>>37450011>No one buys the stylistic downgrade explanation when a movie managed to take the style and actually refine it.Here's the actual reason, then: long running anime like Pokemon, One Piece, or PreCure are training opportunities for young animators to get their feet wet on a low-stress title for the inexperienced. If you read the credits for regular episodes, you'll not only see Korean names, but pinoys, Indians, and even Americans.
An anime like SM with its simpler style is much easier for animators to develop skill animating in a job environment, without needing to stay on model. If necessary, animation studios can hire clean up artists to put things on model, but that's not necessary for Pokemon with this new art style.
OLM is also one of Japan's leading 3G CGI studios, especially with regard to camera action in a 3D environment. Their chief competitor is Toei, who is always pushing the bar in their 3D CGI Pretty Cure endings. Each of these anime episodes is a new proof-of-concept piece, so when a real project comes along like the new Mewtwo movie, the animators will have the experience and tools to handle the higher budget demands.
If you want to read between the lines, OLM knew SM was going to have crappy ratings and doesn't care. It's prioritizing training its workforce over putting out a top-quality Pokemon anime. But it's perfectly capable of doing so, as M20 and M21 showed.
