Jesus this is hard to read and understand for some reason. I skipped out on Girls und Panzer because it didn't seem very appealing. I haven't heard much to deter that I'm missing out on much. Now if you are too lazy to sift through all the anime then I guess that's too bad but that's why for years I have been trying to polish a method of evaluating shows and seeing what I will and will not watch and yet I still have a sub 20% drop ratio over the past 5 or 6 years. It's just the risk I take because sometimes shows are just surprisingly not what I thought they were or I take chances in case something is better than expected or has "potential". As far as trope ridden crap, yeah, there are the "Onii-chan Ai's" of the world and they pop up lots of the time(although I have lots of respect for that director, he knows how to take decent concepts to the next level...but there was no saving this one). But every year there are at least...I'll say five anime that excel above and beyond in their genre. Even things like K-On, while it's definitely a moe show, know how to bring across the joys of SoL(though Aria is still the king imo).
The whole push with recent moe things is just the latest in these occurrences. Every decade has something that gets really big and then pushes a genre to be animated more than others and then dilutes that genre's quality pool. Whether it's been ultra violent anime, giant robots, or whatever else, it comes and goes. We just happen to be in the middle of an era where moe driven anime, which is usually romcoms and slice of life, reign king. But once again, there continue to be new stuff that catch my eye and put me back in my seat and remind me while I love anime. Now that being said, I'm different from most, I tolerate all genres from at a basic understanding. Some less so than others, and I am particularly judgmental with plot driven anime. But this tolerance allows me to see anime from a different lens I suppose.
As far as animation is concerned....I'm not sure what your problem is honestly *shrug*. Every era has copy cat drawing styles or one that comes across as common. And among those eras are a decent amount of anime that will verge from it. There is also something to be said about the difference between animation and art direction. Shin Sekai Yori for instance is inconsistently animated(although it has glorious moments) but art wise? It is gorgeous. A lighter example would be Natsuiro Kiseki. That show has a very common looking art style but it's art is wonderful and I just love looking at the town.
Anyway, I just think you are going through a state where you feel like after you've been getting into a constant state of watching ongoing or new anime, you start to look back on when you were first watching and ingested all the great acclaimed anime of years past and now you look at anime's current state against what you initially got into. Or who knows, you could just be genuinely disappointed. I just know each year I look back and if I can grab at least 5-10 anime that I can say I truly enjoyed and will stay with me, then it was successful. In addition 5-10 or so more decent anime top out to be 10-20+ anime that I am glad I watched. That to me is a successful year.
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I think it is the best of the season at this point as well. Btooom is a decent short shounen action but I think my top shounen is Zetsuen no Tempest so far. It's production is pretty awesome and Michiru on the OST is awesome as per usual. Tonari started strong for me but it's kinda diluted in quality with a more typical shoujo approach to it's drama that hasn't been very striking.
