Animation purity: 2D VERSUS 3D, and how do you define 2.5D?

Now, I know this has been a thorny subject for many animation fans for years, but having research it myself I would like to point some facts, even though they could be opinionated facts.

Animation at it's core is pretty much defined as any form of entertainment that has little to no live action bits. Though you could say there's plenty of live action that uses Animation(but preferably/professionally known as CG/CGI), but let's not focus on that really.

2D has always been my prefered style of animation, simply because due to various technologies and the art of anime, this about 100-year phenominon has grown into a overly-massed market that the whole world has enjoyed without much criticism.

That said, 2D has taken a harsh trail for many people when the dawn of FLASH arrived, which made it almost entirely possible for "non-true animators" to slap something together and call it animation. While there are about of handful of decent flash productions done nowadays, some of the stuff on a site known as newgrounds could almost be considered blasphemy when it comes to the form of art.

Flash wouldn't be so popular if it wasn't for the almost anti-beginner status of 3D Animation.

3D Animation didn't get it's real start until the projects known as "Reboot" and "Toy Story", two of the first fully 3D productions that started a new dawn of computer generated animation. While these shows had very few flaws, the trend they started has created some of  the most notorious "shovelfilms" that give almost any decent 3D movie a bad name.

Thus, this is why 3D has given many an animation buff the likeness of being overrated, not because the technology is bad, but some of the movies that use it are just  plain horrible, and it weren't for the flash industry, 2D would have almost cleared it's name of aweful usage

That said, the japanese have been known to almost excel at both these arts. With the form of both 2D and 3D "Anime", the japanese industry has been almost a godsend to people who have lost faith and/or interest in western interpretations. Movies like the new "Tekken: Blood Vengeance 3D" and productions such as "Ghost in the Shell" showcase that the japanese take their productions far more seriously, and who can forget the almost perfect line of Studio Ghibli titles?

Also since the early 2000s, companies like Disney have incorporated both forms into a single production, which people have debated to use the term "2.5D". Now people have debated what exactly defines 2.5D, but it's obvious that many titles since then to possibly cut down work and time have implemented either 3D backgrounds or 3D models that would be more painstaking to do hand-drawn.

One example would be Robotech, where the original seasons' fighter-scenes probably required hundreds if not thousands of frames to depict the different angles and attack patterns of several attack-craft. While the latest movie version opt-in to just create the ships and fighters as 3D models so they need to only use a computer replica.

The only usual downfall of this method is that the 3D and 2D almost never blend well and the two styles almost give the movie a wierd "ugly" look due to the simplicity of the 3D models. Even Macross Frontier used this method and tried to counteract this effect by using forms of cel-shading to give the 3D models a "2D look", which made the models only slightly more tolerable.

As you can see, the Animation industry has become nothing more than a big huge mess of different styles, and the demand for greater techniques has grown, but the production of said large demand has thinned greatly. It is if almost technology or the people who use it have gone backwards to what people in the mainstream demand.

I'm just glad there is still at least a handful of animation experts who got their heads on correctly.
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