That's actually a pretty good point there, I like it. I guess it depends how you look at it. In my mind Anakin was always "a good friend" and a noble Jedi knight, maybe even a family man who actually got seduced by the dark side as opposed to being a bad apple from the start and tricked into being evil like the prequels show. In the original context I kinda understand why it happened (also at this point it didn't seem totally exclusive to post-Quigon jedi to become force ghosts), but in the context of the prequels yea it's kinda dodgy.
I thought it was a bit dodgy then in the OT, though completely with you on understanding why it happens the way it does. Everyone gets a happy ending in a fairy tale.
But in terms of Anakin's character, despite its execution (which is obviously faulty), I'm in the minority that thinks his arc in the Prequels makes sense and something I can kinda sympathize with. Here's someone who was born to a single mother under poor, hopeless, and oppressive conditions, seen as less than an outcast, and rescued, seemingly by fate, to be spirited away to a life of purpose and adventure. Only it turns out to be way different than he had imagined.
Everyone tells him he's special, he's going to be something great one day, grooming him for this "greater purpose." This inflates his ego and builds his hopes up. The years pass and he's just educated and trained like everyone else and, despite doing and meaning well, he begins to grow bitter and resentful. In gardening terms, his teachers see it as pruning a budding plant so it can grow up healthy but Anakin sees it as purposefully limiting his natural growth. He wants to experience the life being a Jedi has afforded him to its fullest but is told to restrict himself. The precious few connections he's made, he's told to abandon them and try not to get too close; something that goes against his very nature as someone who came from literally nothing, and had only the people around him to form some sort of identity. He's a person moved from one scenario where he can remain as nothing, to another that promises him everything, but teaches him to be faceless, nameless, nothing. The one love in his life that he experiences as a man, the one thing that filled the void the death of his mother left, he has to keep in the shadows. It's another thing he can't fully enjoy openly.
The one person that nurtured his ego reveals himself to be a Sith Lord and offers to pass onto him the greater powers he's been looking for. Moreover, it's a chance at breaking free from his stifled life and giving him the reigns to shape his reality as he sees fit.
Of course, not all of these things happen for him, but it's easy to see why Anakin would take that up in a heartbeat.
I like the idea of Anakin not quite being a "bad apple," but certainly one that soured. The dashing, noble, do-gooder would just be boring. I agree with Solo4114's vision of an "ends justify the means" kinda guy that Anakin would/should be, I feel that very same way, but I also feel like it's not enough. Anakin, in my mind, should also be someone that acts out when no one's looking, his repressed emotions bubbling up, and preferring to do things his own way, which often ends up with him being scolded and derided, but any discretion is overlooked by his superiors because he gets results (we are talking about the times of the Clone Wars, at this point).
I don't like the CG Clone Wars for a great number of reasons, but one of the things that bothers me is it's all made from the perspective of people who think Anakin should be the noble, dashing, do-gooder. Anakin, for me, should be that kinda person that always takes another step further past the boundary the Jedi at the time deemed "acceptable," especially in this time of war where he's solidifying his own stark ideas of what is right and wrong. That is the root of where Vader grows from. The second part of the micro-series Clone Wars did this really well, I thought.
If I had the ability, I'd make a Clone Wars that showed just how scary the Clone Wars was; not some light, adventurous romp fighting robots. We are talking about a conflict of attrition here. Unlike the Galactic Civil War, this is about how many planets are going to fall sway to Federation's pull and it's being fought with robots that have two modes, "conquer" and "off," and a group of genetically engineered people bred specifically to die because "civilized" folks don't want to get their hands dirty. We're dealing with very heavy ideas here that haven't been fully explored yet and it's that hellfire that's going to forge the character we know to become Darth Vader.