was this an anime or not

[dailyplanet]

I'm sorry for sounding arrogant, but shouldn't you be able to tell whether an animated series anime or not by its appearance (ie: drawing style, shading style, etc.)? I haven't done any research either, but after watching a few minutes of an episode, it's quite clear that it's an anime.

No, because you can't always correctly label a cartoon as anime just from it's drawing style. Japanese animation spans many different styles and art forms. And what "drawing style, shading style" were you exactly referring to? If you want to be generic and give specific lame-o American criteria for recognizing a cartoon as 'anime' such as (and to quote from Strong Bad here) "big eyes, mouth that is huge when open and ridiculously tiny when closed, oh and blue hair" then you are not a true Otaku or have not heard of My Neighbors the Yamadas or Tezuka Osamu.

And to twist things even more, US cartoons have gradually developed a more "anime" style to their drawings. Look at toons like Teen Titans or Totally Spies.

So to wrap it up, I don't think you can always correctly "tell whether an animated series [is] anime or not by it's appearance." Yu-Gi-Oh was so fugly that I didn't think it came from Japan. Jin-Roh was so real-life looking that it really didn't need to be animated. I'm pretty sure other people can give you more examples too. So Cidien wasn't exactly being dumb or ignorant or whatever in saying that he wasn't so sure regarding Monster Rancher.