I beg to differ, series rule.
As a note to those who hate anime: You probably have never seen any. The dubs which are easy to get here are usually trash. They're censored, rearranged, dubbed by low-quality voice actors, and usually ruin the original story altogether. Dubs have improved, but the majority, especially the televised ones, are so altered they're practically completely different series altogether. I mean, they will actually redo the entire plot arc in some anime.
There are a huge number of great anime series, and the newest ones are better yet.
Good series:
Excel Saga
Utena (the movie is even better, tho)
Jubei-chan
Ayashi no Ceres
Eden's Bowy
Now and Then, Here and There
Daa! Daa! Daa!
El Hazard (the OAV series)
Final Fantasy Unlimited
Star Ocean Ex
Jungle wa itsumo Hale nochi Guu
Hellsing
Hikaru no Go
Inuyasha
Pretear
Silent Mobius
Good movies:
The Adolescence of Utena
Grave of the Fireflies
Mononoke Hime
The problem with a lot of the anime series + movies that come over is that they are primarily of two types: children's anime, and action anime. Judging the genre by the poorly dubbed, censored, and redone versions would be like judging all american cinema + television by watching Barney and Arnold Schwarzanneger movies poorly dubbed into another language. As an example, Grave of the Fireflies is a drama that has far more in common with Schindler's List than it does with any cartoon I've seen. There is a wealth of anime which targets all kinds of audiences, in the way that American film does. The tiny bits you may see are insignificant compared to the huge variety of stuff that exists.
I think the comparison is simply invalid. In America, cartoons are a niche market -- they target only the young children or the comedy markets. In Japan, anime is produced of a million different forms, targetting everyone from young children to adults.
Sure, there's bad anime (although even the worst anime is usually not AS bad if you watch the original versions; sometimes the originals are vastly superior). But simply because some crap gets made doesn't mean that it's all bad. Simply because America makes movies like Biodome, or Dude, Where's My Car, doesn't mean that it can't also produce films like Gone with the Wind, Schindler's List, etc.
Bottom line: Yes, there's crap, but there's also tons of good stuff.
