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Personally I don't know if a truly "anime" look is possible with CGI. 3D and 2D are really two separate distinct artforms with two very distinctive looks. The closest I've seen a CG animation made to mimick a 2D look was the Dreamwork short "Paperman" , and when you look at the behind the scenes process of how it was achieved, you can understand why we haven't seen many more projects using the techniques regardless of how many people seem to really love the look of that film.
Of course it's possible. A good percentage of what's on the air in Japan now is actually CG. A good example is the series Knights of Sidonia, which was picked up by Netflix and is 100% CG. For that matter, South Park is 100% CGI as well, and always has been. The question is how well can DS studio emulate that look, and it really comes down to design aesthetic and direction as much as tech. Threre are a lot more all CG anime titles are listed here http://www.anime-planet.com/anime/tags/cg-animation?page=1 and they run the gamut from a total videogame look to completely toon. i think the real limitation of the new DAZ figures is that they're so realistic that you really have to redo the shape radically by mixing in somethng like Star 2 and use shaders or original simplified textures for the skin and oither surfaces or you start to walk in the uncanny valley.
It's possible because people are beginning to accept the new look, but make no mistake, most people can totally tell the difference between traditional animation and CGI. There are certain things that CGI works very well on, namely mecha, but animating cgi to move like a 2D character with the squash and stretch physics is hard to duplicate. What you're really starting to notice is that a lot of animation is starting to look more realistic as opposed to earlier stuff, but the looks are still very different.
A very good example of CG anime animation with Cel Shading and more is Appleseed and Appleseed: Ex Machina..
There's definitely anime made with CG where the only difference between that and traditional stuff is that the CG is better quality for less money. Yay technology! And no, I don't think 'most people' can tell the difference. I only can in said quality measure. Now-- can I recognize /3d models/ when they're animated? Often! But that's a totally different issue. Computers are perfectly capable of animating 2d art; my 9 year old does it all the time. CG _contains_ 3d art but is not limited to it. :-)
That's looks fantastic, even though it's obvious CG is being used. But most of the attempts you see for independents don't come close to that quality, in either look or execution. And with Daz we're primarily talking about the look, which I'm simply not seeing. One of the problems as has been stated is that the models being called "anime" style in the Daz store are far from it. They are way too realistic in their porportions -- at least when it comes to the anime style many people are trying to achieve. The other thing which that clip makes clear is that to acheive that look was a combination of 2D and 3D not a 100% CG scene with some toon shading.
Also I need to clear one thing up, when I said it wasn't possible, I was primarily talking about motion. A singe frame from an anime shot in CGI or 2D could be indistinguishable as far as look. It's when they move that you can detect the difference. What I'm not so certain about is if the "look" is possible to truly acheive in Daz Studio at present.
Maybe someone can post some of their experiments, because we can post professional stuff all day long where they have access to all the tools in the world to get the perfect look. I want to see it with the stuff we have available to us.
First, we need to delineate what "the look" we're looking for consists of. Cel-Shading in solid color blocks, with a hard-contrast outline at the perimeter? Okay, there are plenty of shaders for that in 3DL, but we also want to make use of Iray's particular strengths as an unbiased, nearly-physically-accurate raytracer. That means (for shaders) that we need reflection, refraction, caustics and the like to be properly accounted for. Hmmn.