I don't know about that. Ghost in the Shell is excellent. So is Cowboy Bebop for that matter. Cowboy Bebop has one of the best soundtracks of any cartoon I can think of. The Seatbelts rock.
Yeah, some of it sucks. (my daughters liked Inayasha) Like most artistic forms though, some is good, some is bad, some is excellent.
I’d rather gouge out my eyes than have to watch anime. Calling it an “art form” is much the same as calling rap or hip-hop “music”—it stretches the definitions of those words to the breaking point.
Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons weren’t exactly high art, but they were not grotesque mockeries of art, either.