I'm not sure i agree. Yes there are exceptions, but they tend to be few and far between, and fairly niche themselves.

Most american animation seems to be: stuff aimed at young children (pixar type shows), super hero adjacent stuff, or adult commedy (like south park). A few exceptions here and there but on the whole there just isn't that much variety.

I can pull the same thing with anime - the vast majority pumped out are either:

- slice of life

- isekai

- shonen

Here's a few more: (not super hero, not necessarily geared towards children, and not comedy)

- Owl House

- Pantheon

- Infinity Train

- Final Space

- Castlevania

I think you're simply less well versed in the variety of western animation. There's also not nearly as much MONEY in western animation, so of course there's less of it.

Western animation is varied, but I think anime overall still has an upper hand.

In anime not too unusual to see shows like Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju which is a historical drama that follows the apprentice of a master stage entertainer in the Showa era. Very niche, but also quite interesting. Stuff like that almost never gets animated TV shows in the US.

I think the traditional outlet for that stuff is like Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.

USA certainly produces a lot of entertainment and celebrates niches.

What's weird and interesting though is that Japanese Anime covers just so many genres (including edutainment. I'd add Ninja Girl and Samurai Master as a very educational plot about the Warring States period of Japan). Maybe even Kenshin as a more mainstream historical fiction about Mejia Era / dawn of industrial Japan as the perspective of an old Samurai assassin.

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USA has assassins creed for example (or Canada does at least??) but that's a video game. Shogun and Game of Thrones has fantasy + history in them.

I guess general USA entertainment certainly covers all the genres. But anime alone attempts to cover all the bases. That's quite unique for a medium IMO.

These aren't exactly the best examples for your point.

I would consider Final space to be adult commedy (wikipedia also describes it that way)

The owl house literally won an award for best childrens tv (albeit it does look deep enough to be enjoyed by adults)

Infinity train is fair, but also cant even legally be purchased, which isnt exactly a great sign.

The other two are fair examples. (I never claimed there are none, just that its pretty limited)

> There's also not nearly as much MONEY in western animation, so of course there's less of it.

Sure, but that is both a cause and effect of it failing to capture audiences the way anime has.

> The owl house literally won an award for best childrens tv (albeit it does look deep enough to be enjoyed by adults)

Yes, but it also has a large adult following. It is not TARGETING children unlike a show like Blue's Clues. Therefore I don't think you can classify it as you put "pixar level children shows" (which I don't even know what that means).

> Wikipedia describes Final Space as a comedy

Maybe... personally while I think Final Space does have comedic elements - it also has an overarching storyline and is more of an epic adventure dealing with tragedy, death, and loss at a pretty adult level.

> Infinity Train can't be legally purchased

Literally this has nothing to do with the main point which was that western animation does not have variety

> Sure, but that is both a cause and effect of it failing to capture audiences the way anime has.

We weren't discussing whether or not something appeals to an audience. We were discussing whether or not there was sufficient variety. I think the root of our disagreement is in "volume" and I would argue that there is plenty unless you absolutely need to be consuming media every day.

There might be significantly LESS from a quantity perspective, but the DIVERSITY in shows is 100% available if you know where to look.

And in fact the actual OP post that I was addressing (because I think we're getting a bit off track) was that "cartoons in the USA fall under the rough set of same humor or writers" which is, assuming one possesses even a modest amount of experience with western animation, patently false.

Are you talking about made for TV animation or others? I would suggest animated feature films such as The Secret of Kells, A Scanner Darkly, or even Waking Life and Heavy Metal to see that this is not entirely the case.

I liked a scanner darkly and think it was a great use of the medium. However it was made close to 2 decades ago.

That's kind of my point though. There are exceptions (for a recent example i really liked "undone"), they just tend to be few and far between.

those are exceptions that confirm the rule

Rare exceptions

I've not grown up in the US, and I know only about Bojack. And even that from a few memes I've seen.

Around 20 years ago, I tried watching a few US cartoons and comics to get better acquainted with the culture, but they were all pretty bad.

Bojack deals with very heavy themes (depression, self destructive behavior, etc) in a scatological and satirical manner.

Without listing specific cartoons that you watched, it's hard to know where you "went wrong". Part of it might have been a culture gap - pop culture heavy cartoons wouldn't really appeal to somebody who didn't grow up in the US.

This could have just as easily happened to you if you'd moved to Japan and been exposed to shows like:

- Failure Frame (PARALYZE POISON PARALYZE POISON LOOK LISTEN LOOK LOOK) - if you get this joke, you get it.

- Faraway Paladin (devolves into some of the cheapest flash animation YTMND level I've ever seen)

- Diabolik lovers (...)

Conversely there's a lot of good anime out there as well:

- Cowboy Bebop

- Mob Pyscho 100

- Hells Paradise

You are underestimating the sheer amount of Anime produced every year. You probably get as much variety in a single year as a decade of western animation.

That's true, but it's also not the point I was addressing which was that all western animation has the same humor/writers which is LLM hallucination level wrong.

Sure but have you watched anime? Id say american cartoons are still very niche, the same way comic books are mostly about super heros compared to mangas or french BDs