>>149907205
Definitely not. Western animation had a huge advantage in sound design. Emphasis on the word "had", because it's not something that persisted forever, or was properly attended to. The earliest years of sound film was insane in the animation realm. Starting with Steamboat Willie, which caused the explosion of sound design in the first place, the era of great sound lasted essentially the entire Golden Age. You had these people Carl Stalling and Frank Churchill who did wonderwork, and did these scores that were extremely derived from 1930's jazz and Romantic Classical. It wasn't just the music, either, all the sound effects and timings were always properly there. The appeal of properly synchronized sound and great music was inherently a large appeal of 1930's animation. For example, watch 17:30 of this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7X8u-EjADw , and you can see how everything was done. They used hired bands, with original music. They also created the sounds and durations from scratch, without the use off stock or sample recordings. But no surprise, sound design and music both eventually became as cheap as possible during the collapse of the Golden Age and the arrival of TV. Even Disney's films became worse, and therefore nobody was carrying the torch. And, look, I like old anime (and I mean actually old, not just 90's), but the sound design and music is jank as hell. I guess it does have a kitch and so-bad-it's-good quality, but man. Once you get to the 90's (both in the East and West) sound design is pretty much okay, depending on what you're watching.
