I doubt that's the case 80% of the time, people complain about excessive fan service. People who like it are minority. I think the studios just do it as a filler.
In between large projects, like say large budget, popular anime, how do these companies stay afloat?
For an animation studio, their goal is to make money, and anime, say like
Attack on Titan, don't always bring in enough to keep these companies afloat, even if they're well-liked and popular. It's just not financially feasible to only create anime like that.
On top of that, animation itself is
very expensive. Afro Samurai, a 5 episode long anime, reportedly costed the studio $2 million an episode to animate.
So, they make fanservice laden anime that doesn't have much of a plot, is easy to make, easy to market, and sells, and it works. It brings in
a lot of money for the studio.
Just look at the library of any well-liked and popular Japanese animation studio, like, Madhouse, Studio Trigger, A-1 Pictures, and so on. They all have anime that's adored and popular, but they also have
tons that aren't well known, very niche, and
a lot of fanservice laden projects.
I'm not accusing these studios of anything, if anything, I understand their plight and the plight of the employees. They may not want to work on these projects, but many of them aren't in a position to turn down such projects and only focus on the interesting projects.
Not every animation studio has the clout that Studio Ghibli has, that's just a statement of fact.
There are some exceptions that you find in the individual level, however.
For example, the mangaka Kouta Hirano. He started his career as a manga artist by doing porn, not even joking. He then later got enough money and experience to focus on the projects he wanted to do, like
Hellsing and
Drifters.
Take that, and multiply it by like, say, 70 employees for a large animation studio, and suddenly it makes sense.
