Yeah, smears. But one can overdo smears, like any other animation technique. I think anime in general uses it as a crutch way too much to excuse not wanting to actually animate something moving.
But the "character acting" in animation - anything without motion capture anyway - isn't actually acting. It's portraying an emotion but no one's acting it out aside from the voice actor. I'm being finicky I know, but I consider anime no more acted out than a manga. The real meat and potatos, and probably why I prefer anime dubbed, is the voice acting. That drives it home for me, not big bubbly tears or the transition in and out of a pose. I say that because without context and without it explicitly being a gag series it can sometimes be hard to tell if a character is actually upset or just pretending to be upset (y'know, when a character is whining) from the visuals alone. Manga sorts this out with accompanying text, but losing voice acting anime can lose the ability to have something "acted" out purely look as it's presented. If you get what I mean.
Also, you remembered I've watched Space Dandy. Didn't expect that. I liked that show
Yeah, I think that sometimes comes down to the genre of what's presented. Like you can get some amazingly smooth sequences in action series that just can't be present in the west. The closest is probably the surreal stuff in series like Gumball.
When you say "who", do you mean the studio or the individual? Cause if it's studio, I concur. It'd be nice if Japanese studios kind of mixed it up.
Indeed they have. Back in the '40s the FPS count was usually well below 20 though, and action needed to be presented in a way that visually made sense despite the limitations of the time.
A) It's something we'd probably have to go on a show by show basis (when its used well vs. when its used poorly) but overall, I'd say smears are probably underutilized if anything.
B) Body language is a fundamental part of acting. This is true in live action acting and this is true in animation as well. "Anime isn't any more acted than manga" is a statement that doesn't make any sense to me - especially if you are someone who puts the voice component of acting above all. I think this is just a fundamental disagreement here between you and me.
C) When I say "who" I mean on a person to person basis. Most anime employs a lot of freelance work so you get animators doing work for a variety of different studios. With enough experience, you can totally recognize when particular cuts are done by particular people. It's also part of the reason why the staff list of a project is usually more important than the studio. Case in point,
One Punch Man (Studio Madhouse) is being animated by A LOT of people who worked on
Space Dandy (Studio BONES).
Without going to deep into this tangent, as family friendly as K-on is on a textual level there are stylistic elements and general choices that, given what I've seen of how a certain segment of the fanbase responds, were not part of the show naively. Is it some kind of example of perverted anime trash? No absolutely not. But it is worth a critical discussion.
Whether or not someone, somewhere might be fapping to something I'm watching isn't really my primary concern because people can do that with anything. (Have you seen how much Steven Universe porn there is out there? Have you? HAVE YOU?!) All I care about is how I feel about a show and what I can take away from it. I'm aware enough to know what the target audience for a show is and when elements are put in there to appeal to others that I might personally find distasteful. If I personally have an issue with some element, I'll drop a show but otherwise I really can't be arsed to care what others take out of it. I have better things to worry about that than "oh noes the way these two people hugged might give some person somewhere in the world a boner!" or whatever.
I guess a bit of my exasperation is that
A) not all cute shows are created equal so people waste their energy getting pissy and having fits about actually broadly accessible shows (like K-On to my understanding of the show as someone who has never watched it but has read articles and other media written about it) and not taking aim about the actually creepy shows they probably never head of because even most Western anime fans don't care about that stuff and
B) anime is so damn broad that's it really easy to avoid dumb shit and watch good shows but those looking to have their biases confirmed seem to enjoy complaining rather than learning or taking the time to actually find the good stuff that still gets made. "Dat goddamn moe/fanservice" has become too easy a scapegoat.
