Oh don't get me wrong, I love some animes. Your classic pokemon/dbz/gundam wing, but also death note, naruto, Attack on titan. I just don't get how dudes get all hot for drawings and puppets thereof.
Just the way that you're talking about it makes me not wanna watch it. This is some my little pony Bane Shift
Clearly you have not watched enough Upotte! or similar shows. (I'm a bit behind my "cute anime girls" with crosses at the moment. And those I can think of are usually associated with extremely liberal [not the political meaning of the term] interpretations of Christianity. Though, I suppose there are plenty of real-life people associated with extremely liberal interpretations of Christianity... but that is a topic for another topic.)
Gunslinger Girl is boss, actually. But it doesn't make me want guns IRL Chrno Cross is nuns with guns and that's actually pretty cool also. And I meant that loving anime girls makes more sense to me than people who loves their guns or religion (mostly because I don't care about those things, not that they don't have potential value).
You do know ecchi is primarily made for shut-in otakus, so they can fap to it and buy tons of merchandise? I'd argue every one of those kids' shows has more merit then softcore porn for social outcasts. What went wrong during the years that instead of this: The character design became this: Personally I can hardly look at modern anime designs.
I asked something similar before in the thread that was actually on this topic, but... what are the "right" anime to finally learn how glorious the ecchi stuff is? Feel free to not limit yourself to things translated. I can't promise that no one will make fun of you for what you like, but I can promise that I probably won't at least. I'm pretty sure you're just prickly.
Anime girls often display a blend of both behaviors and physical characteristics that certain people find attractive. In the same way that a percentage of the real women you meet will garner speculation or action on your part due to their appearance and/or personality, so too do certain female characters elicit extra attention. Likewise the attraction can be shallow or complex -- overt or subtle depending on the person in question. As for getting hot for drawings: Why do women get all hot over those romance novels? Or the ones where vampires are boffing were-tigers or whatever it is my girlfriend reads? They're just ink on paper! But it's really very simple. The brain takes the input and translates it into ideas and thats where excitement comes from. The layer of abstraction and distillation of key characteristics in anime girls only enhances the reactions of those receptive to them.