Yeah, but when I was in middle school it was all so cool 😦

the real difference now is that these days 100% of anime reaches a western audience

I specifically chose the cutoff point in mid 90's, since you can definitely make the argument 70's anime is better than 70's cartoons

By the growing standards that come from not being a child anymore

80's anime better than 80's cartoons

when early 90's anime only ever left japan if it was already really successful

90's anime better than 90's cartoons... When viewed as a whole, looking at the entire industry... NOW you run into arguments

if anything i would say the opposite. western cartoons are what has seen a huge decline

while anime has remained fairly consistent in terms of overall quality

I could agree with that. It's nice that they're embracing continuous storylines, but most cartoons today really do suck in comparison to most of the 90's

There's still some quality cartoons though, but they tend to have some really weak parts to go along with the good

you just mentioned Gumball, it's been running for, what, 5 years? give or take? minimum 3 years but I'd hazard a guess and say 6 years

what anime comes even close to that?

lots of long running series

tons of them

Run time is what measures quality? Turns out modern Simpsons is great

but anime has a much bigger focus on shorter stories that can be contained and wrapped up

whereas western cartoons want to be able to go on forever

Yeah Western entertainment feels a lot more corperate to me

if we take out the Big Guns, we get shit like MLP that has been running for some 160 22 minute episodes across 8 years

and then end when it is no longer economically viable to keep producing

yeah that's what I was initailly getting at

gumball's survived this long because it's a diamond in the rough

and that's just how our cartoon market works out

Anime, also operates on a model of commissioning as series by season.

>gumball's survived this long because it's a diamond in the rough
this is a very good point, and sort of what I've been aiming at

it's an actual diamond

it works, because it's that one specific pile of poo that happened to be "shiny", while most piles of poo DON*T shine and therefore fail

it's what anime used to do in the 80's, experiment and improvise

Why can't we get animation like this anymore? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNho4Eze5aI
Anime just isn't the same

anime still does that

I'm sure

obviously not all of it, but that was never the case

p.s. when I said western seemed more corperate the keyword was more
not "anime is perfect! あんたたちばかだ!", because the companies pretty regularly overwork their entire teams, but the result seems more genuine in more cases

yeah of course

but what 201X's anime compares to Gumbal, MLP?

idk I never watch anything when it comes out lol

That's too many to even know where to start

overlord and hinamatsuri from this year, off the top of my head

kakegurui's pretty new, I thought that was... *interesting*

if the whole 2010's is fair game i can't leave out shinsekai yori