You have to understand a few things about the situation. An anime fan usually looks beyond the failings of the medium for whatever reason, and thus intentionally blinds themselves to how other people quite rightfully see things.LilithSlave said:
One of the first thing to understand is that Anime is quite bluntly cheaply produced sh@t, I mean there is no way around that. The guys producing the anime themselves are usually quite blunt about it, and how it's popular because actual live films (even cheap ones) are more expensive, and how when they are looking to produce 26 episode anime seasons they usually have a limited budget and producing that much stuff means they have to cut pretty much every corner they can. There ARE exceptions, anime films, and a few shows that had unusually high production budgets, but to be honest the sheer cheapness of the products does stand out.
When it comes to the writing, there are also a lot of criticisms to be made. See, Japan really has very little culture of it's own anymore (which is another whole discussion). With rare exception just about everything Japan does is borrowed from somewhere else, and even the "traditional" elements of the culture have in many cases been re-invented based on romantic foreign interpetations. For example the version of Ninjas and Samurai most of us know are largely based off of Western versions of both of those things that lead to the pop culture appealing to The Japanese and then winding up being inserted into some of the histories. Remember for example that the Japanese pretty much slaughtered the entire Samurai aristocricy for being a bunch of oppressive douchebags, all of thise "we worship our honorable Samurai forefathers" stuff is kind of insane when you look at the actual facts.
I was reading some stuff through the years about how Western pop culture pretty much defined Japan, and how for example Westerns pretty much birthed the entire Samurai film genere and even changed perceptions of the Samurai and how they were presented in history. Not to mention "Ninjas" which are even worse, given that they were hated in Japan until Americans who didn't really "get it" ran with the idea as a group of anti-heroes, Japan liked this version and next thing you knew you had Ninjas popping up everywhere and carrying their own TV series. Things like "Naruto" more or less being born of the "new idea" which is why it's such a joke when you think about what a Ninja was, it doesn't fit the truth, but the concept does work with the mystical anti-hero mercenary.
The point of all of this is that if you read some things, or listen to interviews, you hear about how Anime was largely inspired by US geek culture and science fiction. Lodoss Wars was directly cribbed from D&D and it's stereotypes (and I believe I saw an interview explaining that on one of the tapes I had) for example, and a lot of the stuff you see in science fiction anime accross the board was stuff taken directly from sci-fi novels and other
western creations.
Part of the appeal of Anime has largely been that it's generally been less obsessed with political correctness and social niceties, not skimping on the sex and violence in telling stories. It's also generally been one step ahead of western pop culture in terms of concepts. Basically you had anime working with concepts like killer memes, nanotechnology, man-machine interfaces, and everything else before they hit the mainstream visual medium. To run into something like that as an idea you pretty much had to read a book. Thus just being able to see someone do it visually was cool, and for those who didn't read the concepts probably seemed a lot deeper and more novel than they actually were.
To a lot of the mainstream however looking at Anime they see a low budget production, and concepts that either seem like banal retreads, or are simply not going to appeal to them until they see it presented in a more tradionally mainstream manner in a way that doesn't take 6-13 hours to get through.
The problems with the art style have less to do with androgynous characters and other things that fans like to insert to try and present something as being wrong with the critics (well left wing fans do at any rate), so much as it's oftentimes transparent that the stylization exists to try and hide cheap production. There IS an art to it, but again I've read enough stuff about the amount of material they need to produce within a certain budget and time frame, and a lot of the artists themselves say that the characters look very similar (if not identical except for some feature changes) because starting from set models allows them to produce faster. A base model that anyone on the team can draw and modify allows everyone to produce more or less seamlessly, which is important when you might have a whole team of artists working to produce crazy amounts of material, whether by hand or on a computer.
Now, before anyone goes off on me, I will say I DO like Anime, I'm not as into it as I once was, as I simply feel that a lot of the current stuff is pure drek for reasons I won't go into. I'm one of those guys who could honestly tell you they were into it "before it was cool" and still follows it to a degree (if not like before) even though it's slipping and you just don't see it being carried like you used to. It largely comes down to the exact concepts being used, and to an extent how well funded it is. Over time, as I became more used to it and aware of the stereotypes, and learned more about it, I was actually able to de-geek my perceptions a bit which is why I can convey all of this. I'm still a bit of a fan, but also a very honest one who likes it in spite of it's flaws. I can't really blame anyone for NOT liking it because in many cases it's like say dragging up a high-concept Sci-Fi film from the 50s or 60s, a certain kind of person an appreciate that, but you can easily see why your typical person isn't going to since a lot of that stuff just doesn't age well, and not everyone can appreciate schlock/cheeze for what it is.
