I personally love both, but I believe that assuming one is much better
than the other is too broad and presumptuous. I watch a lot of both, and
when I'm in the mood for comedy, it almost always has to be American
cartoons. And most of our cartoons have better frame rates and we
actually bother to match the mouths to what they are saying. Usually
when I want something more about fantasy, or a drama or series, then I
watch Japanese cartoons. I like the way anime is drawn, and the amount
of detail, and because of that, I personally am able to overlook many of
the flaws and still find joy in it. A lot of people that side with
anime tend to ignore all of it's flaws and label it superior, but I
would like people to accept their flaws and give a legitimate argument
as to why one or the other is better. Although I generally prefer anime,
I believe that cartoons are better since they match the mouths to what
they are saying, and most importantly, they have a lot of frames which
means better animation. People always come up with conveniences and
excuses on anime's behalf like, "The unmatched mouths make it easier to
translate" or "anime is about the story, not the animation so it
shouldn't really matter" but if you aren't even worried about animation,
then you shouldn't even bother making an animation, and you may as well
leave it as a comic book. When you think about it, there's really no
point in making an animation, if the characters barely even move. That's
just my opinion, whats yours?

I'm going to try to not be elitist here, but I find a few flaws with your opinion. One, the reason that the mouths don't match up is because they don't re-animate it when they're dubbing over the original Japanese version. If you've seen anime that's been left with the original voices, you'll see that they take the time to match the voices up to the syllables, but since they do the voice acting over the animation here, it's much more difficult to match. Besides, if you look at newer anime, even ones that are English dubbed, you'll see that they've become much more accurate than past titles.

Anime is generally known for its action and drama, yes, but there are a lot of comedic anime series out there as well. Take a look at Lucky Star, Nichijou, even Clannad. They're not the same kind of comedy you'd find here, with characters either bashing each other over the head or making random off-hand puns.

Anyways, with that being said, I do agree with you that if I want something that's more lighthearted to watch, then I'll side with American cartoons. Sometimes, I'll side with anime if I want something dramatic, but like I said, there are also comedic anime too.

Someone70 : You pretty much took what I was going to say. The only thing I have to say is that some anime are bad character mouths no matter what language you are in, some anime are lazy.
Other than that you took what I was going to say.

Someone70
Yes a lot of the things you said make sense. I know that anime has comedy as well. I was just generalizing. I've seen all of the anime that you mentioned for comedy and I enjoyed all of them. Just like some American cartoons have action like avatar the last Air bender. I wouldn't really call that a flaw in my argument though because I wasn't really trying to use that as an argumentative point I was simply stating which I prefer to watch for the general category.  I didn't at all mean for it to be a part of my argument. As for the mouths, I wasn't addressing the dubbing, but the original. I guess I was wrong if they have been improving and now match the syllables. That's my fault for not taking notice of that, but I do know that they still don't actually form the lips to what they are saying. They do move them in the vague direction of where they should be for hard sounds, like if they say something with an "M" sound they will probably widen the mouth and close it and if they yell, they open the mouths wider but that really all that I've noticed. The mouths are synced to the syllables. I will admit that, but they still don't form the mouths to exactly what they are saying for every word. That, in my opinion, is still a flaw.

I guess it's true what you're saying when you say that the voice acting isn't 100% spot on. I guess I've been watching too much to the point where it's hardly noticeable.

But to be honest, don't American cartoons have the same flaw? They're both still under similar limitations, so I'm sure there are instances where things don't match up there either.

I generally enjoy Japanese cartoons a lot better than American. Because there is more mysticism and I think they do better jobs at creating the monsters,

As it stands right now, I will take Japanese animation because I haven't seen a decently drawn American cartoon in ages that wasn't imitating anime style (and most of those that try also fail).

Mouths never match up perfectly when they are animated, no matter what style or language it is, to use that as a point is kinda... well... pointless.

Generally I much prefer the plot of Japanese animation, though there are some wacky ones. You want comedy, watch Excel Saga (with subtitles, please, the dub is horrible), Strawberry Marshmallow, Yotsuba!, Zetsubo Sensei, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, or Full Metal Panic (especially the second part, Full Metal Panic Fumaffo!). I'm not even getting into the huge bulk of romantic comedy... there are a LOT of those... Toradora is my most recent favorite in that genre.

I enjoy Japanese cartoons because I like the plots that they make in the story lines and I like American cartoons because some of the shows are easy for me to get use to.

