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Five Steps to Better Fanservice

I do find myself rolling my eyes at a lot of fanservice actually, Isuca as an example had me super annoyed by a number of problems that it lent too hard on fanservice while kind of making a mess. It felt like High School of the Dead was the start of some shows that kind of took it a gross way that things just did not feel natural.

I am kind of interested for what Shimoneta might mean for the topic, I started off kind of annoyed, but I ended up thinking that there was a real point to how confrontational things were. What does a woman wearing panties on her head even mean?

^
That's very interesting; may I trouble you to link/show images (anime and safe for work, if that's possible) that you find erotic?

I keep imagining that they're bodies can like...fold into themselves vertically to compact themselves like a robot.

As DVDs became popular, my first shows were Cowboy Bebop and Trigun. I got into stuff like Hellsing briefly, but I eventually stopped caring for over-the-top violence too at some point. I watched Eva (Rahxephon's way better) with some friends, along with Golden Boy, FMP: Fumoffu, and some others I wasn't extremely keen to own myself, but kind of tolerated and even chuckled a bit at. Steel Angel Kurumi and Chobits were probably the most risque things I ever sat through with friends.

No, what caught my attention more was stuff that my friends didn't care for much, and many people have already named throughout this thread. I got into Serial Experiments Lain, Boogiepop Phantom, Please Save My Earth, Kare Kano, Planetes, Master Keaton, Monster, Kino's Journey, Mushishi, and others. I did find some enjoyment from Shonen shows like Hajime no Ippo (I guess I'm slightly hypocritical when it comes to dick jokes, maybe because you get used to that kind of "locker-room humor" as a guy) and One Piece (until the fan-service got too over-the-top), but overall I liked stuff that was a little deeper and largely avoided fanservice altogether. I oddly really enjoyed sports anime for a time, like the aforementioned Ippo and others like Princess Nine and Initial D (if that counts).

For several years, I didn't watch anime at all because I thought it wasn't worth digging through all the harem shows to maybe find one show with substance, but Attack on Titan's popularity in Japan while I was living there piqued my interest enough to check it out, and I concluded it wasn't half-bad. Most recently, the buzz around Madoka Magica made me finally watch it against my pre-concieved notions of it looking, "like pandering drivel," I think was my exact wording. I was completely absorbed by it despite almost quitting after episode one. It's the best thing I've seen recently, but now I'm sort of in a lull of not finding anything interesting again.

Part of what distinguishes anime from other artistic mediums is how it can approach fanservice. When it comes to (non-superhero) character creation, I don't think there's another medium that can outdo it. I think anime over its lifetime has evolved to a point where it's made character creation into a social science. So in some ways fanservice can also be a way for an anime to flex its muscles.

Also, western animation/comics don't do that because they still have repressed sexuality in the sense that westerners in general cannot allow themselves to feel the pleasure of stylized designs. Because if you think about it, some erotic manga character designs are almost "optimally" designed for maximum stimulation for the male brain.