Japan animation usual is animated less than American counterparts.
the budget style of limited animation is well known.
Akira was probably the first feature to try and actually do 24 frames per second.
Disney was known for their painstaking hand rendering of animated films.
A lot of anime is almost manga on the screen. A lot of it is static sometimes with moving backgrounds and the characters move pretty stilted because of the limits of the technique. Not all anime is as lush and beautifully created as miyazaki or ghibli films.
Considering that almost all american animation and japan animation as well as the outsourced stuff is really just computer rendered there is almost no difference anymore except in quality and style.
There is now American Anime, borrowing the style of the japan toons. Being going on for years and years.
Avatar is one of the shows produced that remind people of other such shows, people might be reminded of naruto or dragonball because of the quote "eastern flavor" of the show, but the characters as far as i can remember where not in an exagerrated manga/comic book style as dragon ball was.
Plus there has been anime in the us for a long time except stuff was cut censored or redited so kids probably did not know the origins of the cartoons they watched.
Robotech is a bunch of unrelated shows tied together, the most famous used of course being Macross.
Voltron was an anime as well.
Thundercats and transformers i believe were also animated co productions of us and japan companies.
But to me the old transformers show despite being written by Americans and mostly animated by americans was based on a japanese toyline, and betrays the anime influence at least to me.
in the 80's movie the anime style is even more pronounced. I wonder just how much of the movie was animated by the japanese.
I also believe some of the rank bass production of the return of the king was made in japan, there is a slight japanese feel to some of the animation. If i remember the credits claimed american, french and japan animators.
The same company who did thundercats who probably outsourced a good deal of the animation to the japanese.
Now a lot of anime is no longer even made in japan. Even they outsource. I believe Singapore is where a lot of the stuff goes.
Many industrys have been hurt by the wordwide recession, but anime which was already in trouble has a but been crippled here in the us, and is not doing too much better in japan where they also have had a huge economic downturn.
If not for Miyazakis last film being the highest grossing film in japan history this era would be pretty bleak for japan animation.