As someone who worked in the blossoming field of magic technology in the late aughts I have worked on projects involving these animates and had a few of them as co-workers. Despite the sensationalized name they were given, they do not feed off people's emotions but instead get aligned to an emotion while they are an inanimate object. When they become animate they will act in ways to create that same emotion in others. Oftentimes their souls are stored in objects inside of their bodies called Animas but othertimes their soul just encompases their entire form for example, a plush animate is more likely to have a plush heart inside of it than a pool toy who's whole body would be the anima. They are practically the same thing toons are but as with most things with magic, we arbitarily catagorize them so we feel a bit of control over our uncontrollable world.