Anime vs. Cartoons: What is better?

Based on the picture? Anime.

Anime and cartoons as a whole? They're both great in their own unique way and have their ups and downs. To say either is above either as a whole just wouldn't work.

Anime. I only liked cartoons when I was younger, they suck balls now

Agreed. The anime in the picture >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> cartoons in the picture.

However, with cartoons like South Park or Brickleberry, I would give the edge to cartoons in popularity and about equal in quality.

@pern: Yeah. On the picture alone, Death Note would solo.

@mysticmedivh: Goku solos.

timmy solos with universal reality warping magic muffin.

Depends if your definition of "cartoons" includes shows like South Park, The Simpsons, The Critic, Family Guy, etc.

I'd take those over anime.

Sorry I'm physically incapable of picking. My body and mind refuses to go either way on this.

I mean on one side you have Avatar/Korra but then you have FMA/Brotherhood

There's Ben 10 but then there's Yu-Gi-Oh!

Then you've got a classic like Zatch Bell vs Xiaolin Showdown

I can't do it, you'll have to kill me.

Based on the picture, I'd say cartoons.

As a whole, I'd say anime.

Both! Played a huge role in a lot of childhoods.

Cartoons (or American animated features) tend to have more frames drawn per second, and on top of that, non-stop movement (primary and secondary motion of characters) in almost all scenes to make the animation more realistic and believable. A greater emphasis is put on facial expressions and emotions in American animation, especially during animated dialogue. For example:

Notice that there's near-constant motion all throughout this reel. Hair, clothes, subtle body movements, facial expressions, etc. Just about everything is moving here. Not just their mouths. Hold down the space bar as the video plays, you'll see that there are more frames being animated per second.

Animes (Japanese animated features) tend to have less frames drawn in most of their scenes, but put loads more effort (and a bit more frames) into their action scenes. But, in regular scenes, there's less movement involved, overall. This is especially so with dialogue. Lip syncing is animated more than everything else is, with a few body movements here and there. Movement (besides those in action or fighting scenes) appears to be robotic and unrealistic. There have also been numerous animes with people in the background drawn to be completely still and not animated like the relevant characters are. Less emphasis on the animation of facial expressions and emotions is also present. To compensate, most of the time, emotions and facial expressions are drawn and animated to be comical and less detailed. For example:

If you skip 30 seconds in, you'll notice that their mouths are moving more than their bodies or anything else about them in the first half of their conversation. They're only moving or making gestures every so often. The movements and gestures don't even look believable. Also, if you hold down the space bar as the video plays, you'll see what I mean by less frames being animated per second.

There's more, though. Production for cartoons tend to have higher budgets than that of animes, so that could be one reason as to why the quality of animation is higher with cartoons. I guess with animes, Japanese animators tend to get the job done quicker (and a lot of scenes mirror what has already been drawn in manga), since most scenes (the ones that aren't action scenes) have less frames to draw. On top of that, less movements to animate. With American animators, most of them are trained to get more work done in the time that they are given. Basically, more frames drawn, more movements to animate. There are some cartoons that are or have been animated with less frames and movements. Old Hanna-Barberra cartoons did it the most. Today, there are more and more cartoons on television being animated in the same manner as animes, more or less. At the same time, there are some animes that animate with more frames and movements in all scenes. But, I'm really just speaking for the majority of both. That said, cartoons are tend to have higher-quality animation more often than not.

While I love anime, I gravitate more toward cartoons, based on this. The only thing that American animation and Japanese animation have in common is their 3D/CG animation techinques. They are practically the same in that regard. Both also use motion capture animation very frequently, too.

@notatreeabush: not really at all

Interesting results.

both

Don't anime characters look like this:

Girls

Boys.

@zeezee123: Not sure if serious or...

@mysticmedivh:

Which one do you like better.

Lol.

@frisky4:

I like both, if you're asking about cartoon vs. anime.

The DC Animated movies are why I love cartoons. But I grew up with DBZ, Pokemon, Yugioh. Other anime that I like are Elfen Lied and Akira. I don't watch much anime but I could watch Justice League/Justice League Unlimited, Spectacular Spider-Man, Wolverine and the X-Men etc anytime. I enjoy anime but not as much as cartoons.

@mysticmedivh:

Yes.

This is entirely subjective.

Based on picture though I'd say cartoons personally (in terms of which I like more).

