It seems that the trend in animation is to hire a generation of people who have done flash animation as opposed to actual animation (auto correcting/connecting lines etc..) so that everything looks like Penny Arcade. All the new kids shows have that look it’s super fast and easy to crank out and it’s not like their target audience is going to complain about it. It’s like our generation watching GI Joe we loved it but we had to see some anime and say,..”Hey why is this so much better? is there more like it?” etc.. etc..)

I just watched the much accliamed “dead space” anime prequel to the game and it looks like it was cranked out over the weekend by funimation. And yet people rave….?
Not that it takes the flashiest visuals make the best show. Dr. WHO survived on shoestring budgets with horrible visuals because they had great stories and actors, and many cartoons manage to do the same, but there is MUCH more pervasive “Path of least resistance” trend in animation. There will be fewer and fewer cartoons that will survive the span of a generation let alone make it to the next one. I saw the transformers the animated series and it just hurt to watch. It’s like transformers dumbed down….it was what duplo is to legos.

But then we have the other horrible decisions…Like Batman the Bold and the Brave (or beautiful or whatever) Where they used batman as a vehicle for bad animation and an excuse to get crappy B actors into voice roles, it’s so bad it’s almost as if they did it just to spite actual fans.

and to answer your question on what happened to Optimus Prime…
Anime happened. That’s why he doesn’t have corners. Anime is an easy to produce animation style, and Americans are eating it up so they try to make everything like Anime. And, remember the first rule of Anime; Only hair has corners.