[Kaoru Chujo]

Great stuff from rooboy. The term used in the Japanese on Video Research's site is a transliteration of "people meter," so I would be surprised if it was not exactly the same device as Nielsen uses. And the site does talk about measuring people as well as households, so I think people may log in in some way, too. So that would suggest that PVR'd shows are at least discounted in the ratings because an individual did not log in at the time they were on, or even not counted at all.

I didn't notice the VR site talking about ratings not equaling popularity, but for some reason it kept repeating that ratings do not equal quality. Duh.

And I like Destinyblade's point that most people seem to like "reality" (spurious as it may often be) in their shows, and anime deals a lot in fantasy. In fact, I myself don't think anime does reality very well, although others differ. NANA is the best fairly realistic show I can think of. The gritty mystery/adventure shows tend to fall flat for me. (Moonlight Mile is shaping up as an exception, by the way.)

And I also appreciate solomon's point that a lot of anime sticks in the otaku mold. I think SHnY and Simoun are great shows, but the first clearly uses a lot of otaku referents, and the second has yuri surface elements that put off a lot of anime-watchers, to say nothing of the general public.