Was waiting for this

Thundercats HOOOOOOOO! 

dbz is def. not a classic. I did enjoy it, tho. My fav. part was when Gohan goes SS2, but then it got lame. I miss the shows like Superman, Spiderman, The Bugs and Daffy Show, Transformers:Beast Wars, and so on. That was my childhood. However, now I watch all the anime I've missed and I do like some new shows. I honestly like Avatar even if it does not compare to most anime.

DBZ was made after I was a kid, so I don't consider it a classic. ;)

If anything, I'd say thanks to many made-for-cable programs the overall quality of animated shows has pretty consistently increased for the past 20 years. Stuff I watched as a kid - Scooby Doo, SuperFriends - were well and truly awful; I just didn't realize it because I was 5. Later cartoons, like Joe, TF, and TCats were better, but they were shit too - just less noxious than what had come before.

Now, I've never actually watched DBZ so I can't rightly say that it's any good or not, but the basic argument is a classic one, and so it's flaws are well traveled. For the sake of argument, let's say DBZ really IS a "classic" show. Fine. But that doesn't make it representative of the rest of the cartoons on at the time. True classics are few and far between, and should be ignored as statistical outliers unless you can find some evidence that the quality was typical.

To change genres, I could argue that none of the sitcoms on TV is as good as All in the Family was, and I generally think it's true, so long as you ignore the later seasons of AitF. But I think if you look at the average sitcom or drama of the time period, they weren't all that good. In fact I'd say if you took the very best shows of that time period, and put them up against the very best of today, today would be more likely to win, thanks to more sophisticated production, fewer restrictions, and a much larger pool from which to draw.

I used to wath tons of cartoons as a kid.

My favs (from various time periods):

Beast Wars
Robotech
TMNT
Superman
Batman
Batman: Beyond (epic win)
Transformers
Exo-squad

That's because the Anime is based on the Manga more often then not in Japan.  Which tends to go a lot slower then the Anime.  So the Anime catches up and can't go any farther so it has to make a bunch of BS sidestory stuff that is basically going to have no effect.

Also.  Captain N ruled.  I have one of the 5 Captain N comic books.  They shoulda thrown in the Powerglove.

I never liked the stile of DBZ but I have not seen much of it. The only "western" serie I liked when I was a kid and still like is batman. That show was great it felt almost like adult serie for me. I liked the stile of Cowboy bebop but I could not watch the entire serie it became boring, damn it is just 24 episodes want to see more about "Vicious" someday I will watch it again. Remember if you are going to watch anime serie look if there is manga version and how far it has come, or else you are going to get pwnd by fillers ....naruto, bleach.... and on. The best cartoon serie I have ever seen is Full Metal Alchemist 51 episodes that serie is just wow.

Most of those cartoons we liked as a kid were "better" than cartoons today only because we remember them through the rosy eyes of a child. Most of the cartoons that I grew up with during the early-mid '90s were poorly-animated, low-budget, and primarily existed to sell action figures.

Most anime isn't for mature audiences, either; it may be (for the most part) better animated than American cartoons, but look beyond that and you'll see a bunch of juvenille crap that ALSO exists to sell action figures... only, in Japan instead of here.

Now, there are a few exceptions. I still find Ren & Stimpy, Rocko's Modern Life, and Animaniacs just as funny as I did when I was a kid - but those shows were never intended for an audience of only children anyway.

 How can you like DBZ and not like Naruto and Bleach which in my opinion are way better. Family Guy and Boondocks are hiliarious too. There are tons of good anime shows also.

And about the state of TV in general I truly think it's ten thousand times better then the recycled crap of old. 99% of tv was like CSI and stuff every episode a different case with the same exact formula, it was horrible, characters never advance, serial tv is amazing now. I love shows like Lost, Jericho, Friday Night Lights, heck even in the summer you got Pysch, Kyle XY, Burn Notice some I'm sick of people saying tv isn't what it used to be, it's seriously way better.

Oh Boondocks is hilarious. That show is great. The other show that I love is Futurama, and I was really happy to hear that Comedy Central is renewing it for one more season.

As far as most animes being made for kids, that's really not true at all. Unless you only watch mainstream animes (ones that have come to America) you would know that animes vary in target audience as much as The Little Mermaid and 300.

There are comedies, action, romance, and kids shows in animes. Some animes are so popular in Japan that they are the highest rated TV shows and mangas can be the best selling books. The best selling volume of the One Piece manga has only been outsold by Harry Potter.

There are shows for all audiences, shows for mature audiences, shows for kids, and shows for adults. It's sort of hard for westerners to understand what animes are to Japan because all of our cartoons are directed at kids (with a couple small exceptions).

 No doubt the target audience for anime varies across the board, but that doesn't except the fact that most of it is targeted to a younger, less-discerning audience. For every Death Note or Cowboy Bebop, you have seemingly 10 shows about magical girls, 50 shows about giant humanoid robots, and about 10,000 shows like DBZ where the producers introduce two new characters every episode so that they can make more merchandising money.

Believe me, there's a ton of horrible anime out there - much, much more than the good, by orders of magnitude.