Quite a lot of furry art (kemono) here comes from Japanese artists in sites like pixiv or twitter. But, I see almost no animation here from them even directly at these sites, despite Japan being globally renowned for its bustling animation business. This is in sharp contrast to the many animators outside of japan making quality content.

Browse animated to see what I mean. Compare that to animated kemono (yes, I know not all japanese work is animated with kemono, but consider it a sampling shorthand; also, keep in mind animation in general is rarely undertagged in e621). 203 pages versus less than 1 page.

Are there any different sites for this, or am I just looking at the wrong artists? Or is it really just the case that Japan doesn't make as much furry animations? Or maybe I'm missing some other key fact entirely?

The japanese tend to lean more towards catgirls than animals.

for what it's worth, I also understand that the animation industry in Japan's in kind of a rough spot right now. Those jobs tend to be 'jobs of passion' where one is expected to work endlessly for very little reward, and the industry itself doesn't pay as well anymore-- you've got lots of passionate fans, but not as many people buying things in a way that rewards the producers. So, in some ways, the manga/anime industry's struggling. It's hard for shows to get a second season anymore.

And with this, there aren't as many people who want to get involved in that sort of industry, you know?

from a western point of view, it could also be that since anime is seen as increasinly nerdy/dorky, that fewer peopel are itnerested in finding and uploading japanese art.

Due to local laws and legality. Plus the overall issue of theft. Japanese artists typically dont want you to share their art at all anyway because posting uncensored porn can in some regions get them in extreme amounts of trouble.

As a result generally speaking they dont want nearly anything shared elsewhere. They often dont get credited either and language barriers dont help the situation.

Demesejha said:
Due to local laws and legality. Plus the overall issue of theft. Japanese artists typically dont want you to share their art at all anyway because posting uncensored porn can in some regions get them in extreme amounts of trouble.

Setting aside the issue of theft...

Realistically, the law in question is only rarely ever brought up or into the picture. That said, it is the reason why much japanese Pornogrpahy--drawn or otherwise--features censorship--mosaic pixilization, blurring, strategic camera angles... those are... all methods used to avoid depicting 'obscenity'. Seriously, pornography is a HUGE industry in Japan, yet the most recent trial on it was in 2004, and THAT one was the first in 20 years. (there were some more recent arrests, but I don't believe they went to trial.) ... The artist was fined and spent no time in Japan. The publisher was also convicted, but his jailtime was suspended by the Judge. (the fine, by the way, was 1.5 million yen... while I'm not positive what the exchange rate was at the time, that's about $13,000 -- nothing to sneeze at, but ask me how much my new car was.

Generally speaking--slap a few black strips on a picture, blur some stuff out, pixilate it... use some creative camera angles and you can draw what you like and no one really cares.

While Japanese people do have some interesting laws in that regard, there are not hoards of repressed japanese artists fearing that the police will knock down their door.

To the best of my knowledge, anyway. I could be wrong.

...

...Also, I"m pretty sure that kemono is not really an 'accurate' tag to be looking at. To my eye, about a quarter of what I see is probably drawn by someone inspired by the kemono style, rather than a Japanese artist. ... also, this form does not necessarily lend itself to animation. Anime/manga styles tend to be very pretty and focused on this ONE image--there's not much concern about if the pose would work if you turned the head, or if spines can actually bend that way, etc. Drawing a still image and animating are two very different--but connected, skill sets.

Animation also takes a boat load of time.

i adore kemono animations. i feel your pain, brother.

why are we still here? just to suffer?

Pixiv made an update that made animated GIFs some new thing that can't be saved--it essentialy splits each frame and slideshows them.
That, or it's a legitimately different thing and artists are intentionally using it to help prevent "theft"

Furrin_Gok said:
Pixiv made an update that made animated GIFs some new thing that can't be saved--it essentialy splits each frame and slideshows them.
That, or it's a legitimately different thing and artists are intentionally using it to help prevent "theft"

They are branded as ugoiras.

It's literally just HTML5 canvas which shows JPG files for specific amount of time, so like you said. Artists cannot upload animated gifs as image submissions, so it's indeed sites required system for animated content. Pros are higher quality than gif and more precise frame times (if user uploads as image sequence) and of course it becomes much harder for user to simply save it. Twitter has similar approach as they convert GIF files into MP4 videos which cannot be just right clicked and saved - and sadly pixiv and twitter seems to be the two places that people from the east seem to prefer.

It's still relatively easy to download all the frames as zip file and then encode it into video (or gif, but jpg compression will bloat them a lot and decrease quality if user uploaded image sequence). I think some booru created their own copy of pixiv system which eliminates the need for filetype conversion and users simply upload the zip with JPG files and frame delays.
https://e621.net/wiki/show/howto:sites_and_sources#pixiv

This is nothing like my Japanese animes.

Wow, a lot of interesting answers from different angles (some kind of tangential but still fascinating). They're not as definitive as I'd like, I'm still grateful to know at least a little bit more, so thank you for sharing, folks. It's a real shame though... I guess it's unlikely I'll ever see a native anime adaptation of my favourite furry bara 😢

notawerewolf said:
i adore kemono animations. i feel your pain, brother.

why are we still here? just to suffer?

I suppose we have to settle doujins, friend. _{just not here anymore}

SnowWolf said:
Animation also takes a boat load of time.

Then serious kudos to all the talented non-Japanese (generally Anglophonic) animators we have.