I was obsessed with anime during the late 80's/90's. Evangelion + End of Evangelion were pretty much among the last few i loved.
I loved the rough, hand-made, "sketchy" looking and highly detailed animation cells even if animation wasn't always smooth. I loved the violence and how the gore was more visceral and detailed. And i loved the individual scenes where most of the budgets would go, even in titles where the animation was generally not that great. The best looking individual animation sequences of all time are still from movies and OVAs of that era, nothing has ever managed to come close since then.
Because then came the mass production for western mainstream audience, the CGI fests, the lower budgets, Pokemon and it's clones, the "100 different characters fighting each other with their random silly powers" such as Naruto and it's countless clones, etc. I got out then and never came back.