Present-Day Anime Animation

[Kriven]

You see Wild Takes in Spongebob from time to time, although whatever creative team is behind the show now doesn't utilize those traditional gimmicks nearly as much as the late 90s/early 2000s team did (which I think had a lot of the same folks who worked on Rocco's Modern Life, which also used that style).

I don't know if this is "Anime" specific, but I'm saddened by how kind of similar a lot of cartoons are these days. There's a few shows on right now that are probably among the greatest cartoons ever made (Stephen Universe, for example), but most of the shows are this similar-looking Regular Show-knock-off deal. It's almost like flipping stations shows you segments of the same cartoon (assuming the network is even playing a cartoon... even Cartoon Network tried to drop the animation thing a few years ago). I miss the variety. Part of that variety was maybe because when I was a kid networks played both contemporary and vintage cartoons, so growing up I could turn on Nickelodeon and see Rugrats, Spongebob, Catdog, Fairly Odd Parents, Hey Arnold, Animaniacs, Rocko, Invader Zim, Danny Phantom, Teenage Robot, The Last Airbender, and so many other shows which were being broadcast on the same station despite there only being new episodes of (for example) Spongebob, Jimmy Neutron, and Danny Phantom. The other shows were still there, and if you didn't like one that was okay, because it would be over in half an hour and meanwhile, Cartoon Network, Disney Channel, Fox Kids, Kids WB, or Discovery Kids were likely playing one of their twenty programs that you did like. The shows were different, and you had options. It isn't like that anymore... The network's are relying on the same circle of modern programs and most of those just aren't very good. And that's the network's which still play cartoons, like I mentioned earlier. I don't think Disney Channel has any animation these days? (It looks like they all moved to Disney XD, which isn't a regular cable channel).