I've been watching American cartoons more closely lately and I did notice that a lot of the words weren't perfectly matched like I previously said. But they still match the mouths quite a bit unless the character is an animal. So, it's really not that much better than Anime but I think that there still is a noticeable difference.. Although I do like the way anime is drawn, I think that they could do so much better if they just improved frame rate and didn't use as many still images. Not all of them do, and I think that they are getting better with it which is good, but if you take a look at a lot of action animes like Naruto, you'll find that in the middle of a battle, the animation suddenly turns into a slide show with action lines. I also think that if they had less dialogue in action scenes and spent less time showing reaction shots while they're running towards each other to attack, the fighting would be much more well received by broader audiences. One of the main complaints that I hear about anime from my friends and family who don't like it is, "There's just not enough action." I didn't think much of it until I noticed that in the middle of an action scene they might stop for a long dialogue and maybe even a flashback before they resume fighting after staring each other down and groaning for 30 seconds. Or when they finally clash weapons they automatically get into a dead-lock and you can clearly see that they are struggling but then they decide to take the time to zoom in on each person's face and sometimes go into more dialogue and though. And in a lot of the action animes when they are fighting someone stronger than them and they suddenly somehow get the advantage and manage to get their sword or gun pointed directly at them at lethal range but instead of killing them, they just wait there and say something like, "You are defeated! Give it up!" It's like they are waiting for the person to just slip out of the position and lose the advantage. And if they don't want to kill them then they could at least shoot them in the arms or the legs. I just think that the fights would be a lot better if they actually took the chances that they were given to either kill them or at least wound them. Also, I won't get into it too much, but anime cliché's kill me. I just can't stand to see the same cliché's used over and over again in each new anime. For a lot of anime, to me it seems like they are just taking the anime from last season, drawing over their faces, making them slightly more shiny, and calling them it a new anime. For those types, it's always the same cliché's over and over again. Not all of them do it, but most anime will have at least one killer cliché present several times in the series. I by no means hate anime. I just think that it could be so much better if they ditched most of the cliché's and stopped prolonging fights with unnecessary dialogue that can be told at a later time and animated their shows more to make it seem more like an actual animation not a slide show. And it would be nice if they paid attention to smaller details like making characters blink if they're going to freeze the frame on their face for 30 seconds.

you cant jjust calssify one being better than the other, their btoh good in their own ways

western cartoons are mainly made for kids, but the adult ones like family guy or south park are mainly fileld with humour be it scarcastic or slapstick. They were made for humour. If you mean cartoons like x-men then the plot is aimed at drama and theo nly real difference between these cartoons and anime are drawing style and more western ideals than eastern.

Eastern Cartoons or anime were originally made for a drama for adults and so have alot of plot and storyline but recently are full of ninjas like naruto with an aimed audience of children. The humourous animes out there are far outnumbered by action or drama animes that are the most popular like death note, naruto, etc..

its all down to personal preference watch what you want to theres no need to restrict yourself to one set of cartoons if you like them.

POKeMAD : :I'm just generalizing. As for the main differences I wouldn't say that
other than story the drawing style is the only difference. It's also the
animation, which is... pretty important.
 
And if you look at the first
anime. It was about humanized talking animals like Disney characters
because that's what they were modeled after.

And if you looks at Osamu
Tezuka, who many people consider the father of anime, his first anime
was Astro Boy. Astro boy's genres were action, adventure, and science
fiction. Not a drama and aimed at children. Anime's roots were never adult drama, it was always aimed at children whether it was talking animals or little robot boys with super human strength.

But you are right in that people shouldn't restrict themselves to either one if they like both. I know I certainly don't.  

DeltaEdge : wow i was always told anime derived from adult drama because of the complex story lines, ill have to research more into it. I remember astro boy though surely that wasnt one of the first animes to make appearance? Tbh it seems pretty recent.

If in fact it was aimed at children with talking animals it kinda strengthens what i was saying about the similarities between the two types of cartoons. I also think your right in saying it's the animation itself that is one if not the most important factors, sorry for missing that out.

Thanks for clearing up the generalisation though i read through the thread again and i saw that you were just generalizing, you've got a good thread going here

It doesn't matter which, the original is always the best.

Galacta : American cartoons were the original and Japanese cartoons were based off of them, so your saying that American Cartoons are better just because they came first? How do you reason that exactly? That isn't a good reason no matter how I look at it. Take into account the fact that things improve over time. Saying the original is the best is denying all other possibilities. That's like saying the first form of portable music like a Walkman that plays stereo cassettes is better than a modern day Ipod touch or another equally current device. The technology improved, making the Walkman obsolete. The Walkman was never bad, just out-dated. Or like saying that the original Astro Boy cartoons are better than Final Fantasy VII Advent Children the movie. That movie is a CG masterpiece, and to say that  Astro Boy is better just because it came first just does not make any sense. The improvements made make it superior to it's predecessor, unless you prefer the older for nostalgic reasons. I'm not saying that Anime has evolved to the point where it can be regarded as an improvement over American cartoons, but I think that it's simply unfair to deem the original Mickey mouse cartoons better than something like Final Fantasy VII Advent Children over such a baseless reason.

DeltaEdge : .....Wow. You love typing. I wish I could type as much.

What I'm saying is that I'm not a big fan of sequels. Some Japanese cartons were better than American, and some American were better than Japanese. They're not all the same.

And I didn't mean it by order. I meant by sequels, like I said. I would have put "order" if I meant "order".

I thought we were talking about cartoons, not movies. Just saying. I didn't like Astro Boy anyway



Yes, things improve over time. If you signed up on Vizzed when I did, I could have made it an example. Vizzed's improved a lot, but not everything improves.

And this. It's called an opinion.