There is certainly a greater uniformity in what’s available (commercially) in English - though even there, we’ve gotten things like Black & White (honestly, one of the ugliest manga I’ve ever read - the cover shown doesn’t do it justice), The Bug Boy, or Shin-chan.
And, of course, there’s the fact that even stuff that ‘all looks alike’ only looks (generally) like other works in the same era, demographic and genre - a 70s Shojo romance will look different than a 70s Shonen fighting series, which will look different from a 90s Shonen fighter, which will look different than a 90s Shojo romance.
Been explained, but the flip side is more detailed characters. I actually prefer this to the American style (though of course, the higher-budget stuff in both categories has both the higher framerate and the extra detail).
Some artists are easier to pick out than others. Toriyama and Miyazaki are both pretty distinctive, for example.
That’s just silly. Sure, a lot of Japanese animation is cheap and generic. But a lot of American animation is cheap and generic. If all you’d ever seen was dubs of Scooby Doo you’d think that all American animation sucked as well.
Granted, if all you’re looking at is pure frame-by-frame drawing skill, I can’t think of any Japanese animation that’s matched the virtuosity of Disney in it’s heydey. There’s no Japanese equivalent to Pinnochio or 101 Dalmatians, for example. But anime balances this by telling stories that American animation would never touch. There’s no American equivalent to Whisper of the Heart or Grave of the Fireflies.
I feel the same way about it. I can’t get excited about any of it. I find it mundane and unimaginative to the n’th. I also think modern US animators are pretty boring, too.
I guess I’m just not much of a fan of animation to begin with.
I watch a fair amount of anime, and yes, I’m willing to concede there’s an artistic theme apparent in much of it-- huge eyes, small nose/mouth, crazy hair.
Here’s my theory:
The traits that Japanese people don’t naturally have are exaggerated, because to them, that looks exotic and interesting. Japanese people don’t have huge, colorful eyes or a wide range of hair colors, so I think it makes sense that this kind of thing would catch on, and once it got popular, everyone started emulating it.
Except the nose thing. Anime characters with big noses are foreign–it’s considered a non-Japanese trait. Once upon a time, black hair color often signified normality and a wild hair color signaled a strange, foreign, or alien character (for example girl Ranma had red hair, unlike the ‘real’ boy Ranma). I don’t know if that has changed a lot.
I have to disagree with this. IMO the best works of Miyazaki are better animated than early Disney and in some respects much better. In particular the background artwork is more detalied which makes for a much more vivid universe. Miyazaki is also a master of using quiet scenes which are rare in Disney. At the same time he can animate explosive action scenes like in Mononoke where characters actually get hurt and die. The only area where Disney is superior IMO is sight gags and even here Miyazaki can excel when he wants to: some of the gags in Spiriited Away are brilliant.
In fact I would say that when it comes to animation Pixar is also better than early Disney and even Miyazaki himself sometimes. The first half of Wall-E is as extraordinary as anything I have seen from Studio Ghibli. The problem with Pixar is that they are constrained by commercial considerations to make fairly conventional if well-designed stories so, for example, the second half of Wall-E doesn’t come close to fulfilling its potential.
All this shouldn’t surprise us. Greatly revered though the early Disney works are, animation is a field where technique and technology are constantly improving and today’s animators can do things that their predecessors couldn’t dream of.
I wouldn’t count The Boondocks as anime. It was a comic created by an American. It definitely seems to draw a lot from anime, such as the insanely huge eyes, small mouths, and choppiness. I’ve noticed that there are an increasing amount of American cartoons that look like anime-wannabes (Boondocks, Teen Titans, I know there’s more but I can’t think of any at the moment) and IMHO they just look horrible because they overkill with their usage of the stereotypical anime faces. They may have good stories, but I wouldn’t know as I can’t get past the bad art.
I actually love Boondocks. Visuals aside, the writing and dialogue is hilariously edgy and transgressive. I was a fan of the strip before it was turned into a TV show, but I think the show is even better.
The answer to the OP is, Unfamiliarity. Why does country music all sound the same to someone who hates it? Ditto rap or blues. If you’re not familiar with an artform, all you see from the outside is its identifying features; you don’t notice the details that require more effort and unfamiliarity.
