Shock and Awe said:
I recently finished watching Avatar: The Last AirBender(yes I know im late) and I thought about how it was kind of a mix of American and Japanese styles of animation and it is probably the best animated series I have ever seen. Then I started to think about which kind of Animation was better in and of itself, and I could not really think of an answer. American animation has a lot more variety in an artistic sense and is often of a lighter tone and has higher production quality. Japanese tends to be of a very high artistic caliber and much more varied topic wise, though it really has awful production quality. In the end I always tended to enjoy american better, partially because in general I liked more shows. What do you guys think? Oh, and one more thing,
I have the complete opposite opinion regarding quality. I think Japanese animation has always been way ahead of Western animation, and still is. This is because Japanese animation has always had three major advantages over Western animation.
One is that art is a fundamental part of their culture. It's a rare Japanese person that can't draw at least somewhat well, and their artists still number 1/3? or so of their population (it used to be 2/3 or so back in the middle of last century). And by artistic population, I mean a family member painted that painting hanging in the hallway of the house or on the wall of a business.
The second advantage is that much Japanese animation is based on original works by independents - the manga -> anime path. This means that you get both genuinely original looks and stories, and while this also means Sturgeon's Law comes into effect, you also get those 10% worth of gems that light up the industry and blow away anything the McAnimators can do.
(I also absolutely love the fact that a would-be manga artist can commit themselves to their dream, do their best at it, walk into a business with their work under their arm, and if it's accepted, start working with professional artists to make it happen. You can't really do that here in America, but to me, that's exactly what the American Dream is supposed to be like. So go mangaka! Show our media industries why closed doors are bad. )
The third advantage is one which Western businesses cannot touch, indeed cannot even understand (although their animators can). It's embodied in a simple phrase: "Pride and Spirit in our work". This is why Japanese animation started showing scenes from different camera angles (which made them draw it from scratch), drawing every movement of folds of clothing and shadows in even simple gestures in non-critical scenes, cranking up the number of frames to really convey the impact of the scene even when they could have gotten away without doing so, etc. They do all of these things because they wanted to be proud of their work and show how much they cared about it. This carries over to voice casting too btw, and voice quality is even more important in animation than in live shows, so there's another advantage.
Meanwhile Western animators (who I believe have always possessed equivalent skills and motivations) were being strangled by managerial budget controls and the lack of a market beyond children. Now they're starting to realize that "if you don't build it, nobody will watch it" and we're seeing some things coming out, but honestly I think we have Pixar to thank for breaking that ice.
Edit: and I have to say, you might want to check out the making of Avatar. It's mostly overseas animation work and written/directed by Western people who were heavily influenced by popular animes, to the point where they made their staff watch them
