I didn’t even bother to see Winnie the Pooh

Don Bluth had a dark period during the 90s in which he stepped away from what he can do best aka following the ideal that animated movies can be targets to kids and at the same time being enjoyable by adults as well as the thought that children can withstand almost anything as long as there’s an happy ending, and instead made childlish movies that not even seemed to be his works. But his first works, his golden age if you will, is made of magical masterpieces like The Secret of Nimh, An American Tail, Land Before Time and All Dogs go to Heaven who were both astonoushing in stories and characters. Their plots were revolutionary for animation in being both enjoyable, as I said, by kids and adults. Bluth even outshadowed Disney itself and lead them to reconsider their way of making movies, leading to the Disney Renaissance. Ironically, in the same period in which Disney learned from Don Bluth that their works could be more mature and sophisticated in plot, Bluth, for no reason, decided to make more childlish and immature films. But it came back to his roots with Anastasia, which is an absolutely stunning piece of art. And Titan AE was too. Now I know what you’re thinking: Titan AE flopped and it was the reason Bluth don’t work for big studios anymore. I know and that is unfortunate. But Titan AE did not flop because it was a bad movie. It was a really great movie. It had an original story, interesting characters, it was complex and it gave us many things that we don’t get too often in western big studios animation aka double-crossed anti-heroes as protagonists without a true classic hero to feature. Titan AE flopped because the project went through many issues (it started as a live action but Fox changed it to animation and asked Bluth to do it because it did not wanted to spend too much money on it) which led to basically what is Don Bluth’s real weakness: he’s an amazing artist but he is a poor marketman. Unlike Walt, he never was any good at promoting his stuff. In the 80s animated movies still basically promoted themselves so it worked. Anastasia benefied from Disney princess rousing love across children of that time. But Titan AE couldn’t came out in a worse time. It was 2000 and Disney Renaissance was over and people once again started to look at cartoons as “children’ stuff”. Bluth’s dark and sophisticated formula that was once his greatest success is what caused instead the downfall of Titan AE. So it was not a bad movie, it was simply in a bad place at the right time. Same for Princess and the Frog really. Disney was not interested in developing 2d animation anymore at that point so they did not promote it at all. We all know how powerful Disney can be when coming to promotion. We saw nothing of it for Princess and the Frog and that’s unfortunate.

Because in Japan hand-drawn animation cost absolutely nothing. The japanese animators are paid something like 1 dollar per hour. With such low costs, there is no wonder that hand-drawn animation is still alive. The reason the CGI animation won is, as always, a question of money. 3D animation is financialy speaking more convenent. Besides japanese audience never liked 3d animation so well. They are the opposite of americans: americans look at technology like the future, they believe they are always looking at the future and they consider CGI as “evolution”. Americans as a people are not much interested in their past as much as the future. Japanese on the contrary are very stick to tradition and for them the classic 2d animation is simply untouchable. In fact CGI animated movies in Japan, so far, have all been flops (Captain Harlock, Saint Seiya etc…)

Europe always followed American example, so they stopped making 2d animation as well. Some country, like my own, still use it but only when it’s trashely done by underpaid asian countries.

I mean frozen, young heroine against the Snow Queen, Tangled, princess stuck in tower finds prince charming, even the last big hand animated feature was a Princess and a frog < you obviously never saw any of them. The princess and the frog is not about a princess at all, the heroine is a poor woman that works hard all his life to get something they denie to them because she's a woman and because she's black and confront herself with a nasty dishonored prince that never worked before in his life. In Frozen the only prince is a bad guy, the main love story is about the sisters while the romantic love is secondary and in Tangled there is no prince charming at all, just a thief/Han Solo-like character.

look at Studio Ghibli, their features are highly successful around the world < so successful that it closed.

Perhaps this is just an issue in America? For example, hand drawn animation does very well in Japan. < Because in Japan hand-drawn animation cost absolutely nothing. The japanese animators are paid something like 1 dollar per hour. With such low costs, there is no wonder that hand-drawn animation is still alive. The reason the CGI animation won is, as always, a question of money. 3D animation is financialy speaking more convenent. Besides japanese audience never liked 3d animation so well. They are the opposite of americans: americans look at technology like the future, they believe they are always looking at the future and they consider CGI as "evolution". Americans as a people are not much interested in their past as much as the future. Japanese on the contrary are very stick to tradition and for them the classic 2d animation is simply untouchable.

Don’t you mean just AMERICAN animation? and even then only just for feature films? Since just about every popular “Western” animated film released in mainstream theaters are wholly American-produced and directed (same goes for the studios).

In addition to Japan, doesn’t Europe also make 2D films?

Hey, did you know that the number of audiences going to see it =ing the box-office and the audiences opinion DON’T go hand-in-hand? And it doesn’t matter rather a film has good critic/goer approval, bad approval, bad critical reception and good audience reception, good critical response and distaste from the people seeing it… the movie does financially good if a BIG NUMBER of people or EVERYONE sees it.