I'm not too sure on the litigation regarding fansubs, but I work on some digital fansubbing. irc.EnterTheGame.com forces us to drop any licensed anime we are working on. At any rate, if you don't mind fansubbing (and believe me, the quality is astounding ) you should really check out some of the anime channels on IRC. It's all free. I'm not gonna do any shameless pluggin as to which group I work for.
I'd like to suggest a few series, however, that aren't yet licensed in the US. There's Tokyo Underground done by Anime-Empire, Samurai Deeper Kyo by Anime-Keep, Abenobashi by Elite-Fansubs. There are a dozen of other series that are being subbed by each group, and sometimes subs come from more than one individual group. There's a lot of competition on the subbing channels, which makes it very unappealing. Just don't scrutinize any group too much. We all do this for free.
Anyway, other series to look forward to (and some already releasing here) are: Love Hina, Chobits, Ai Yori Aoshi.
I'll grant that some anime has quite a bit of adult content, but there are those that are just simply humerous like Love Hina. If you really don't like anime, there's nothing I can do to change that. I prefer them simply because of the art. I can honestly say some of them aren't as well animated or drawn than others, but it is a lot more appealing than the cartoons we see here in the US. I don't kno what it is, it's just the way they draw I suppose. The storylines are also pretty good. And don't count pokemon or digimon as anime either. Yes, I know it fits under the genre, but I don't want to get into that.
Ok, it's 4:22AM. I'm only writing this cuz i'm bored, but hope this contributes in some way
G'Night.