>>34335157Pic related shows my case for the necessity of muscle structures to display intensity; shadows and lighting were needed to give the ILLUSION that XYAsh had some type of muscles that could display anger. The result is quite noticeable, but why waste lighting animation department time and money when you can more easily transition between bubbly face and other emotions. Also the fact that muscle contortions+lighting would make pic related even more intense
tl;dr flat artstyle limits its own potential in emotional expression. Yeah it's a kids show, but we had a straight up shonen that could've been more intense if the humans were as expressive and off model as the pokemon were
