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

what's going on , why ya all here

first three to come to my mind that I'm pretty sure are in that time period would be Katanagatari, Ping Pong, and Mononoke

Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu is the best drama i've seen in like, basically forever

and it was 2016

i think theres some ways that things can be messured as improvement that actually detracks from personal taste. for instance i both think that anime now is overproduced and yet also much improved vs older anme, shit like dumb filters are there now which distract the attenton in my opinion, but additionally lots of extra details go into modern anime animation to make either more fluid animation, more details, or just fuller compositions and background that also make things feel like a mess even if they are more realistic like watching an anime with realistic trees vs simplistic trees

the entire ufotable fate series fits into the 2010's nicely

Man, I guess modern cartoons are in a really rough state these days since I can think of only like 5 that I'd put in the same category as the great modern anime.