Yeah, I TOTALLY haven't seen a lot of anime, since though I recognize titles, I have never seen the anime, and thus haven't seen those eyecatches. And others I have seen, such as CLANNAD and Higurashi, don't really have eyecatches. They just have the name of the anime at the half-way mark and fade in/out to the next scene, pretty much. Umineko at least tried to be a little creative with their eyecatches, complete with a jump scare XD. The few I have seen, such as Digimon Adventures, Azumanga Daioh, DragonBall Z (though it's so freakin' obvious DragonBall has the better eyecatches), and Cardcaptor Sakura, to name a... few of those... I didn't mind the eyecatches. Azumanga Daioh may have the cutest eyecatches I've seen thus far.
Yeah, I'll agree with Sceptile Master. They tend to leave it in in the season boxsets, but it's probably for time purposes. I don't know how broadcasting works in Japan, but they either have the anime shown all the way through without commercial breaks, or they are very consistent with how long a commercial break must be. (Because heaven knows we tend to have problems with commercial breaks here. Even though a normal commercial has to be no longer than 30 seconds, if it's longer than that, the station will cut it in mid-sentence to go to the next package to maintain schedule.)
