Matplotlib is definitely a monolith, and it does seem like a huge fight to fix the style, but what is great is you can easily use some of its several predefined styles [0], define your own style sheets or customize specific style parameters through rcParams [1], or install third-party style sheets [2], so in the end the styling does seem much more manageable.

[0]: https://matplotlib.org/stable/gallery/style_sheets/style_she...

[1]: https://matplotlib.org/stable/tutorials/introductory/customi...

[2]: https://pythonawesome.com/matplotlib-style-for-scientific-pu...