Having grown up around people obsessed with it, and been around countless brands or places that sell or ape the style, it literally could not interest me less, but it's bizarre watching Westerners get so passionate about it.
That's not how Japanese people talk, right?
Generalizing, no, they are to ordinary Japanese people like Western cartoons are to the people they depict. They simply exaggerate things in a different way. The stylized, declamatory and unsubtle way anime characters speak with their personalities on their sleeves is more theatrical than lifelike. Anime subverts or upends tropes, stakes and expected beats in traditional storytelling, which can end up with fascinating situations but is also why, with long, popular serials, the story proper can end up becoming silly or convoluted. Depending on the anime, yes there is a deliberate degree of sexualization, because most of it is targeted towards young men, and Japan is a country that has nude saunas and a penis festival.
Also, in what world were those outfits skimpy? Pinafore dresses, blouses and baggy gowns, suits and full length stockings? Most school uniforms are less conservative than that.
Is there a malevolent Konata-shaped tumour in their brains that compels them to spam tranime gifs in otherwise civil group chats and put Evangelion wraps on their '96 Skyline GT-Rs? Is the fact that I've had to tolerate multiple group project presentations from people with a busty anime waifu as their desktop wallpaper an indictment of human society?
I dunno, but I've never felt encumbered to 'tolerate' what people put in work chats for levity or how they decorate their appliances or waste their money. You ever posted a dated meme?
Anime has been informed by porn
Yes and no, it's quite a bit more complicated. Japan had few taboos on nudity, and there are numerous famous prints of women masturbating (and being consensually raped by a dragon). When the Allies occupied Japan, they prohibited all images of nudity or indecency, which of course spawned a softcore market of otherwise increasingly kinkier things that would otherwise get round the censors - one of them was the invention of tentacle hentai, which were initially used as an excuse to cover up genitals. Yes, tentacle rape porn is a thing in part because the Americans told the Japanese to stop looking at penises.
If anything Western pornography has probably been informed by anime, specifically in terms of the Asian (and to a related extent, Latino) beauty standard and the kinks shown that's taken up to 11: your bukkake, your bondage (which the Japanese seem
really into), the pubic hair and hair in general people shave off, and fetishization of large breast sizes. And certainly the few times I've caught straight porn the women's vocalisations are a few pitches higher than seem natural as well. That's on top of porn giving people unrealistic beauty standards and expectations.
Also, anime is in a state of post-post irony right now. Like the people posting above me with 'react' pictures? 7 years ago that was death-penalty cringe. Now it's only 'ironically' cringe because everything else has turned really fuckin' lame and gay.
TL;DR: Anime is like, whatever.