Studio Ghibli vs. modern anime studios: Has the art form lost something?

This is going to be controversial: modern anime is technically superior to Studio Ghibli's work but has lost something essential in the process.

What Ghibli had:

• Hand-drawn animation where every frame was a deliberate artistic choice. Miyazaki famously checked every single frame of his films. Source: Starting Point: 1979-1996 by Hayao Miyazaki.
• Quiet moments. In My Neighbor Totoro (1988), there is a scene where Satsuki and Mei wait at a bus stop in the rain. Nothing happens. It is one of the most iconic scenes in animation because it lets the audience breathe.
• Nature as character. The forests in Princess Mononoke, the ocean in Ponyo, the sky in Laputa — Ghibli treated natural environments with a reverence that modern anime rarely achieves.

What modern anime does better:

• Fight animation. Demon Slayer's Hinokami Kagura, Jujutsu Kaisen's Gojo vs. Sukuna, Mob Psycho 100's psychic battles — the kinetic energy of modern action anime is extraordinary.
• CGI integration. Studios like Orange (Land of the Lustrous) and MAPPA have made CGI anime visually compelling rather than jarring.
• Accessibility. Simulcasting on Crunchyroll means global audiences see episodes the same day as Japan. Source: Crunchyroll global subscriber count exceeds 13 million.

What was lost:

• The willingness to be slow. Modern anime is terrified of boring the audience. Everything moves fast. The quiet, contemplative moments that made Ghibli films feel like lived experiences are rare.
• Hand-drawn warmth. Digital animation is cleaner but lacks the organic texture of hand-drawn cels. A Ghibli background painting has warmth that a digital composition does not.

The exception: Frieren: Beyond Journey's End recaptures Ghibli's spirit of quiet reflection while using modern animation techniques. It is proof that the two approaches can coexist.

Sources: Miyazaki's published writings, Crunchyroll data, studio animation credits