Matplotlib funcanimation blit slow

Update 600 rectangles every frame is very slow, cbar_blit mode in your code is faster because you only update the rectangles which's color is changed. You can use PatchCollection to speedup drawing, here is the code:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib
matplotlib.use("TkAgg")
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.animation as manim
from matplotlib.collections import PatchCollection

Nx = 30
Ny = 20
numtimes = 100

size = 0.5

x, y = np.ogrid[-1:1:30j, -1:1:20j]

data = np.zeros((numtimes, Nx, Ny))

for i in range(numtimes):
    data[i] = (x-i*0.02+1)**2 + y**2

colors = plt.cm.rainbow(data)

fig, ax = plt.subplots()

rects = []
for (i,j),c in np.ndenumerate(data[0]):
    rect = plt.Rectangle([i - size / 2, j - size / 2],size, size)
    rects.append(rect)

collection = PatchCollection(rects, animated=True)

ax.add_collection(collection)
ax.autoscale_view(True)


def animate(tind):
    c = colors[tind].reshape(-1, 4)
    collection.set_facecolors(c)    
    return (collection,)

ani = manim.FuncAnimation(fig, animate, frames=numtimes,
        interval=10, blit=True, repeat=False)

plt.show()