First of all all Anime is cartoons and all cartoons are anime, all anime means is "Animated" the orginal "anime's" wore inspired by the Disney Cartoons... and if you ask japaneese people they view "cartoons" as anime, because that is what it is, overhere they don't even have this "anime vs cartoon" debate, because to them there isn't one, sure tehre are different animation styles, but its all animated...
in a "vacuum" I would agree with you (the whole "let other generations have their own stuff") but its not like "this" generation will have this version of the cartoon, they won't care about it, there are already vastly better cartoons around so why should they watch something really bad when they can just continue to watch whatever they are watching right now?
the only kids that are gonna watch this is those to young to even grasp anything but motions and colors... those smart enough to actually watch it won't want to, and that's the point.