Am I the only one here who thinks western cartoons are better than anime?

[KorpiklaaniVodka]

So I'd like to share a VERY unpopular opinion... I think cartoons which made it big in America and Europe made it big for a reason. While children can watch stuff such as Spongebob and Batman, adluts have awesome comedies such as South Park and Family Guy, with funny plots and awesome characters. Not to mention legends such as Tom and Jerry and Pink Panther. Like, the only anime I watch is Pokemon because duh.
Anyway, the main reasons why I think western cartoons > anime is because the animation is well-suited towards all audiences, and comedy is the first thing ordinary people think when they say 'cartoon', compared to anime where most characters have many common features (the eyes, the faces, etc.). Sure you can say that anime is not just comedy, but I think that if you want something more emotional and serious, you should watch actual TV series.

What do you think?

 

[maccrash]

hmm personally I can't really make a generalization like that. I've seen less anime but almost all of it I've seen I love, whereas with western cartoons I've seen a lot and there are plenty I'm not fond of at all.

although, I'm not sure I agree with your stating that all cartoons should be comedic -- sure, plenty of them are funny, but think of things like Up or Wall-E or, hell, even something like Frozen. sure, they have funny moments, but there's a shitton of emotional heft there and that's something that cannot be overlooked. ADDITIONALLY there's plenty of super breezy anime that isn't particularly Emotionally Deep. you know what I mean. watch something like Akira or Grave of the Fireflies or Neon Genesis Evangelion -- this stuff is definitely not meant for kids and it's incredibly thematically rich / serious.

 

[Ryoutarou]

Generally speaking, I like anime better, but that's for one specific reason: there's more to watch. When there's more to watch, there's a naturally greater chance of finding something you're going to enjoy. American cartoons just aren't made in the mass volume that anime are, especially in the last decade or so. Granted, this means there will probably be a bigger amount of anime that aren't all that great, but that goes hand in hand with the quantity of the stuff that gets pumped out every season.

That said, a lot of my favorite animated projects aren't anime. Avatar: The Last Airbender, Young Justice, Green Lantern, the recent Thundercats, and The Legend of Korra are all fantastic shows that aren't actually anime. (unless you want to get picky about the studios that make them) On top of that you have fantastic direct to video projects in the form of the DC animated productions. You would probably have an industry that could rival anime if cartoons were created with the ability to cast a wide net. For instance, Young Justice and especially the second half of Green Lantern have huge nontraditional fanbases - this is supposedly the reason Young Justice was cancelled, its fanbase skewed towards female more than male viewers.

 

[Iceshadow3317]

To me, Anime is 9001 time better,

Most toons here in America have no storyline to me. Anime has perfect storyline, fun humor, and more for teens and adults. And the stuff in America to me is terrible. Not to mention it seems like most of it is way too childish because of America's pathetic censorship for shows.

The only thing I have watched that even comes close to anime is Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra, both in which are heavily animeish. And I consider American Anime. I also like Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness, but not nearly as much as Anime.

And to be perfectly honest, I find anime to be better than most American Shows. And real shows are so limited to what they can do.

 

[Sir Codin]

Generally, not really.

Both anime and western animation follow Sturgeon's Law, yes, but I prefer the animation style of anime to western cartoons most of the time.

Western animation has stopped interesting me all that much since the early 2000's, when Cartoon Network started going to shit and I absolutely HATE the art style that the new shows on CN these days. Everyone keeps harping on Adventure Time, but I just hate that art style.

And Hana-Barbara cartoons have almost ALWAYS looked like complete shit.

 

[Golurks Were Meant to Fly]

I think both definitely have their merits! It's honestly hard to choose one or the other because some have great story lines, great animation, great comedy and/or drama... and then some have none of those. It really depends on the show tbh, and I kind of feel like you need to judge them based on a case by case basis. Sure anime does fall into some tropes, especially repeating comedic gags - but western cartoons fall into tropes themselves. I enjoy both on a semi-regular basis though!

 

[Omicron]

I watch more cartoons than I watch anime, but I don't think anyone's better than the other. I just enjoy some more than others.

You can't really say any is better, as it is very subjective. There's no way to measure how good or another is as if you like it or not depends a lot on yourself and there is no way to be objective about it.

 

[Sopheria]

To me it's like comparing apples and oranges. They're really like two different art forms, in my opinion. I tend to watch more anime, but that's because there's so much anime out there, it's easy to find something you like. There's also plenty of Western animation that I like, but they're mostly classic cartoons that you'd find on boomerang, so a lot of it is a nostalgia factor.

But I don't compare them. There's too many differences in creative style and target audience.

 

[Her]

I don't really care about which is 'better'. It's simply too broad a generalisation to make.

but I think that if you want something more emotional and serious, you should watch actual TV series.

I take issue with this statement as the birth of animation (both Western and Japanese styles) was to defy this very thought. Disney was formed on the belief that animation can be just as emotionally provocative and capable of telling a story as live-action cinema. Early anime production was based on the same premise, there just wasn't a unified force equal to Disney existing in Japan until the '50s, although the style that became what we know as anime stretched back to the 1910s, long before Disney had formed.

My point is that animation was born on the idea that animation is just as valid an emotional medium as recording humans on a camera and it is sheer folly to suggest that it is not.

