Is there an easier way to place simple animations on the map?

I'm making my first game after buying MZ a few weeks ago. feel like I must be doing something wrong here.

I'm placing torches and other flames all over the place and I want them to flicker to give the game some life (and eventually use them as light sources with some parallax shading) but I'm having trouble animating them.

So far I've been using control switches to switch to the next sprite in the animation after a few frames. This seems to be working, but is quite cumbersome and feels sloppy. I also haven't figured out how to make an enemy sprite (some of which are flames) animate similarly as it follows a movement route.

Is this actually the only way to get some simple animations into the background? I feel like I must be missing something. Is there at least a plugin that does this more easily?