Yeah, while some series do go with some strange choices in terms of story, one thing I do think is holding the medium back is restrictions on streaming, which I've never understood why they exist in the first place.
I think its just out of the fact I'm British that I don't get it. As is true for a lot of Japanese media brought to the west, we see more series in subbed or dubbed form in the US. But things get iffy when it comes to Europe. We Brits don't get a number of series because the companies don't want to fork out for working into the wide range of languages in Europe, and yet when we do, we're tossed the same version that the Americans already got.
In this age of the internet, if you don't allow something to be gotten legally, people who want that something will just pirate it. There's so many fans out there that haven't contributed anything to the shows they enjoy because they watch on illegal sites. Some act like "If I can get it free, why should I pay for it?", others say "I can't find this legally in my country."
The latter is a legitimate complaint, and one I find more from people outside the US and Canada. But unfortunately, we have few ways to try correct this.
The former is what I have issue with. One can tell people you can watch things on Crunchyroll for free, and get "But I don't wanna watch ads!" thrown back at them. Here in the UK, Crunchyroll Premium is £5 a month, or £40 a year. That's the same price as your year of Playstation Plus or Xbox Live Gold. Is that really too much to pay out to watch anime legally?