Japan. Not so much because its anime/art style/story etc but animators over there (from what I've seen) to an extent, still practice traditional animation. Yeah the movement of the characters, some objects seem really slow, but when the situation calls for it (like an epic battle etc) you can see the animation work beautifully.
If you look back at the golden age of American animation, they were the best of the best; frame by frame @ 24fps. Yeah a lot of them were racist/offensive (hurray for political correctness) but if you can look past that, the animation is where its at. According to Mel Blanc (famous voice artist) animation was pretty pricey (still is for this type). For the 1940/30s, $50K was a lot.
Now FF to today most cartoonists have relied on CGI and Flash animation too much IMO. I my honest opinion, I see very little effort in cartoons made this way. They look like paper cutouts moving on a flat surface. Keep in mind I'm not saying that I hate this type of style, but this style (along with CGI) has caused a saturation.
I loved cartoons like Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi, but even then there weren't that many like today.
