There’s some interesting discussion about religion and age ratings here.(Which I imagine will be ignored by some people). Although interestingly, Torishima mentions that “There are a few things that absolutely must not be done”. I’m curious what he means by that.
Funnily enough, there’s quite a lot of Western video games that get censored in Japan as well, even M rated ones(Although they do censor their own games as well. For example, Resident Evil games are frequently censored in Japan, but not the US.
I also remember recently that an EA employee was annoyed with the Japanese rating board for banning the Dead Space Remake while allowing Stellar Blade, despite both games supposedly having similar levels of gore. Of course, with both Stellar Blade and EA being controversy magnets, you can imagine the discussion that came from this.
I suppose different countries having different cultures as well as different ratings boards will just inevitably cause these kinds of problems, and I’m not sure there’s a real solution to that.