Given that they have to hand paint all the poses for the new character, I'm not sure it's laziness. Cartoons in general...well...how many cartoons have you seen where a character had their jaw drop, and had their eyes pop out of their head? I'm guessing lots, and not all by the same company. Animation isn't necessarily about giving people stuff they haven't seen--a lot of it is about making people feel familiar and comfortable. And note that familiar is going to mean different things to different audiences--western animation has lots of squash and stretch, whereas Japanese anime has very little.
