Anonymous Guest asked: What is it about the nature of japanese animation production that even the most nakedly merchandise driven toyetic stuff (ex. precure) has more genuine soul in it's creation than half of of the slop that passes for western "prestige toons"? (ex. bojack horseman, that new old x-men thing, etc)
i wanna push back on this and say that precure is a terrible example, of course it is a toy driven franchise but it's a well respected home for incredible animators and one of toei's flagship series. if you want to watch some of the most reliably incredible tv animation on the planet, precure is one of the best possible places you could look.
the east vs west comparison is a false one, at most it is due to anime's production history which did lead to a higher percentage of more interesting and much better looking animated productions, but even that was mostly driven by frankly insane levels of worker abuse. and in the modern day, with the industry cut to the bone, production skyrocketing and pay bottomed out, i think if you look at the landscape of bottom of the battle garbage narou adaptations that look like shit and only exist to re-enforce its target audiences most cynical desires, we can confidently say that japan can pump out slop with the rest of us.
there is nothing more profound or noble about the kind of capitalism present in japan that imbues the cartoons with an inherent quality that rises above western art, there is a production method driven by culture of overwork spearheaded by Tezuka in the 60s, which gave anime a distinctive style as compared to the way american cartoons developed. With the utter crisis the anime industry finds itself in, as it blows up to never before seen global profits yet can't find the staff to animate its shows as planning collapses in on itself, these tensions are being pushed beyond breaking point.
so yeah, i guess i just don't really agree with the premise. charitably i will say the thing you are percieving as more soul is the post-tezuka production methods of anime, the limited animation style that focuses on getting the most out of the poses and cuts you have, and the way that developed over the years. but that isn't an inherent orientalist quality of japanese animation's soul that western animation can never capture, it's a production context.
Consider: Akira Toriyama's death at the age of 68 meant he lived beyond the average for his cohort of mangaka
