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If I was a creator, I would certainly like that my work stood the test of time. With that much I can agree. However that is a long-term dream that goes much further and beyond your lifetime. It is not a practical approach to worry about the transcendence of your work because you are not going to have a proper measure of it no matter what.
On the other hand, I feel like this is the wrongest era to set this debate. It's not very appropriate to talk about forgotten and buried gems in an age with extensive online databases and the ability to watch an obscure 70s anime by clicking on a random torrent site. We have more access to information than we ever had, and this is only going to improve. Being a fan of classic film, literature or older anime has never been easier. And I understand that the trends of mass production bring uncertainty to the equation, but the fact we can find like hundreds of copies of everything is a much bigger guarantee for their future than what we had before. Yeah, I can agree with 0cean here and think of myself as part of a very irrelevant minority but there's never been a better moment to be part of this minority, and there's never been a better chance for older stuff to reach and be consumed by an audience.
Heck, mass production is not even the inherently recent problem it's made out to be. The historical peak of film production in Hollywood happened during the 20s and 30s. The difference is, a huge percentage of these films were not kept in good conditions and now either survive severely damaged or cut, or are completely lost. Right now preservation is much better than it was back then and we are not only guaranteed to have reliable records for future generations but there are better tools and a more focused effort to find and preserve older titles that would otherwise remain lost or in decay.
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