Why Anime Sucks Nowadays?

Every season there are a ton of new anime series that come out, but I often find myself not wanting watch any of them.  Now and then, I go watch a few episodes of some of the more popular series, and I end up dropping most of them.  It almost seems like we are far away from the golden age of anime.

Here is another incoherent rant on why I think this is the case.

Playing it safe

Animation is expensive.  This is why there are so many shortcuts in place to speed up the animation process, such as outsourcing the drawing of transition frames to Korean and Chinese animators.  Some of these we all end up hating, such as CGI animation.

This means that animation studios are not incentivized to take less risk.  Hence, why the moe school slice of life anime ensues.  We see the same thing happening with cartoons in America, where Fairly Odd Parents and Spongebob go on longer then they should and cartoons with smaller audiences get cut.  Live action is simply just more cost effective than animation, which is why Cartoon Network, Disney Channel, and Nickelodeon were forcing it on us.  It just so happens that, for anime. bland slice of life is profitable enough.

Hindsight Bias

There are really two things to this. 

We only watch good things from the past.  When we watch anime from the past, we typically only watch most of the good things.  We skip all the mindless moe school life (unless you like that) and just go for the Fate/Zero's and the Bakemonogatari's.  Thus, we think more highly of those times.

We have nostalgia for series from our childhood.  Dragonball, Pokemon, or anything else on Toonami is not the greatest anime ever.  However, they hold special places in our heart as anime we grew up with, so it makes sense that we overate them.  

Therefore, it is likely that anime was not necessarily better in another era, but we are spoiled by these two factors.  

Conclusion

Honestly, it is hard to say what is actually wrong with anime sucking for me.  It could just be that I am growing out of it, but I always have hope for another 10 series in the coming years.  Also, if you have a recommendation, then please post it somewhere in the comments.

Peter