If you watch cartoon network at all these days, you'll see that anime is slowly eating american cartoons and making them part of it's enormous, disfigured body. A lot of anime ROCKS, but then there's a lot of crap, too... just like with American television.
Also, in response to the bit of Eva bashing i saw. Try watching it 3-4 times in a row with a few stanford philosophy/language/theology types. It's a little bit of genius, and it's damned entertaining, too. There are so many hidden references in that anime, it's great.