Were I being far more generous I would suggest that Chapek wasn't talking about all cartoons however it's Chapek so... no.
Cartoons as a medium can be far more freeing than live action for a number of reasons:
Characters don't age. If you have a long enough running series, or it is set across multiple timelines, then you can have characters from years/decades/centuries apart meet and interact without the need to recast. Sure VAs die, like with Mako in Avatar, but that's a general problem and one that's easier to deal with when other VAs can step in rather than having an entire face change.
In Doctor Who the Twelfth Doctor, played by Capaldi, met the First Doctor, however not only is has William Hartnell been dead for almost 50 years but even when they shot The Three Doctors in 1972 his health was so bad:
Hartnell reprised the role in the tenth anniversary story The Three Doctors (made in 1972, broadcast 1972-1973) with the help of cue cards, but appeared only in pre-filmed inserts seen on video screens. Hartnell's health had deteriorated in the early 1970s, and in December 1974 he was admitted to hospital permanently. In early 1975 he suffered a series of strokes brought on by cerebrovascular disease and died in his sleep of heart failure on 23 April 1975 at the age of 67.
Note that John Hurt played The War Doctor at the age of seventy-three, 9 years older than Hartnell in The Three Doctors so still not the oldest an actor has been in the show.
Meanwhile the Naruto anime has done the following:
Start with the attack on the Hidden Village of the Leaf by the Nine-Tails which featured characters such as The Fourth Hokade Minato, his predecessor The Third Sarutobi, as well as various other characters who bear witness to the attack.
Actually start the main story around the titular character 12 years or so after the prologue, including not only The Third now much older - and he was already old hence having retired and chosen Minato to replace him, but also Kakashi and many of his generation who were children during the Nine-Tails attack and are now adults in their 20s, including Iruka.
Run the main series over around 3 years in story time which was released 2002-07 in Japan.
Then bring out Shippuden set after a timeskip of a 2.5 years that ran 2007-17 in Japan.
Include Naruto at one point travelling back in time to meet an even younger version of Minato in The Lost Tower movie set 20 years before the series takes place.
Have another timeskip near the end of Shippuden where the main cast are now young adults rather than middle-aged teenagers.
Bring out yet another spin-off in the form of Boruto, focused on Naruto's firstborn son.
Include yet another time travel story where Boruto and the older Sasuke travel back in time to just after the younger Sasuke has deserted the village back in the original Naruto series.
So that's multiple timelines, multiple versions and ages of the same characters interacting with themselves, and before even getting on to the point that Naruto's main ability is to duplicate himself so much he sometimes reaches triple if not quadruple figures in duplicate numbers. CGI may be good, and while there are identical twin actors like the Ashmore brothers, live-action effects simply can't do anything near that sort of production without it being uncanny.
Add on to all that special FX are simply that much easier when you simply have to draw them and not have live-action actors look at a tennis ball and pretend they are on fire or whatever.
Live-action productions can be good. They can also be dog shit. They can be made for adults. They can also be made for toddlers, or those with the mind of one like journalists.
Cartoons are just the same. They can be good, they can be bad. They can be made for adults, or kids, or any in between or some other niche.
Were I being far more generous I would suggest that Chapek wasn't talking about all cartoons however it's Chapek so... no.
Cartoons as a medium can be far more freeing than live action for a number of reasons:
Characters don't age. If you have a long enough running series, or it is set across multiple timelines, then you can have characters from years/decades/centuries apart meet and interact without the need to recast. Sure VAs die, like with Mako in Avatar, but that's a general problem and one that's easier to deal with when other VAs can step in rather than having an entire face change.
In Doctor Who the Twelfth Doctor, played by Capaldi, met the First Doctor, however not only is has William Hartnell been dead for almost 50 years but even when they shot The Three Doctors in 1972 his health was so bad:
Note that John Hurt played The War Doctor at the age of seventy-three, 9 years older than Hartnell in The Three Doctors so still not the oldest an actor has been in the show.
Meanwhile the Naruto anime has done the following:
Start with the attack on the Hidden Village of the Leaf by the Nine-Tails which featured characters such as The Fourth Hokade Minato, his predecessor The Third Sarutobi, as well as various other characters who bear witness to the attack.
Actually start the main story around the titular character 12 years or so after the prologue, including not only The Third now much older - and he was already old hence having retired and chosen Minato to replace him, but also Kakashi and many of his generation who were children during the Nine-Tails attack and are now adults in their 20s, including Iruka.
Run the main series over around 3 years in story time which was released 2002-07 in Japan.
Then bring out Shippuden set after a timeskip of a 2.5 years that ran 2007-17 in Japan.
Include Naruto at one point travelling back in time to meet an even younger version of Minato in The Lost Tower movie set 20 years before the series takes place.
Have another timeskip near the end of Shippuden where the main cast are now young adults rather than middle-aged teenagers.
Bring out yet another spin-off in the form of Boruto, focused on Naruto's firstborn son.
Include yet another time travel story where Boruto and the older Sasuke travel back in time to just after the younger Sasuke has deserted the village back in the original Naruto series.
So that's multiple timelines, multiple versions and ages of the same characters interacting with themselves, and before even getting on to the point that Naruto's main ability is to duplicate himself so much he sometimes reaches triple if not quadruple figures in duplicate numbers. CGI may be good, and while there are identical twin actors like the Ashmore brothers, live-action effects simply can't do anything near that sort of production without it being uncanny.
Add on to all that special FX are simply that much easier when you simply have to draw them and not have live-action actors look at a tennis ball and pretend they are on fire or whatever.
Live-action productions can be good. They can also be dog shit. They can be made for adults. They can also be made for toddlers, or those with the mind of one like journalists.
Cartoons are just the same. They can be good, they can be bad. They can be made for adults, or kids, or any in between or some other niche.