[darktruth]

You're right, the difference between the eastern and western society regarding animated stuff is the respect they have.

In the US, most of their cartoons are purely aimed at young children and families with some exceptions like South Park, Family Guy and American Dad. Many of these contain humour which pretty much shows how they perceive cartoons as. With animes, there are series that are very dark and contain very little or no humour in it at all showing how serious they take it.

Even most Hollywood animated/cartoon films always have humour in a number of ways compared to anime movies like Perfect Blue, Ninja Scroll and RahXephon. I guess another difference between these is that anime movies (and in some cases anime series) usually try to make a point while hollywood animated films are made usually for entertainment and laughs.