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I don't get this animosity between the two either.
Yes there is marketing behind calling our car the 86. Toyota isn't stupid, they want this car to be as successful as it can be and hearkening back to an old but loved name I think was vital for this car's success in Japan. The differences between the two are large, the old car never had a boxer engine, the new car would never be seen with a live rear axle, the parts bin engineering is more explicit in the older car, the new car only comes in one body style with no hatch option, I could go on.
The similarities though can't be forgotten. Both are inexpensive RWD coupes, both favour corners over the drag strip, both were designed to be a everyday sports car, both were designed to allow relatively easy modification, they're both very simple cars for their time, both despite their sporty nature are grounded in sensible car principles thus they're relatively economical to run, etc.
They're not the same, I don't even think Toyota goes that far. There's no question the new car derives a good amount from the old car. Toyota though decided to take this old concept and bring it to the modern day with all the modern engineering behind it that the old car could only dream of.
The only thing that's slightly off is saying the AE86 is based off a Corolla and thus can't be a sports car. If one was using this as a guideline...the new car will fail too because the new car's underpinnings are based off the Impreza. One may argue its heavily modified...but so was the AE86's and frankly most mainstream sports cars. This is all semantics though, the real deal is in the end product. If the AE86 was a Corolla in sporty clothes meaning it was merely a Corolla with a different body, then yeah you can argue against its sports car-ness. As noted it diverged from the main Corolla line since the normal AE8 Corollas went FWD.
Resale is a funny animal. For a long while the AE86 Corollas were treated very much like any Corolla, a heavily depreciating item. It wasn't popular in North America and it likely had a similar story in Japan for the early part of its life. It took racing driver Keiichi Tsuchiya using this as his personal touge car that suddenly people took notice to this unassuming but attainable car. Then comes Initial D after that, basing a story off of this real life event and now the car is a star. Suddenly a lot of unloved AE86s suddenly became desirable, first in Japan and later all over the world.
Its not even just an anime series that can do this. The Delorean DMC-12 is a great example. Here's a car that didn't do well, it was massively flawed even new. The company that made it even shut down. Imagine selling this car in 1984, you lost a ton of money, a car that didn't review well and has no support, how much do you really expect from it? Suddenly a major film that starred this car comes out in 1985 and now this worthless car turns into a object of affection. Such events can't be predicted.
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