well, when i was a child, we could watch rurouni kenshin without knowing the creator was a pedophile for one. animation, dubbing, and access have all come an extremely long way since i was a kid. my first ever series was di gi charat (if you don't count pokemon/one pice/yugioh on 4kids) and my first ever exposure to anime as a whole was vampire hunter d. i'm glad anime is popular and that people are allowed to like it now without being called weird names for it like i was. also merch access is so much easier than in my day. back when i was a kid, you'd have to go to a specialty anime store to be able to find anything but now you can walk into a barnes and noble and find merch. it's awesome!