 

[Pinkie-Dawn]

And now you see why I've created a thread back at the video game section on how anime-influenced art style is ruining video games for westerners and why I've created a thread at the round table section about the west wanting to convert other cultures such as the east to their own culture. A lot of westerns will find their own cartoons to be better than Japanese cartoons, because the former never heavily focus on moe and ecchi stuff regarding underage characters despite looking older than they're suppose to be, even though western cartoons heavily focus on the least intelligent characters and self-insert characters as the main protagonists.

 

[Crizzle]

The west has better comedy, but that's it.

 

[Esper]

I don't think either is inherently better, but if you asked me to take a stance right now I'd say western cartoons, at least when considering what is being made right now. I say that because I haven't seen anything which has caught my interest from Japan in the last few years. Sure, there is a lot more of it as was said, but I think that just makes it harder to find anything worth watching. (My Hulu and Netflix are full of anime that I'll never watch.) In the English language sphere there are a lot of shows that I've seen in the last few years which have surprised me with their quality and, more importantly, their maturity. I kind of feel that when I watch anime made recently it's like watching a big summer blockbuster but stretched out over 6 or 12 hours, which just can't sustain what feel like underdeveloped characters and sometimes inscrutable plots.

 

[Zeturic]

Personally, I tend to roll my eyes when people talk about "western animation" and "anime" as categories.

Both are incredibly diverse - there's essentially nothing of substance shared between all anime shows or between all western animated shows that aren't also shared between all animated shows.

 

[Crunch Punch]

Nah I prefer anime over western animation any day. I like both really tbh but growing up watching both styles I remember preferring the former than the latter.

 

[pkmin3033]

For me personally, I would say that Western cartoons USED to be better than anime, although the quality in shows has declined noticeably since the early 2000s. Yes, I know that sounds like a very "90s kid" thing to say, but I just don't find modern cartoons like Steven Universe and all the rest it. It's just not for me. However, there are plenty of anime out there I've not seen yet that I enjoy, and they're making new ones all the time that I want to see and enjoy watching. I look at modern day cartoons, I might watch a few episodes, but I'm not motivated to really watch any of them; they bore me.

Cartoons from my youth just keep on giving, though, especially the Warner Bros. ones. As a kid, I loved the antics of the Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, etc. Now that I'm older, I love the dialogue, the parodies, the references; all the stuff that went completely over my head as a kid. From being one of my most loathed cartoons, Taz in Tasmania has become one of my favourites, and I have a whole new appreciation for Freakazoid as well. That kind of humour isn't present in modern cartoons OR anime, and I will always love it for that. Similarly, superhero cartoons like 90s Batman, Spiderman and X-Men series are substantially better than their modern-day counterparts. Well, Brave and the Bold was fantastic, but the new series of Marvel cartoons are all atrocious.

I don't feel like Western cartoons really cater to me these days; my tastes have changed as I've gotten older, and they don't make a cartoon for that...at least not yet. Anime, however, does; I might have to hunt about a bit to find something that appeals to me, but I CAN find something, which is my point. Maybe it's a case of quantity: there are a lot more anime than cartoons these days, after all. Plus stuff has gotten worse as time has gone on...Winx Club is utterly unwatchable now, for example.

...also, there's too much CGI going on these days. The new Thunderbirds is TERRIBLE. The Captain Scarlet CGI they aired a few years ago was pretty good, but they really dropped the ball with this one. I shudder to think what's going to happen if they adapt Stingray next; I loved that show. The new TMNT cartoon is a far cry from the stylish, vaguely cel-shaded series they aired before that as well, at least before that godawful Fast Forward season. There is an increasing use of CGI in anime too, and it bothers me - it's often not particularly appealing visually, and quite jarring when shown alongside traditional animation.

I still have trouble considering the two mediums as separate sometimes though...partly because anime was aired right alongside cartoons when I was younger, and it wasn't until I was older than I found out that anime and cartoons were separate. I don't really care where it comes from, as long as it entertains me. It's just most (read: all) of what entertains me these days comes from Japan.

 

[Winter]

I personally prefer anime, because it's just my taste. I do love Western stuff such as Avatar and RWBY, and Warner Bros. But I don't generalize and say that one is supposedly superior than the other. To be fair, stuff like RWBY and Avatar were inspired by anime, and there are bound to anime that's inspired by the West.

Very hard to compare apples to oranges, especially when it's essentially a comparison of cultures.

 

[Kirestananderson01]

Both anime and western animation follow Sturgeon's Law, yes, but I prefer the animation style of anime to western cartoons most of the time.

 

[jasonresno]

The only Western cartoon that I can honestly stomach is Adventure Time, right now. That isn't to say that all anime is a godsend, because a ton of it is garbage, but when you have shows like Cowboy Bebop and Trigun there really is no competition.

 

[Sir Codin]

I can't even stomach Adventure Time.

I really am completely incapable of even pretending to understand why people like that show.

 

[Ashes to Ashes]

Depends. Some western stuff is a lot better than anime, but theres some really kickass quality anime out there. Not many animated western shows compare to something like Cowboy Bebop... but not much anime really compares to South Park. Theyre different kinds of things tho. Anime is better at serious. Western doesnt usually do serious animated shows well. Cant name any that are outstanding off the top of my head except maybe the 90s Batman.