That's it? Is this the pinnacle of Japanese animation? Is this what is considered a good action scene nowadays? Is this what outsold Western comics and cartoons?

Let's analyze this scene:

>The first 2 seconds are quite good because you can clearly see what they are doing.
>Simplistic sword clashing without any actual choreography. The same people who criticize the punch rushing from DBZ are the same people who love this fight.
>Their movement is so fast that you are unable to see what they are actually doing. Naruto (including Shippuden) has fights that are both fast and with clear movement.
>It looks like the animators were lazy: they put a ton of special effects at the expense of clearer movement.

Most fights from Naruto are better than this.
If you actually slow down and go frame by frame, you can see how seriously unimpressive and directionless anime fight scenes are. You notice the amount of post-editing that's done to make it seem impressive to people who don't understand much about animation when it lacks substance in that regard.
It lacks the movement, sophistication, and technicality of a properly animated scene