ninitan
It's because of a few things:
1. Anime has become a very generic thing and everyone and their dog is drawing anime. People are sick of it. Everywhere you look there's anime.
I don't understand why it's okay to hate something because it's become popular. I see everyone and their dog with an iPhone these days, does that mean I should hate iPhones?
ninitan
2. A lot of people consider anyone, not just anime artists but anyone, who does not have a personal style to be uncreative. Basically if you look at a picture and the first thing that comes to your mind is "anime", then the person who drew it is not creative.
If someone were to do this amazing, well thought-out drawing in realism, it would be great, but if they were to draw it in an anime style that makes it uncreative? It's not the style/medium that matters, it's the thought that was put into the piece.
ninitan
3. Anime is associated with kids and teens and thus seen as immature and childish.
Okay, this one I can agree with. I'm 16 and got hooked on anime when I was 8 or 9.
ninitan
4. A huge amount of anime artists have no knowledge of the foundations and are not really that good to begin with.
Yeah, this one I can agree with too. I have decided today to go back to the basics, learn basic anatomy, etc. And I have art class next semester, which should help as well.
As for "not really that good to begin with", I believe that anyone can be a great artist if they work at it hard enough.
ninitan
5. A lot of anime artists are more interested in polish than anything else, and they make zero effort to actually learn anything at all about drawing -- they just copy other anime artists and read tutorials on DA and are generally pretty immature when they are given critiques.
In their defense, part of learning to draw anime is by looking at other artists' work, emulating it, and then branching out into your own style once you have the basics down. We become artists because there is some artist out there that has inspired us, so what's wrong with taking a leaf from their book, as long as it doesn't turn into plagiarism?