Or the people who say that are obsessed with subtlety and want everything to conform to the Western standards for art due to cultural hegemony brainworms? Sometimes I feel very guilty for engaging with this sort of media instead of something more “serious”
This is silly, simply do not do this. Even if anime were inherently Deeply Unserious (it is not, there are rad and cool anime) there is no reason to feel guilt over watching anime