Most anime produced is simple and feel good and glosses any sort of complexity in human interactions. It simplifies existence to a few basic emotions. And, by reducing the human conscience to such a state, the mind becomes blind to the cosmic horror that is nihilism that breeds within all of us. For older generations, survival was more of a focus alongside use of the religion to guard themselves against nihilism. However, younger generations do not have this protection and, as a coping mechanism, will distract themselves with non-complex things or even dumb things down like anime, video games, gender/sexual/racial identity, and politics. This is not say you can't enjoy these things; however, more and more young people are enveloping their entire existence around these things in order to protect themselves.
(Sidenote: This is one of the reasons why words are equated to violence. If you make someone susceptible to that terrifying, nihilistic voice in their head, you are effectively trying to kill them because that voice will make them want to kill themselves.)
This can also explain why weird fetishes have exploded in the past decades. People have grown so afraid to the idea that nothing matters that they will develop their entire identity around some weird thing that either makes their peepee hard or their vag wet.
Overall, SJWs like anime for the same reason anti-SJWs like anime... because they are cowards who need to distract themselves from that "call of the void" voice in the back of their head.
