So, a little background for this. Someone, on another forum, basically said that he didn't like MLP, or any other Western animation, because Anime (Eastern Animation) was better. And so, I wrote a quick reason to him as to why I think he is mistaken in his assertions. So, since this is a MLP forum, I felt this was the best place for me to post my thoughts on the subject. But let me preface this by saying that I am a fan of BOTH mediums for entirely different reasons. However, this will be written in a defense style of western animation for the most part.

First off, it seems apparent to me that fans of eastern animation seem to think that it has better animation, and drawings. I find this interesting. Mainly because there is barely any animation at all in most Japanese anime. That isn't to say that most of the pictures aren't very pretty, because they are. However Japanese animation is very lazy animation. They tend to use panning shots, shots of the backs of characters, and very little dynamic movement of the characters to avoid animating the characters, they don't even want to animate the mouths moving. And don't even get started on the backgrounds. Almost never any movement at all. Naturally there are exceptions to this, like in anime such as the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, but on the whole, anime is atrocious in terms of animation and production values. Take any Western Animated series, and compare it to Eastern, there is no contest in terms of what is better animated and what has a better frame rate.

Ok, so what about the pictures? Anime looks awesome, right? Well, yeah, but does Western actually look bad, or just more cartoony? I really think this is the weakest of all points, because it is a difference in art style, not in inherent artistic ability. In fact, western animation can be better at times than Eastern. Take Samurai Jack for instance. Just an all around amazing art style and direction, with high quality animation to match.

Now the last one is tricky... Story telling... Anime tends to be plot driven, while western animation tends to be character driven. Basically it comes down to story arc vs episodic. And really? They are both equally valid and interesting styles of story telling. Really I think both deserve a place. And really there are anime and western cartoons that break this system.

In the end, I think what I am getting at is that fans of anime seem to overlook the graces of western cartoons. I'd rather both live in harmony and both sides be open to the benefits of both.