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No. 27902
[Edit]
>>27895
First, let me be very explicit about this, because it seems to be a common misunderstaning: by no means do we watch these shows 'sarcastically' or 'ironically'. I'm usually vary of projecting my opinions on others but in this particular case I'm pretty confident I speak for all of us.
I've seen a couple dozens of anime for little girls (and they're usually 50 eps if not more mind you) and I'm following PreCure, Aikatsu and picked up Saint Tail recently. I don't follow this show in particular but it's not really a question related to Kami-sama Minarai so I don't think it matters much.
'Moe' is no doubt one of the factors. Most of these anime feature predominantly female casts. In fact significant male characters are very rare, and if they appear they're almost always love interests. As stated before I have seen my fair share of little girls' cartoons and I struggle to come up with a single one where the male characters introduced are just friends with the girls, EVEN if they show is about elementary schoolers. This kind of gender segergation is a Japanese thing I guess, looking back on my school days the circles of friends that formed were usually pretty coed.
Anyway, the point is there are lot of cute girls around, and they do cute things, so this aspect is pretty much the same as your usual SoL.
Now, as far as 'they play to the sensibilities, interests, and understanding of adults' is concerned. While this is true it's a double edged sword. The writing of the SoL series is by no means 'adult'. In fact, it's extremely infantile, in my opinion moreso than the writing of most kids' shows. Since it's a means of escapism the characters usually live in a perfect bubble world with no real hardship, where every day is filled with smiles and laughter. Now I'm not criticizing this, I'm sure I must've watched over 100 CGDCT shows by now, but let's try to look at it a bit more objectively.
Moreover, since they 'play to the sensibilities [and] interests (...) of adults' the characters are created specifically to carter to the tastes of said adults to fuel the sales of the source material itself as well as character merchandise. It's basically pandering. And with the male lense in perspective the pandering often results in looking at the girls as members of opposite sex. While it's not that common the characters gets sexualized sometimes (onsen/beach episodes are the for a reason, as is breast envy and the like).
On the other hand girls' cartoons don't have to pander to men like that because they have a different audience. The characters in little girls' anime are either made to be relatable to the audience or as role models they could look up to. Sometimes it's just a 'cute, likeable girl' but even that is at least on the level of SoL. What I consider to be the key difference kicks in now: the characters don't have to be perfect, and they're allowed to make mistakes, AND the characters themselves matter less than their actions. You'll see the girls argue with each other then reconcile, and make other mistakes and learn lessons from them. They learn about friendship quite often. In seinen SoLs this aspect is rarely touched upon: you're left wondering what the relationship dynamics are between the characters. It seems all 4/5 are 'friends' and that's all you get. It's natural that the relationship wouldn't be equal among all of them, both on the 'intensivity' side (you'll be closer to some people than others) as well as the nature of the friendship (i.e. one character being a scatterbrain but energetic and optimistic, and the other being responsible but without any self confidence).
Now, don't get me wrong. Not all little girls' anime are so perfect. Some have no morals for the viewers and no message to convey. With seinen CGDCT they'll usually hold my attention in one what or another regardless. Little girls' cartoons are much more hit and miss. The worst ones are really bad and seem to have nothing going for them. The opposite is also true and there are some gems among them. Many of them have some extra aspect besides just CGDCT - monster of the week, competitions, reverse harem. That helps them a bit, if you're into the theme of course.
So TL;DR: the appeal of little girls' cartoons is the fact that they're NOT written for adult men. They avoid the pitfalls of that thinking, and deliver cuteness geared for little girls, along with characters that aren't created to pander to men and some simple but valuable life lessons. They are quite often simply well made pieces of anime.
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