Funding for anime adaptations is plentiful, and fan support helps bridge the confidence gap where production committees (consortiums of multiple publishing/IP companies pooling the money to distribute the risk) won't go for more indie / experimental works. Profit is recouped on developing the brand and merch, while leaving plenty of room for directors and studios to establish their own auteur identity. Studios are getting leaner and more focused these days, splitting off into smaller entities kicked off with a project or two with more margin for talent to shine.
It's not all perfect, though. Freelance work and lack of mentoring has really put a dent into the supply of new animators, who lack job security and often swing between studios left and right, but there are industry efforts to fix this and preserve knowledge, with the oldest pioneer animators now starting to hit their 60's and 70's.
You can check it out for yourself, go to anilist.co, and filter for Year 2024, and then filter again for each Season. There's tons of fad-chasing, aside from the major standouts. It's honestly a shame because some of these slop-tier anime still tend to get beautiful animations, but their stories and writing in general is really bad. Sometimes you get an F-tier story with S-tier animation.
Never could get used to the term 'derivative' in that context. Everything's derivative. Hard to know what word to use instead, but I just wouldn't attach an adjective in the first place and just skip past it. For instance, I don't call a particular reality show derivative, I'm just not really going to be interested in the first place, odds are.
Thats not to take away the enormous contribution made by fansubbers. Some of them are absolutely amazing. I remember seeing some of these techniques used in School Rumble years ago, and they also went out of their way to translate visual puns for western audiences.
But there's also several long running toy commercial series for kids like Pretty Cure. They're better than any other country's toy commercials but still that.