Am I missing out by avoiding certain anime?

There's no argument that anime has followings all over the world. Ever since Astro Boy and Speed Racer came into the picture, kids enjoyed them. They enjoyed anime a lot more with Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z. And I used to watch anime on TV too until recently. I seemed to have lost interest in anime.

I don't know if I'm suffering from depression, since loss of interest in anything is a symptom, or if it's just the lack of quality anime...

See, I see lots of fanart on Deviantart of anime I have watched(Tenchi Muyo, DBZ, Sailor Moon), anime I have watched or manga I have read, but never finished(FMA, Naruto(stopped when they first met Zabuza), One Piece manga/tv series(the 4kids tainted one, Bleach(manga; stopped at chap. 34)), anime I've never watched but may want to(Ah! My Goddess, Slayers, Lupin III(well, I have watched the Funimation dub on Cartoon Network, but I don't know if that counts), Gurren Lagann), anime I've never watched PERIOD(Fist of the North Star, Berserk, Death Note), and anime I don't want to see(Black Lagoon, Ghost in the Shell, Gundam(except maybe G, but that's it), Grave of the Fireflies, Elfen Lied, Claymore, Battle Angel Alita, anything depressing, ultra-serious, ultra-long or hentai in general).

And yet, people are making me feel like I'm missing out by not watching the certain anime and I still see fanart of it. Like...I haven't even reached the Soul Society Arc of Bleach, because the manga takes far too LONG getting there, so I gave up, and yet I see fanart of characters like these "Captain" people, Kuukaku, and "evil Ichigo"(Ichigo with half a "skull-like face") .

I mean, I do tend to give up on anime when they drag on for too long or stray too far from the main premise, like in One Piece, what's the main plot? Luffy gets a crew and looks for One Piece to become king of the Pirates. OK, simple enough, but then, there are these subplots that steer the anime far from its established synopsis, at least in my eyes. Or Bleach...what's the main objective? This kid named Ichigo Kurosaki can see ghosts and becomes a sort of Grim Reaper who saves the human world from these beings called Hollows, that eats people's souls. OK, that one's a bit harder to explain, but yeah. Why can't it like stay that way...? I know I'm sounding whiny, but I don't understand. I've researched Death Note...and apparently a guy named Light Yagami(?) finds a note in which if he writes a certain name in a notebook down, that person dies. Maybe I could get into it, but the bad news...most of the anime today are downloaded and subbed before the big name anime companies get a chance to dub/translate it, so basically these people are getting it straight from Japan even before the whole world knows about said anime. They could be millions of volumes ahead of us by the time the manga is translated and the anime is dubbed, so it's hard for people like ME to catch up.

Wow, long wall of text...anyway...what I'm trying to say is...

I haven't watched much anime because:
- most of the popular ones drag on way too long,
-stray too far from the established synopsis,
-may have too many depressing moments,
-have little to NO humor,
-require you the watch all the episodes from the BEGINNING(I'm hoping to find some anime that are not really connected by continuity),
-may be for smart people only,
-and I would talk about the copious amounts of character development/flashbacks that may or may not slow down the story, but I don't want to get any more flame comments than I may get for this journal entry alone, so I'll leave that alone.

If there ARE anime that are enjoyable yet aren't as long as most of these anime/manga today, stay with the established story, have humor, are not that large or as long a continuous storyline from beginning to end, try to keep some character development/flashbacks to a minimum, and are accessible enough for the common viewer to enjoy, please suggest some to me in the comments below.

Other than that, I hope to try to keep things civil here. No name calling or anything like that.