The slow erosion of anime's visual quality

I'm sorry if what I'm about to say is contentious, but I think that it's important. I've been seriously enjoying anime since late 2011/early 2012 and what I've seen in that time is a gradual decrease in the general level of visual quality. I believe that the reason for this is the shift away from hand-drawn animation and the slow erosion of traditional anime techniques. <br><br>This isn't a rant against CGI or anything crass like that. I accept that times are changing and the way that we produce animation is going to evolve with the times. However, I can't help but feel that as the industry moves further and further away from traditional methods, it is losing part of its soul. Anime is just becoming more homogenized and visually generic, just like western animation.<br><br>Now, I get it. CGI is fast, efficient, cheap, and allows for a higher volume of content to be put out. There is a business case for it. However, I just wish that more studios treated it as what it is: a tool, rather than a solution. If I want to watch a hyper realistic video game, then I'll play a hyper realistic video game. I don't watch anime for that. To me, it's a visual medium that celebrates the script, the music, the voice actors, the story, and the animation.<br><br>As such, the decline in the general level of visual quality is just profoundly sad. I look back at anime from the late 1990s/early 2000s (or as I call it: "the golden age") and compare it to what we have now and I honestly wish that I could jump in a time machine and work in the industry back then. The animation was beautiful, expressive, and conveys emotion in a way that even the best modern works struggle to. And it's not like I think that the modern era is incapable of producing quality works either. Stuff like 'Ruby', 'Jashin-chan', 'Blackfox', and ' Uzumaki' all come to mind. But what I do see is that these examples are the exceptions and not the rule. <br><br>For every 'Demon Slayer' there is a 'Chainsaw Man' and I personally think that the industry is worse off for it.