There's three big distinctions between American Prestige TV and Japanese Anime that I've noticed (other than the "one's animated" bit).
Younger protagonists/antagonists: There's a Japanese fascination with the idea of a protege or savant that dominates even the most serious shows. Whether you're an ultra-ace pilot, genius detective, or (most commonly) a primary school student who just happens to be smarter than everyone three times their age, the anime lionizes young people who behave like adults. As a kind-of knock on effect, this results in a fair amount of graphic depictions of children - violence, nudity, and other situations that a Prestige TV show in the US simply isn't going to want to touch.
A fixation on rivalries: US Prestige TV tends to hone in on existential or obscured threats. The ultimate antagonists of shows like Sopranos and The Americans are rarely present on the screen. Whether they are crime bosses or government officials, they tend to operate at a high level with the protagonists operating as pawns in a much bigger game. Even big political shows like GoT and House of Cards tend to get away from the primary antagonists and focus on the daily life of the protagonists, with major conflicts coming suddenly and at the tail end of a season. Compare that to anime, where the major rivals are a regular presence on screen and are keenly aware of the protagonists as the most important players in any conspiracy or conflict. There amount and significance of dialog between Walter White and his wife and son simply wouldn't exist in anime. That time would be spent on White and his current drug-dealing arch rival, trading verbal barbs in an escalating game of cat-and-mouse.
Gaming: Anime fucking loves games. Maybe that means a heads-up tournament a la DBZ or Naruto. Maybe that comes in the form of an elaborate game of riddles or some obtuse chess match, as in Terror in Resonance or Death Note. This regularly leaks into the live-action dramas as well, with Squid Game being the most obvious recent example. Episodes almost always involve some kind of very explicitly stated challenge with rules that are somehow rigidly enforced. These are presented to the audience as an invitation to solve at home (or simply to marvel at, with the implicit assumption that you're a bunch of dumb-dumbs who can't run around an airport playing chess on a mental board). Prestige TV, by contrast, will regularly hand wave the How of a particular scheme or add enough professionalized jargon so as to make it inscrutable. You're not supposed to think too hard about the Magic Island from Lost or the mechanisms for accruing celebrity in Atlanta. The focus tends to be on social relationships, decisions, and betrayals, as well as the hedonism that drives people to acts of increasing desperation.
I'm sure I could come up with more. But in every case, it does feel like the American Prestige show is trying to empathize with a much older age group of "normals" while the East Asian high profile cartoons are constantly appealing to late-teen/early-20 something folks that empathize with feeling Special. Asians are focused on the upward climb while Americans are entranced by the fall.
I don't think its a coincidence that anime also has a habit of resonating with American kids in GT/Honors classes or with some other self-described sense of elevated ego or purpose. Meanwhile, Prestige shows tend to play well with folks who feel run down, who feel they've missed their big shot, and people who like rooting for the dumb guy.
you're comparing anime as a whole with specifically prestige tv, which doesn't seem fair. when you expand the western tv beyond 'prestige' stuff you'll find series that have young savants, or heavy rivalries, or lots of game references.some of the biggest shows of the past few years have been things like the queen's gambit or stranger things. and you can find plenty of anime that flies in the face of all of these trends
i think these things you've identified are broadly accurate trends, but to act like it's universal bugs me. especially when you try and talk about the demographics that watch both, look at how massively popular around the world something like dragon ball is with people rooting for dumb guys
There's three big distinctions between American Prestige TV and Japanese Anime that I've noticed (other than the "one's animated" bit).
Younger protagonists/antagonists: There's a Japanese fascination with the idea of a protege or savant that dominates even the most serious shows. Whether you're an ultra-ace pilot, genius detective, or (most commonly) a primary school student who just happens to be smarter than everyone three times their age, the anime lionizes young people who behave like adults. As a kind-of knock on effect, this results in a fair amount of graphic depictions of children - violence, nudity, and other situations that a Prestige TV show in the US simply isn't going to want to touch.
A fixation on rivalries: US Prestige TV tends to hone in on existential or obscured threats. The ultimate antagonists of shows like Sopranos and The Americans are rarely present on the screen. Whether they are crime bosses or government officials, they tend to operate at a high level with the protagonists operating as pawns in a much bigger game. Even big political shows like GoT and House of Cards tend to get away from the primary antagonists and focus on the daily life of the protagonists, with major conflicts coming suddenly and at the tail end of a season. Compare that to anime, where the major rivals are a regular presence on screen and are keenly aware of the protagonists as the most important players in any conspiracy or conflict. There amount and significance of dialog between Walter White and his wife and son simply wouldn't exist in anime. That time would be spent on White and his current drug-dealing arch rival, trading verbal barbs in an escalating game of cat-and-mouse.
Gaming: Anime fucking loves games. Maybe that means a heads-up tournament a la DBZ or Naruto. Maybe that comes in the form of an elaborate game of riddles or some obtuse chess match, as in Terror in Resonance or Death Note. This regularly leaks into the live-action dramas as well, with Squid Game being the most obvious recent example. Episodes almost always involve some kind of very explicitly stated challenge with rules that are somehow rigidly enforced. These are presented to the audience as an invitation to solve at home (or simply to marvel at, with the implicit assumption that you're a bunch of dumb-dumbs who can't run around an airport playing chess on a mental board). Prestige TV, by contrast, will regularly hand wave the How of a particular scheme or add enough professionalized jargon so as to make it inscrutable. You're not supposed to think too hard about the Magic Island from Lost or the mechanisms for accruing celebrity in Atlanta. The focus tends to be on social relationships, decisions, and betrayals, as well as the hedonism that drives people to acts of increasing desperation.
I'm sure I could come up with more. But in every case, it does feel like the American Prestige show is trying to empathize with a much older age group of "normals" while the East Asian high profile cartoons are constantly appealing to late-teen/early-20 something folks that empathize with feeling Special. Asians are focused on the upward climb while Americans are entranced by the fall.
I don't think its a coincidence that anime also has a habit of resonating with American kids in GT/Honors classes or with some other self-described sense of elevated ego or purpose. Meanwhile, Prestige shows tend to play well with folks who feel run down, who feel they've missed their big shot, and people who like rooting for the dumb guy.
you're comparing anime as a whole with specifically prestige tv, which doesn't seem fair. when you expand the western tv beyond 'prestige' stuff you'll find series that have young savants, or heavy rivalries, or lots of game references.some of the biggest shows of the past few years have been things like the queen's gambit or stranger things. and you can find plenty of anime that flies in the face of all of these trends
i think these things you've identified are broadly accurate trends, but to act like it's universal bugs me. especially when you try and talk about the demographics that watch both, look at how massively popular around the world something like dragon ball is with people rooting for dumb guys