@Omisyth – Indeed.  Come for the references and in-jokes; stay for the trenchant social commentary.

Kind of reminds me of something I was studying about Shakespeare, where in some plays he wrote partly for the more learned people of society with discussions on the nature of leadership or law, for example, and partly for the masses, with his comedic sketches. Everyone still had something to enjoy, in any case.

Choudenji Machine Voltes V
Mazinger Z
Toshho Daimos
Scientific Ninja Team Gatchaman
Space Battleship Yamato

etc. Hmm, even in the second wave of anime I’ve seen (at this point around 7 years old I’ve no distinction for the concept of ‘anime’) I don’t get any references (even in hindsight):

SDF Macross
Laserion
Cedie (Little Lord Fontleroy)

etc.

Hmm even in the third wave of anime I’ve seen (at this point I was in high school going on university) I missed any references in shows that aren’t sequels:

Dragon Ball Z (technically a sequel but I hadn’t seen the original)
Ghost in the Shell
Akira
Ninja Scroll

I only started seeing referential shows like Lucky Star, Gurren Lagann a few years ago. Could it be I was lucky to have only been watching ‘beginner anime?’

@IKnight – Accessibility is perhaps not the precise word, as you point out, but somehow the experience does need to line up with something desired by the audience (even if they didn’t necessarily go in seeking that particular thing.)  In the case of people who want something opaque, I would argue it’s that actually inscrutability that makes the work accessible to them.

@Kiri – We know products which are useless to us are simply aimed at a different group of consumers.  Yet somehow when we start viewing anime, we sometimes have a strange tendency to not imagine another group that it might be aimed at.

@Toonleap – Thanks! That is Tanaka Punie from Dai Mahou Touge, wearing her black uniform.  (Her normal dress is pink and frilly.)

btw, I was wondering whos the girl in the first pic?

The first anime I ever watched all the way through was Martian Successor Nadesico, which is about as laced with references and tropes as you can get (even its Japanese title alludes to two other franchises). I spotted very little of what was happening, but enjoyed it heartily anyway, because it’s funny and, underneath its outer skin of stupidity, rather cunning. (Nowadays I can spot more of what’s going on, but I’m sure there’s a lot in Nadeisco I still miss.) I don’t know if that would’ve happened if I’d been watching, say, Pani Poni Dash, which has less of a story to sustain itself.

I wouldn’t agree that anime always has to be accessible, though. There are some viewers who want inaccessibility, opacity, alterity: drunk fifteen-year-olds who want to try some of that anime stuff because it’s reputedly zany and not for kids, for example, or art film fans who want to be made to feel cosmopolitan by watching something in a foreign language from a long way away.