I went down a rabbit hole recently that got me to find something I've been trying to examine and explain for a while now in ways I didn't know before. I'm...still working on doing a really good examination of the dichotomy between anime and manga having strong women characters who if you took them solely from a character/story perspective are miles ahead of Western interpretations of "strong" or "independent" women but physically are often used for fan-service and eye-fucking in ridiculously designed costumes and angles or situations that go against their character in order to appeal to a male demographic/idea of masculinity/femininity. Due to the Ghost in the Shell trailer, I found out that Roger Ebert reviewed the original anime movie and while a generally terrible review because he basically just describes events that happen in the movie and then goes "It was pretty good 3/4 Stars" with barely any critique or examination of elements from it, he actually points out the element of anime I'm talking about above by saying that the Major is a strong female character who nevertheless shows off her titties and not entirely for artistic reasons. He then makes reference to a recent (at the time in '95-96) article in Film Quarterly that examined the life of salarymen in Japan who often found their lifestyle trapping and claustrophobically binding, wearing them down every day, and finding their freedom in women who generally did not have to do the work they did; living vicariously through depictions of women who were the heroes and independent and free to do these things they could not. But because they were still men as the target audience it couldn't just be strong women doing independent things; they still had to at the end of the day be a service towards the men. I had never really thought about it that way before, and to be completely honest I feel that with the audience shift in anime to be mainly targeted at younger people or otakus that this idea can still hold up; a lot of kids could feel trapped by school or parents or tradition/grades/Japanese culture or as an older otaku by the life that they find themselves in and use this anime/manga as freedom from those things while still being men who cannot see a woman being all these things they can't be without needing a tit or panty-shot to keep them grounded or being depressed watching someone do what they can't.
I think it's actually different from the similar notion of the popular self-insert harem protagonist/variations thereof that have also become popular because of the gender of the characters. Often the woman who is strong and independent is not meant as a self-insert but as liberating to watch and envy but not want to be. You watch what they do and their freedom and wish you had FREEDOM like her, but not HER freedom, if that makes sense. Therefore you can project your desires on top of her desires or her freedom and strength and not directly feel weird when she falls on top of some guy's dick because you are not her.
What's unfortunate is that I seem to be at a roadblock following this further because after 2 hours of searching I have been unable to find this specific article or a good place to look for it. The Film Quarterly site only has articles going back to 2005 and only select articles and I cannot find another site that has logged any specific articles or a searchable database of their '90s output. Likewise, I am unsure if public libraries would carry such old issues of Film Quarterly and get the distinct feeling that the ones that do, or rather any physical place that does, wouldn't be around me.
Which is too bad because I really wanted to go in depth to look at this as it might kick my ass into gear to actually continue working on my self-imposed research paper regarding this and posting yet another thread on GAF with an OP that's way too long and in-depth except this time it won't be about girls fucking dudes in the butt with strapons.