Why does modern anime not have the same feel compared to older shows?

Embarrassing blunder, Any Forumsedditor.
What's next, going to claim anime is no longer hand drawn?

>They were a product of the Japanese late 1980's bubble economy where people had so much money to burn that studios could spend a ton of it to fund passion projects
This is a half-truth. A lot of OVAs weren't actually that impressive visually, even with inflated budgets. Even Angel Cop, a show that you lament the loss of, has pretty terrible animation overall and doesn't really stand out all that much. People keep reposting that one sakuga webm where Angel blows that terrorist woman's brains out, but the animation quality in that one scene isn't representative of the whole OVA unfortunately. I'd say this is applicable to 90% of OVAs from that era (and the 90s to some extent). The important thing is now how much budget the OVA had, it's how you utilize that budget. So many OVAs have a tendency to show off their best content in the first few episodes, then gas out towards the latter half.

Basically you've discovered that aesthetic presentation and animation quality trumps narrative and character writing, despite what most of the western fan base has suggested for ages. Everything you listed was directed by people who first started on the animation side of things and than later became directors ( people forget that Kon was doing KA and layouts in the early 90s, as well as drawing manga) and weren't on brutal TV schedules, which allowed them to fine tune everything. You probably also have a particular taste for the realist aesthetic of the drawings. Just remember, this is a subset of old anime, not that the other old stuff is bad though.

>But the recession caused people to spend less money on entertainment, making the demographics shrink considerably, and animation studios didn't have disposable income anymore
I don't really buy that explanation, because the recession started 1991, and OVAs were healthy until ~2000.

OVAs died because late-night TV anime, and particularly shorter TV anime, stole their economic niche. OVAs made money with less buyers because the cost-paid-per-customer is higher for a physical VHS that you sell, than for a show that airs televised via a broadcast model. Once TV anime began to target a more specific niche and aim for a similar type of model, OVAs were more and more outcompeted.

I'm not even going to look at OP's post but it's a real shame that of all the names on the cover, Space Adventure Cobra didn't pop up.

Based and redpilled.
OLD is Soul
And new is soulless

Angel Cop has great animation quality all the way up until episode 5, and even there it has lots of good scenes. 6 is the only weak episode.

There was a variety of levels of average quality during the many periods of the OVA market. But OVAs from around 87-91 are definitely the highest average quality save films.

because you're not a child anymore

Not really - after 91 the amount of cheap rental OVAs started to eclipse the really well made ones, and they started lowering the overall quantity made well before 97 when we start to see lots of late night TV anime. It's more so two trends happening at the same time, OVAs dying and TV anime ascending.

I don't know, I've watched a lot of OVAs from that late 80s era and my impression has been the opposite. Obviously there are good shows that can hold their animation quality for the full runtime, but a vast majority of them don't. Since we're on the topic of Angel Cop, I'd say it actually shits the bed around episode 2 or 3 and gets progressively worse as it keeps going, but yeah I agree episode 6 us a bit of doozy.

It objectively doesn't. 2 and 4 in particular are extremely high quality and famous for it, particularly for Ohira's work on those episodes. There is a subjective element here, but I can't think of any justification for calling episode 2-4 poorly animated. The drawings are technically solid and complicated, the timing is always good and effective, good physics, high drawing count, etc. I've seen 370 OVAs, about 250 were from 83-94, I obviously get that they aren't all amazing looking, it's not as if everything is on the level of Birth. But the bar is notably lower on TV anime from all eras. You don't commonly get falling apart drawings and awkwardly timed scenes that don't work like what happens all the time in TV anime, and there are tons of amazingly well animated ones.

Episode 4 has good moments but it's not particularly consistent for me. I just watched the show a few weeks ago so maybe my memory is spotty but I honestly don't remember it being that impressed. To be fair, the plot kinda shits the bed towards the latter half so that might have something to do with my disconnect with the animation quality.