@static_shock: That's not always true. You're looking at more Disney quality animated feature films as opposed to the average everyday cartoon. The same is true for anime as you'll find many a movie feature with beautiful animation and constant, consistent motion in every scene.

When you compare Early animation styles, Western animation was rather atrocious. He-Man, for example, was just awful. Whereas Thundercats, despite being a story initially made in America, was created by animation teams over in Japan because Western studios just weren't up to the task of telling the story the way the creators wanted it to be seen. Even though Thundercats came out not a few years after He-Man, it's quality was by far superior.

We can look at 90's animated features. Perhaps some of the more notable ones of that time in the west, were the Batman TAS animated movies. Such as "Sub-Zero" and "Mask of the Phantasm" which, while excellently stylized and done, was not a huge improvement from the show itself.

To it's credit it did come out in 1993. But just 4yrs later and we see the likes of Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust

And if we wanted to look at some of the CGI works, the West gave us things like Toy Story in 1995.

Which, at the time, was quite huge. But whereas we were doing childish things, it wasn't long before the East put things into a far more realistic look.

Sure not all of these were gold winners in storytelling, but when it comes to Graphical quality, Anime and the East tends to go above and beyond what the West has done and continues to do so, to the point that many Cartoons and Comic-related animated films either borrow heavily from the Anime style or have Anime studios producing it. Like most of the Marvel Animated Films and even the G4 series of X-Men, Wolverine, Iron-Man and Blade.

There is also one major thing. Eastern live adaptations of anime and the like aren't nearly as awful as Western attempts of making cartoons and games into movies. Especially when Hollywood tries to steal an Anime and do it their way, ultimately making something so horrible that everyone around the world hates it. Like Speed Racer and DBE. Akira Toriyama, the Creator of Dragon Ball, was so horrified at what they were trying to do to his story that he abandoned work on the film, and they continued without him to do whatever they liked. Resulting in such a horrible, offensive mess that Anime fans consider it the worst adaptation ever made.

I guess one other thing to be said is that Cartoons in the West are primarily geared towards children and young adults. And some cartoons were mad explicitly to slap us in the face with the creators views and beliefs on what people should do. Like Captain Planet. Wheras on the other end, Anime is so varied that there is enough for everyone from small children all the way to adults of all types and orientations in life.

I mean, I don't think Western toons have anything even resembling Same-Sex partnering until Legend of Korra. And that was towards the end of the series. Whereas Anime was doing that in the 80's and 90's. Heck initially, in the Manga of Sailor Moon, two of the female cast were actually lesbians but that was adapted out in the English Dub of the anime and certain other things were changed so as to be less offensive to American viewers. Which kind of irks me, regardless of the fact I never liked Sailor Moon.

Overall I find anime better, not just for visual quality, but for being endlessly creative and broad, and that many anime do have an End to them whereas most cartoons feel the need to just keep going until their studios run out of money. Look at the Simpsons. It was a great series, but it's been going for 30yrs and I don't know of anyone who's still watching it.

There are cartoons I like and have even loved. Gargoyles was utterly fantastic and nobody can't not like Batman TAS. It's just a given. PPG, Invader Zim, Avatar and Danny Phantom have all been great. I have liked Fairly Oddparents, but it is one of those shows that didn't know when to end, and where the main characters ultimately never learned anything and repeated the same mistakes and sins every other episode. So it ran out of ideas very quickly.

But then we have anime like Durarara!, Fruits Basket, Fairy Tail, Black Butler, Death Note, Ergo Proxy, GUNDAM, DBZ, Card Captor Sakura, Soul Eater, Ronin Warriors, Voltron, and just so much more that it just blows Western Cartoons out of the water with endless variety, so many varying styles of animation and overall much greater storytelling that I find myself more easily invested in Anime that I could in most any cartoon series.

Cartoons because all i see in anime is girl whining about nothing, also anime lacks a decent storyline. I like cartoons such as American Dragon, Batman beyond and Courage even thought its scary at times. I hate adventure time so much though

Oh Wait i forgot about family guy and south park and simpsons

You're clearly watching the wrong anime.

not a battle

and i can't stand that nearly every anime character have the same hairstyle, emo like.

Now you're just trying to rustle jimmies.

Nice try though, too obvious.

