Jakob Knight, on 15 November 2013 - 12:14 PM, said:
Simply put, because, like G.I. Joe, it was made solely to sell toys and action figures.
This is how U.S. commercial animation was/is set up, as a marketing tool for the toy companies. In the US, the animated series are seen as something only for kids, and the quality of both animation and story are limited to what the toy companies think will sell their product (i.e. target audience of about 8-12 years old). For this reason, they tend to not work overtime or put much effort into them, as the belief is that kids won't care beyond seeing lasers flash and good guys always beating the bad guys (and don't confuse them with anything but simple stereotypes). Also, this means the same animators can be free to do other series quickly without looking for better talent.
Oh, there's overtime work and such, but the problem is that the companies holding the purse strings tend not to take the shows seriously. And frequently, the quality suffers for it.
Jakob Knight, on 15 November 2013 - 12:14 PM, said:
By comparison, the animation in Japan (where just about everything in Battletech except for the actual tactics and means of getting to the battle came from) is something viewed as an artform, meant for both adults and kids, and the detail and complexity of the series is much, much more developed.
Yes and no. There's plenty of animation in Japan that is based solely on marketing toys to kids (Pokemon, Digimon, Hamtaro, etc.). And the marketing concerning even relatively high-brow anime would make a lady of the night blush in embarrassment. (Evangelion's pilots on bags of Doritos? Gendo shilling for razor blades? Really Gainax?) A lot of the stories get their depth from the fact that they are adapted from manga (comics), a medium where it is the stories themselves that are meant to generate sales.
That and manga is done very differently from US comics. While in the US there are dedicated titles for teams and characters, in Japan there are magazines that publish installments of 4, 5, or more different series at a time (with several pages of advertising breaking them up, of course). The Japanese way lets the publisher test out one or two new series for a few issues without sacrificing the series that have proven to draw in sales. It would kind of be like if Marvel put out a monthly mag that contained an issue of Spider Man, Iron Man, and 2 or 3 other titles; say maybe a part of a 5 issue run of a team up, an attempt to utilize an old character, and a solo-comic for the Human Torch to try to generate sales for the Fantastic Four/Thor based publication. If the attempt to bring back the old character tanks, there's no interest in Torch's solo career, and/or the 5-parter ends, it's ok, they still have Web-head and Tony Start to bring in money, and they could swap in other lesser known stuff to see if takes off.