Nice Comment about how anime has gone "down hill" over the years

[Majin Darshe]

From here: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/colu...man.php?id=257

Question: Here's an interesting question. There's no way of denying it, but the general level of quality anime seems to have dropped over the last year. Western distributers are plugging a lot of re-releases of existing material, and quite a lot of the new aquisitions that can honestly be called high quality (Barefoot Gen, Gundam Seed, Samurai 7) are either classics that were produced almost a decade ago, or remakes of other classics.
In part, I think that this is mostly due to something of a lack of truly noteworthy anime that's being produced. At the moment, Naruto wins a lot of fans over here, as does Bleach, and I'm enjoying Monster. But there doesn't seem to be much in the way of the 'big classic' series that we all know and love (Cowboy Bebop, Kenshin, Witch Hunter Robin, and even the much overhyped Evangelion).
What are your thoughts? Are we presently in the middle of merely a dry spell, waiting for a new 'big thing' to re-infuse the industry with some real creative spirit? Or could the animation mileau have finally hit the point where there's no good stories left to tell?

Answer: Hold on just a second there. I'm pretty sure there is a way to deny that the general quality of anime has dropped over the years; in fact, I'll deny it right now!

I became an anime fan back in the mid-late 90's when shows like Fushigi Yuugi and Escaflowne and Cowboy Bebop and Evangelion were all the rage, and as the years have worn on, all of those series have become "classics", shows most people look back on as great examples of what anime can be.

Problem was, back then we only got the good stuff. Now we get everything, and to make matters more complicated, they're producing more anime than ever before.

Think about it this way; it's as if in previous years the only American shows Japan got were Lost, Battlestar Galactica and The Sopranos. They'd probably think that American TV is all very high-quality and that these instant classics are what to expect from them in the future. As years went on, more and more was being imported, so now they were getting Lost, Battlestar Galactica, The Sopranos... and also Dancing with the Stars and Two and a Half Men. It isn't that the programming got worse or that the new shows were all terrible and that no more classics were being produced, it's that now they're seeing everything, and like most things, 90 percent of it is crap.

I can point to at least 2 or 3 recent shows - like Fullmetal Alchemist, Gankutsuou, and even Beck - that are all at least as good as the stuff we were getting back in the day. There was never a golden age where the majority of anime being produced was instant-classic material; it's just that we're being exposed to more and more of it, especially with fansubs. So take heart - we're not in a "dry spell", you just need to be careful with what you watch.

All I can say is FINALLY someone put what I always wanted to say into words.