All spoilers must be tagged!Maybe I'm an old person, but I feel like one of the weakest ideas for a show or movie is a remake. It's like, you can't find anything new to do? The reasons to do remakes I can see (outside of just money chasing):
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It's been like 60 years and no one remembers. This is the weakest.
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You do a interesting twist or change(The various Sherlock Holmes in modern day, redoing in a different language, doing a live action version).
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The previous adaptation was completely off the rails and considered bad.
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There were shots that you just couldn't do in the past due to less technology.
For the recent Trigun, and now Spice and Wolf and Rurouni Kenshin - were the previous anime's way off the source material? I don't think Spice and Wolf was, I haven't read the source for Trigun or Kenshin. If not, I'm struggling to see why anyone who was interested in these would wait to see the "new" version versus just watching the existing one RIGHT NOW.
For those of us who watched the existing version, why would we want to waste time on re-watching the same story when there's other shows that are new, either to everyone or at least to us? I guess in my limited time to watch a firehose of entertainment (heck, just in Anime, forget about shows like The Witcher, various Star Trek, books etc), tell me what I'm missing by just skipping these and remembering the stuff I watched 15-20 years ago?
Heck, I even tried to watch the live action movies of Kenshin, and while the first was interesting enough, I was also kind of just like, oh yea - this scene now. And never watched the rest because I know the story.
OTOH, I recall these being enjoyable enough that I watched Trigun and Kenshin several times, bought the translated light novels for Spice and Wolf (though I did peter out around book 11).
I get stuff might look old, however I also kind of doubt that's as big a deal as some people make out. I really enjoyed many "old" shows, and movies as a kid, and the look was just part of the style. Then again I also liked old books so... I guess I am also reminded where a lot of recent attempts to update a story for modern sensibilities was controversial at best, and rarely that good a movie or show.
And you're right the shot for shot remakes make even less sense.
Then you have the very questionable idea with Kenshin to go out of your way to make the author more money. I liked the original story, and would not support banning or putting it in a vault. But to choose to do more business and raise the profile says something unsavory about the people making the current show. Makes it easier to let that one just be my memories.