Don't forget about Mutant's and Mastermind's relationship to BESM.
GoO hired Steve Kenson to work on Silver Age Sentinels (Tri-stat dX / d20). GoO then used Silver Age Sentinels d20 to serve as their framework for BESM d20 (they adjusted the values and reinserted their anime material via copy pasta).
Sometime later, Steve Kenson used his work from Silver Age Sentinels as a start point for creating Mutants and Masterminds. THUS, Mutants and Masterminds could be considered to be the spiritual successor of both Silver Age Sentinels and BESM d20.
Ummmm..... No. That's not it.
Steve Kenson has stated a number of times that he just did the History of Comic Book section for Silver Age Sentinels. Additionally, it's not like a whole bunch of time passed between SAS and M&M. In fact, you can read the Guardians of Order announcement here at ENWorld:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpg-in...superhero-rpg-launches-august.html#post165501
Scroll down to point B.9:
9. I thought Green Ronin was doing the d20 superhero game?
Yes, Green Ronin is also publishing a d20 superhero game (in Fall 2002) called
Mutants and Masterminds. Steve Kenson, who contributed to Silver Age Sentinels as
well, is the line developer and primary writer for that game. Although Silver Age
Sentinels and Mutants and Masterminds are not directly related products, they will be
compatible through the d20 system. See
Green Ronin Publishing: Be Your Own Master for more information.
Which then had this:
This is the kind of goodwill I like to see between companies. I havn't bought a GOO product yet, but I think I'll be picking up both the d20 and Tri-Stat versions of SAS.
This doesn't look like good will to me. Green Ronin announced Mutants & Masterminds many months ago. Now these guys, who aren't even a d20 company, are going to bum rush GR and squeeze out their conversion first. That is simply rude and strikes me as a blatant attempt to cash in on d20 by a company that has nothing to do with it.
While I had previously considered getting the Tri Stat version of SAS, now I will be getting neither version.
I've got me a fair amount of love for BESMd20 (which was a slightly reworked SASd20) and feel it really got short-changed; it's not a flawless system but has some pretty solid bits to it. But the games came out at almost the same time. And when you're talking publishing a book (and hardback ones at that), there's too much of a lead-time required to publish.
Further, if the link that you and others suggest was actually present, both GOO and Green Ronin would be in violation of the terms of the OGL, since neither one of them cites the other's work; that's a legal requirement of the license.
Given how excited everyone was about the OGL back then, as well as the fact that it's a requirement (and even if GOO did play a bit fast-and-loose, Green Ronin doesn't appear to have done so), neither of them would have had much reason to not include the declaration of the other's OGC.
The similarities between SAS and 1st ed M&M? Parallel development seems to be the answer. And not a really unreasonable one either; when you're talking about the evolution of stuff (including game systems), you're usually dealing with a fair number of folks that have been thinking about the problem in a similar fashion and from similar backgrounds/starting points. So their solutions are going to tend to look somewhat similar as well.
Steve has been doing supers stuff for a looong time. You can still find stuff he did related to the old Marvel SAGA (card-based supers rpg) which pre-dates d20 by a comfortable margin (1998).
Mark MacKinnon on the other hand was really more about the anime than supers. Tri-Stat was busy evolving along, having new bits grafted onto it with each game. Dominion Tank Police doesn't even have a skill system as I recall. Drifting into supers territory was kinda logical given that effects-based systems are a popular enough way of dealing with both types of games, as well as there being (at the time) a strong desire for a d20-based game, to try and hook into the flood of new gamers. Ultimately this actually didn't benefit GoO, since many d20 fans hated BESMd20/SAS, a chunk of GoO's fans hated that they were ignored by GoO trying to cash in on d20 (and they hated d20), as well as the fact that there's always been (and continues to be) a chunk of gamers that hate _anything_ d20 related regardless of who the company is that produces/produced it.
On topic....
I think 4E _could_ be leveraged for a strong anime-feel game, but it'd take some work. And part of the problem you're likely going to run into is the balance issue; 4E is all about balance and anime-ish stuff... isn't. It doesn't mean you couldn't work with it, but as you pushed more towards one side, you're losing fans of the other.
Plus, the inherent premise is fundamentally different. 4E is about a very particular sort of fighting. While the powers etc might seem "over the top" from some people's perspective, at the end of the day 4E is still about dungeon-crawling. Anime stuff might have lots of fighting (depending on the type of anime), but the _goal_ behind the fighting is different.
D&D is still about killing things and taking their stuff. Editions play around a bit with this, but that's the heart of the game. 3.x narrowed it down, and 4E zeroes in like a laser on this.
Anime... the fights are to entertain and all, but they're in the _service_ of some other goal. Anime starts out first and foremost about story and bends things to fit that.
You try bending D&D rules in the service of "story" and you're going to have a fair chunk of unhappy folks.
But it's only because I'm searching for the exact correct system to implement into my master scheme, but haven't quite come across it yet... But that's something I myself will be asking for in another Thread. I digress once again. To tell you the truth, BESM is perfect for Anime-based games, I guess, and while there's alot to chose from, keep it simple, and even keep it smart, everything is convertable, if you and your GM put your wills to it 
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