Can people tell the difference between true anime and "anime-inspired" animation?

This question occurred to me while I was watching two shows on Adult Swim. One was anime version of Junji Ito’s infamous horror manga, Uzumaki. Like most of Ito’s works, Uzumaki has a distinct visual style that is nothing like what most people outside of Japan would traditionally consider “anime style”. The visual cliches associated with anime— spiky, colorful hair, popping veins, giant sweat drops, and so on—are totally absent.

The other was Invincible Fight Girl. This show uses many of the visual and narrative tropes we associate with anime, but is made in America. In fact, at first glance it looks more like a stereotypical anime than Uzumaki does. But the similarity is skin-deep; Invincible Fight Girl has the fluid, dynamic animation of an American cartoon rather than the limited animation typical of anime.

If you showed an episode of both of these shows to a person who had never heard of either of them, do you think they would be able to correctly guess which country they came from? In other words, is there something inherently but indescribably Japanese about true anime that goes beyond just the stereotypical art style?

If that’s the case, it would explain a lot about why no American work has managed to capture its appeal.