The Insider's Guide To Anime

By the way: the difference in style also has to do with
money. Budgets for animation in Japan tend to be
lower than in the U.S. What does that mean? Here’s
an example: It costs money to create each episode of
Inuyasha: stories have to be written, storyboards
created, scripts written, voices recorded, drawing and
animation completed, digital files created… dozens
and sometimes hundreds of people work on each
episode. It all costs money – lots of money. Each
episode has a “budget,” or a limit, on how much
money can be spent.

In order to save money, anime tends to have less
movement, and what movement there is tends to be
less fluid or smooth compared to Western animation.

(That’s not always true, of course, but it is as a general
rule.) Anime makes up for that by paying more
attention to character design, telling great stories, and
creating scenes that seem to be full of action even
though the actual movement is pretty limited.

So, when you see Spike attack in Cowboy Bebop,
you’ll notice most of the time he doesn’t actually move
– the background moves, making it seem like he’s
flying across the screen. Sometimes it’s scenery,
sometimes just lines that indicate movement… but
either way it’s a lot cheaper to make the background
move than to make Spike move.
Speaking of costs, most of the animating itself –
drawing one pose after another, with really small
differences, so that when put together the sequence
shows motion – is done in the United States or in
Japan. Labor costs, or what the artists have to be paid,
are just too high. Artists in Korea, the Philippines,
China, or Indonesia do most of the animating. The
artists aren’t paid as much in those countries, so
making the episode is a lot cheaper. Usually the
storyboards, character designs, and voice recordings
are done in Japan or the U.S., though.