I liked Recess till recently when I found out the woman who voice Spinelli was a regular on Californication who waxes buttholes and was doing coke and screwing the guy who sang 'Jesse's Girl' (Rick Springfield?).
Grim- I think we ALL had that "weeaboo/wapanese" phase of "everything Japanese is superior/ I wish I was Japanese" and all that nonsense. I'm glad I grew out of that nonsense.
While it has it's share of awful tropes and whatnot, I'd say that in terms of animated TV series, Japanese content is superior. Mostly because there's more stuff than just "Saturday morning cartoon". I mean, can you imagine the likes of Death Note or Aoi Bungaku made in US? Hell, even TMNT, while pretty solid, has so much potential wasted because it has to sell it to the kiddies.
I think animation is just viewed down upon for some reason.
The problem is more along the lines of A) most of the animation and cartoons seen here have had some element drawn from Japan (like Transformers, Thundercats, Avatar: the Last Airbender, etc.), B) because even shows made for US audiences have had their animation work outsourced to Korea or China, and C) the few shows that remain are garbage like Brickleberry, Drawn Together, or anything made by Adult Swim (well, some of the early stuff wasn't too bad). It's pretty lamentable, but South Park is pretty much the best US made animated show on air right now.
That and the fact that the niche is already pretty thoroughly filled by Japan at this point. If you want to watch shows like Death Note and Aoi Bungaku, then just watch Death Note or Aoi Bungaku (or don't because they're both pretty mediocre).