look ugly though.

There are some strange-looking ones too (圖-図、圓-円), but agree that overall it was lighter touch. I think all simplification projects have an inherent awkwardness in taking handwriting shorthand or cursive and trying to reformalize it back to print. In any case it's a shame that there was no coordination due to obvious geopolitical conflicts, that we're now left with 3 sets. It was easier last time, 2.2k years ago when some dude took over all places that wrote Chinese characters and forced a single way of writing :)