I'm fairly picky about what I will watch with 
Sailormoon; on some of the "filler" episodes I 
found my self fast-forwarding or just skipping 
the entire episode to get back to the main (and 
well done) storyline.

I think part of the problem with the major series 
you are discussing (primarily Sailormoon & 
Dragonball) there is a lot of pressure on the 
studio to make a mountain out of a molehill... 
basically they are forced to take a series that 
would fit well and comfortably into 12 episodes 
and they have to make it into a full-blown 36+ 
episode season with tons of filler. The 12 
episodes that really fit the theme and style of 
the manga get lost if you are just flipping on 
the TV and watching one episode, you don't get a 
feel for the excellent episodes that converted so 
many fans.

I'm a major manga junkie ... I almost always read 
the manga before seeing the anime. I liked 
Sailormoon the manga a lot, I'm not as fond of 
the anime because it's dumbed down to "monster of 
the day" episodes.  Some of the subtitled (and 
uncut) animation (the last 3 episodes of the 
first season, the R & S Movies, the Sailor-V 
episode, all of Sailormoon S) are really 
excellent.

The same is true with Dragonball. My friend 
showed me the Ice Movie (which is my favorite DBZ 
anything ^_^;;) and then (as we couldn't get 
episodes at the time) I started reading the 
manga. The manga is great ^_^. I really 
particularly love (as characters) Vegeta & 
Trunks, both whom are not 14-year-old kids. ^_^;; 
The anime is one of those "we need to make a lot 
of episodes to make lots of $$$" type of things, 
so they totally stretch out the series when it 
could have been faster paced and more interesting 
if they had made it a shorter series. Also, it 
fell victim to the filler episodes which are just 
as bad as the filler in Sailormoon.

Cowboy BeBop is an incredible series, the 
animation is lovely. However, the surreal feeling 
of the episodes is not for everyone. I highly 
recommend that you check out the subtitled & 
uncut version on DVD, it's much better than what 
is on TV right now. Of course, everything that's 
not dubbed is better IMHO ... but I know there 
are some real die-hard dub fans ^_^;

cont...