It's true ;)

Ok, I was born in 1985, so I grew up in the 90's. Where is Doug, ren and stimpy, rocko's modern life, beast wars, mummies alive, darkwing duck, etc.?

@reikai:

Well, I wasn't trying to say that it was always true. But, most of the time, it is. I also said this.

Regardless, you're going to have your fair share of horribly-animated features from either the East or the West.

Even if you compare Mask of the Phantasm to Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, everything I said still holds true. Never mind the art style or visuals being the same as the Batman animated series. That's a totally different discussion. I'm talking strictly animation. There are instances during dialogue in VH where movement isn't constant or there simply isn't enough movement. I just went back to watch parts of VH, and noticed that during the scene after D catches that arrow, there's a lot more lip syncing than physical movement or facial expressions among those characters.

But, in Mask of the Phantasm there's a balance between the animation of physical movement, gestures, facial expressions, and lip syncing. Animation is more believable here. Particularly the scenes were Bruce drops off his girlfriend, and the scene where Alfred hands him the letter.

As far as Thundercats being animated by the Japanese, you're right about that. Same goes for G.I. Joe, both the movie and the animated series. They were animated by Toei Animation. I remember watching G.I. Joe: The Movie, and there was a bit more physical movement and gesturing during dialogue scenes. but the animation wasn't fluid enough to make it believable. Other than that, a lot of cartoons were outsourced to Japanese studios. But, that doesn't really take away from American animation, nor does make Japanese animation appear any better. Let's take it back a bit further. Remember the first Astro Boy anime? This came out in 1963.

Compare the quality of animation in this anime, to this, which came out in 1950. Same as Mask of the Phantasm.

I wouldn't compare Toy Story to Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Toy Story is traditional 3D animation, involving 3D character models, skinned over character rigs, and then animated using relevant software. Most of Final Fantasy was animated using motion capture. Movements came from actors wearing CG suits on the set. In essence, a lot of the animation was done for them by capturing the movements of the actors.

But, Toy Story wasn't the beginning of CG here in the West. That was Jurassic Park in 1993. Most of that was CG (and a few scenes of it being robots/animatronics), developed by Industrial Light and Magic, who at the time, had employees that didn't even know how to animate in CG. One of them had to prove that it could be done, in which it was. So, while Final Fantasy did have a realistic look, it had already been done.

But, back to anime. I went back to watch the first episode of Ronin Warriors. Remember what I said about background characters not moving? That's about three minutes into the episode. In the city, the camera pans to the left, as pedestrians are scattered about the street. Neither of them are moving. Yuli's parents, as the are speaking to him, do more lip syncing than physical movement and gestures. I'm not aware of varying animation styles in Japanese animation. Most of them are animated the same, just like Ronin Warriors is. Dragon Ball suffers from the same thing (though background characters are animated at times, unlike other animes). I went back to watch the episode where Bulma flashes Roshi. It's the same thing. It's like, while they're talking, their physical movements are "stop and go, stop and go" or something. Ultimately, action scenes tend to have a few more frames of animation and more constant physical movement than all other scenes in anime, period.

Just the characters present in the picture: Haruhi Solos

Including the entire universes of the characters in the picture: Haruhi Solos

Anime and comics in general: Haruhi Solos Both have been a massive part of my life and there's no way I could chose :3

There isn't one superior to other, really. Goes down to personal choice.

@mysticmedivh: lol, obvious bait is obvious.

There are lots of GOOD animes out there , cartoon qualities are BETTER but half the number ;

Anime ----> Quality => Quantitiy

Cartoon ----> Quality > Quantitiy

So they are evenly matched.

Well, i guess u must have seen some intresting shows

yep

Pendleton Ward is awesome

Like this one?

wow that is annoying

Cartoon, simply because some of the anime in recent years have been downright terrible.

Couple of rambling points.

Funny thing Anime is an overarching term that includes all animation including every cartoon listed.

As for the Pic In OP If I had to make a List of my Top 100 anime Only Five of those would be included.

Animation quality varies drastically across all animation regardless of origin comparing "a" anime vs "a" "Cartoon" is a failed argument do to lack of sample size.

specifically comparing Disney Vs an Extremely Long running series is dishonest.

I prefer reading manga instead of waiting till new episode comes out so i choose cartoon

For the cartoon side on the picture those aren't even the best cartoons.

LOL.

All of anime lacks a decent storyline. Not just one, all of them.