Not that this is an espeically important part of Japanese culture, but didn't "Anime" develop sort of as a reaction to/parody of Disney cartoons?
Dunno, anime maybe. But manga art style has been around for longer than japanese modern popular culture. Some of the stereotypes were inspired by westerners after WW2 I think but the style in itself is older.
I have only watched 5 real animes, not counting Miyazaki movies which I also watched a few (Treasure Island was my favorite movie as a kid). I played more video games with manga themes and stereotypes though. Reason why I don't get into it more even though I like it is because I don't master the language good enough yet. I don't want to be just another unemployed loser who watched 1000 animes without even speaking the language. I want to be among the losers who can post YouTube movies about japanese things, translations etc and understand everything I read and watch as well as having japanese aspie/otaku/hikikomori friends online. I've seen some westerners who do this, they become popular with certain japanese people if they speak and write the language well enough (almost like a native).
I would like to eventually make "let's play - improve japanese vocabulary, kanji knowledge and grammar video game walkthroughs". I would play, stop and have the screen grey out with a large word or sentence in kanji appearing taken out of the conversation, I would explain the meaning and the grammar used. Every short language lesson like that would end with the words spinning and the "recruit/join entourage" sound from Suikoden playing. Between this I would fake voice act japanese for humor in certain dramatic scenes, imitating some of my favorite voice actors (my pronounciation isn't bad at all actually, I can imitate almost any language to a degree that impresses locals if I listen to it long enough) and I would also edit in random funny things to make it seem like more than just a let's play type of thing.
