>>718574068
Unironically physical media. Anime and cartoons used to be drawn on actual paper and film with multiple physical layers. When anime went digital in the late '90s early '00s, and I don't mean 3D but not using actual physical paper/film for the drawings that end up in the final product, opting to using drawing and image manipulation software on the computer instead, the early adopters of this new method and pipeline looked pretty damn bad and simplistic in places. However, they got a hang of it quickly, but something was already lost at that point. It had already become too clean and lacking in human touch and emotion.
Fast forward to 2020s, almost all charaters in anime are just 3D models that are made to look like 2D animation. They are virtual dolls manipulated in a 3D studio with some flourish. Better than professional flash animation / tweening, I suppose, but not that much.