> It does seem that even though anime is more popular than ever, there is not so many modern anime classics. Are you comparing to 1995-2005 or are you comparin

> It does seem that even though anime is more popular than ever, there is not so many modern anime classics. Are you comparing to 1995-2005 or are you comparing to the lifetime of anime from about 1970 onwards? 1) I'm not sure anime is all that popular anymore. For example, I see FAR less anime merch than I did back in the early 2000s. Cyberpunk:Edgerunners is one of the few recently that seemed to spawn merch. 2) It doesn't help that a cour is now 13 episodes, at best, by default. It's pretty hard to make a "classic" anime in just 13 episodes on a super tight deadline. You can see the drop in quality around 2005 right about when things are switching to 13 episodes. By the time you reach 2010, practically nothing that isn't promoting toys is longer than 13 episodes. 3) Up through about the mid-90s, anime was mostly meant to promote buying toys and the quality reflects this (really--take a look at the anime released from about 1980-1990). 4) There were never that many "classic" anime after you remove Studio Ghibli. 5) 1995-2005 just had a remarkable run of producing some stupidly good anime along with all the standard dreck. It was a combination of decent enough funding, decent enough technology, and a sudden market opening (US demand). 6) The Japanese anime business leaders were complete and total dolts for a very long time. After about 2005, they sold increasingly expensive box sets to their whales and that completely warped things. Consquently, you get increasing amounts of junk hyper-tailored to the anime faithful (See: Zero no Tsukaima getting 48 episodes(!)--actually, please don't see it, it's total garbage).