The adoption of puppetry and replacement techniques in digital environments combined with the fact that anime still relies on low frame rates (which means less drawings) doesn't point to practice being an issue. It's that the economic and social issues surrounding the industry itself are not conducive to producing good and/or appealing art on the regular, and on top of that what counts as the generic "default" anime style has shifted regardless. The look of most modern anime- that shiny, inoffensive, less expressive, light novel style- just fucking annoys me, and it would annoy me even if we still animated on paper.
I can't necessarily speak directly to practice, as I'm not an animator. But, for purposes of reflection, were the social and economic issues conducive in the past? It seems like this is a classically overworked and underpaid area of production, and from my perspective the art doesn't seem better or worse nearly so much as it's different. I agree with you in that I think the difference has created a very plastic-looking style that's far too common, but that too is a reflection on the cultural values of modern society. The amount of anime, the production-line construction of it is a reflection on that society, and in truth I don't think that has ever really disappeared. Digital, I think, just points out the inherent issues of anime as an industry that can't move as fast as demand. The production of anime is far more a reflection of society at this point than the product. I don't think that, historically, this is all that different or unexpected. It's a history, not repeating itself, but rhyming.
It is not economically feasible for the animation industry in any country to create tools and workflows that do nothing but try to perfectly recreate the look of paper animation to the point where both would be indecipherable when it would be cheaper in the face of such a ridiculous goal to just move back to a paper pipeline. The industry has merely moved on to an environment that plays to digital's strengths in the way western theatrical animation has moved on to 3D. I would also wager that the look I desire would be impossible to capture exactly anyways because- again- the very fact that is the drawing tools are different is simply insurmountable. Drawing on a screen will literally never physically feel the same as drawing on a sheet of paper, even if the computer underneath is doing its very best to render your lines in such a way that it's not so mathematically perfect. Don't assume that computers can do everything.
20 or 30 years ago it wasn't economically feasible to make digital animation. As for the animation industry attempting to make it look that way, no, I don't think it will be them, I think it will be the art industry more generally that demands those functionalities in the future. And a pen that feels like a pencil, and digital paper that feels like regular paper. Saying it's not possible seems like a denial of how much has changed in a few short decades. I'm also not assuming that computers can do everything, but I am saying that computers can create situations where one has to make decisions about their preference rather than their expectations. Right now we expect that drawing on a computer won't be the same experience as drawing with physical materials. But that may not always be the case.
You're being dismissive. I'm not asking for a thesis. I'm saying the conclusion that "Anime is and always has been shit" doesn't produce even a modicum of interesting discussion when people are discussing the changes between old and new anime of which the baseline quality of the medium as a whole doesn't have as much relevance to that discussion as you're putting on. Seriously, if you believe that's the case what's the point in even talking to me?
I don't think I'm being dismissive. Sturgeon's law applies here, and I don't think that should be discounted. At the same time, if we're only talking about the upper echelons of quality in anime, rather than the wider field, the discussion changes quite a bit (or if we're just talking about the stuff in the middle, or the lows and the highs, etc.). We haven't really set the stage for a discussion of the field. What I'm curious about has a lot more to do with the net being cast and what's going to be caught up in that. The lowest end of hand drawn animation is going to look just as bad as digital animation, it will just be bad in a different way. So if we're comparing the old and the new, what are the parameters? Are we talking about certain years? Decades? What shows in those years/decades are indicative of the problem you see? Why? And these are just some of the questions we would need to discuss in order to get to an understanding of what the baseline is. It's difficult to say we have a wider view without first coming to an understanding of what we're looking at. But that's what I want to know and why I'm having the conversation. What we're looking at. What's indicative of the problems we see in anime.