It's been a loooong time since I've seen the anime series ('Star Blazers' in the US), but I recall the show being a remarkably sober look at war. For example, after every big battle, the coffins for all the dead would be placed on the deck of the Yamato while the captain gave a eulogy (the living were all in spacesuits, of course). Could you imagine that happening in any cartoon today?!? Star Blazers tried to portray a real war with death, heroism, fleet tactics, logisitics, R&D....really everything you would expect in a serious war story. It was light years (pun intended) ahead of Star Wars...and still is.
Only anime I really watched was only Hellsing and One Piece
I'm not much of a fan of anime either. I watched Star Blazers when I was about 10.
Since then, I've only been impressed with two anime series: Cowboy Bebop (in my opinion, the best science fiction vision to grace television since the original Star Trek) and Claymore (a remarkably intriguing story with surprisingly good character development for anime). That's about it, despite the best efforts of my anime fan friends.