One of the strangest contrasts, of what is considered mature content, is the one between sex and violence. If we were to compare them as far as depictions go, violence is the one that is more accepted and by far more prevalent in both anime and many other forms of media. And that lack of normality toward sex, and things of an erotic nature, has always been a mystery to me as to why people are more comfortable seeing limbs being pull off compared to a little bit of nipple.
Maybe that comparison isn't the best, because there are more gradients of violence, but there are also different gradients of eroticism that are still met with shock when viewed by a majority of people. For the most part, the action genre is one of the most popular genres, and has the most admiration compared to things like ecchi. Probably the biggest problem for such genres is the lowbrow way of approaching sexual content. For that to change, like action has, there probably needs to be a change in the way people view sex, resulting in ecchi becoming less of a joke, and more of a legitimate genre.
I guess the best place to start is figuring out what these so called problems are, and improve on them. Just to name a few problems, maybe the most important is culture in general, followed by less obvious things like people are able to disassociate themselves with violence more easily than sex. Maybe there is even the idea that violence is mostly associated with masculinity, while sexual content is both controlled by men, yet expected of women to be less sexual and still fully forced on them. It's a weird dichotomy for sure, but I will try to explain it a bit more clearly.
Conservative Japan
There have been stories popping up for a few months now indicating that in Japan there is both an increase in the elderly population and a decrease in overall population. This probably has to do with the fact that technology is progressing faster than how people view relationships with their fellow humans. Japan has this strange view on sex that is continued to be dragged through to the modern age, and it most likely have to do with their censorship of porn. Heavy censorship laws have most been abolished, but the one in pornography is still strong and happily being enforced. And that discomfort in porn gets carried out to their people in relationships.
Like the west, Japan has a view of sexual acts being really dirty, but it is still somewhat necessary, so porn doesn't really get banned -- just the government is going to deem somethings more indecent than other. However, unlike the west, Japan doesn't really have much apposing perspectives, like religion, to continue the negative light sex and pornography is in -- so their isn't this uprising "rebellion" from the youth, like there is in the west. This results in there being no real push to change the views they have, making it slower to see change.
But thats not the only thing that is slow to progress, there is still a very rigid way genders are expected to be. This probably contributes to the way the Japanese view sex, and most of their porn ends up looking rape-like, with not much variation beside the reverse of that being femdom. So lets go into where I left off back on the introductory paragraph before this section.
Gender Dilemma
The result of a culture that respects and encourages most of the traditions that have been establish many decades ago, there is a misconception on what is a relationship -- where the men are the providers and the women are the home makers. This misconception got out of hand and quickly made many of the youth rejected the idea of being in a relationship, because it is more troublesome than helpful in their eyes. Which started this race to not become someone that is associated with this image of being one piece to that tradition relationship.
Women in Japan are probably the ones with the most noticeable changes. They are more focused on themselves rather then relying on men to support them. Since work in Japan for women usually stops when they have kids, there is less of an incentive to settle down and make a family; resulting in women being less interested in relationships, because of that skewed image of what is a typical romantic relationship. And I don't really even blame them for having a negative view on romance. There is still a very small definition of what is an attractive Japanese women, in both physical and mental characteristics; so is there much surprise that some women would reject every aspect of the standard Japanese model of what is beautiful.
With this rapid change of the women, men still expected in their heart for women to be the sweet and innocent person they hoped for. However, for the most part, that image had disappeared. It's weird, for most men, they wanted "their" women to stay the same while they -- the men -- change to become far less of what society expected them to be. So with the men's image of what women act like shattered, a good chunk regressed into anime, manga, Japanese Idol, and several other escapists media. This has become a bigger problem going on into the future where some view real women as a hassle and don't pursue relationships with them. Sometimes even exclusively have pretend relationship with their 2D "waifus" or the idols themselves -- and this is probably where the phase 3D pig disgusting or 3DPD cropped up from.
In essence, both parties are rejected some aspect of the other, making it more difficult to get anywhere; it ends up becoming a big struggle of possession, where on one hand women want to have control of their own bodies and image, and on the other are men that want to control the image of the women. Resulting in a stalemate in a war not worth fighting and both relationships and sex continue to be viewed in very juvenile ways.
Unsexy
Culture has always been a weird thing to mess with, and the way people view sex is even more of a touchy subject. If Japan can overcome or even make progress with the two -- what I deem to be -- major problems, there might be more interesting takes on the ecchi genre. However, for now, the view will be mostly geared toward teenage males that don't really have a nuanced, or even mature, view of sexual content.
I do hope to see a less possessive take on how women are viewed, making the erotic things feel less objectifying. Sex doesn't always have to be about turn people into objects; there very much can be someone that is sexy, but not merely there for eye candy. Just need to find out better ways to present this content and maybe, just maybe, there will be a more legitimate genres for eroticism, like violence and the action genre has.
Side note: I used Freezing and Freezing Vibration pictures mainly because this is one series that I would argue has the least objectifying views on sex. It also treats violence and erotic material as equals, especially after watching the fifth episode. Plus it is the one anime I'm writing most about on sekijitsu.