Interesting. This depends on the expected audience of the anime, and whether most of the characters are young, right? I'm not an anime fan, but the movies I've watched (Ghost in the Shell, Jin-Roh, Mononoke Hime) have very distinct male voices. I've even heard from one reviewer that the Japanese love deep bass male voices in their anime, an observation which is true in my experience. They go as far as using deep male voices for characters who are visually or nominally female, such as the Puppet Master in Ghost in the Shell (pre the awful 2.0 remastered Blu Ray edition) or Moro in Mononoke Hime.
