Personally i think a lot of censorship is due to hypocrisy on a lot of company's parts.
I will prefix what i'm about to type by saying:
I play 18+ Japanese porn games
I play western games like GTA, 1st person shooters etc
I play japanese games like Neptunia, Star Ocean etc
I play pretty much anything and everything regardless of age rating, and genre
Let's take a games like Neptunia RPG as an example of a japanese game that has been censored.
Neptunia RPG was censored on Playstation but not Switch.
Sony's reasoning for this was something along the lines of the usual things we see 'they LOOK like children' and 'we didn't feel the scene was NECESSARY to keep without censoring'.
Now let's take a game like The Order 1886
This game is an 18+ rated game and has full frontal nudity. However this seems to be fine when a company wants to put out a game that uses arguably photo realistic graphics.
For those confused as to what Sony removed from Neptunia RPG.
They removed cleavage, (not full frontal breasts) where all the characters were covering their chests to begin with.
And they cropped an image of one of the characters playing a game with her legs crossed and you could see her underwear.
The part i don't understand is that both Nintendo and Sony have given Neptunia RPG an age rating on 12+ at least in the EU.
The point i'm trying to make here is that PEGI system didn't need to change the age rating for the game on either console, despite Sony going through the lengths to have their version censored.
So why did Sony even bother?
If the game was going to get the 12+ age rating anyway, why did they feel the need to crop off images and censor things?
Self censorship. Pointless self censorship at that.
However games like GTA 5, The Order 1886 and a plethora of other western games get 16+ and 18+ ratings with anything and everything they want added in. However god forbid we have a 'cartoon character' that LOOKS like a child have her panties showing.
I've made this argument before, but if someone LOOKS like a child does that mean that they aren't allowed to do adult things even if they're of age?
When i was 19 i got stopped from buying scissors at a WHSmith because i didn't LOOK over 14, this was despite me having identification in the form of a passport.
Does this also mean i shouldn't be allowed to drink, have sex or smoke because i LOOKED young. No, no it doesn't.
Sorry if i get a little heated on this topic, but i've been stopped doing a lot of things because i LOOK a certain way. My bf used to get funny looks from people because they thought he was dating a minor, when really i was in my early to mid 20's and he was in his early 30's.
What i'm getting at is just because someone LOOKS a certain way, doesn't mean that they ARE a certain way.
Japanese art styles in anime, is a contentious topic for a lot of people, and i understand that.
You're right, at times they do look like children doing adult things.
But A: they may not be and they just look young
And B: they're cartoon drawings that don't look like real people.
Now i;m not saying Sony should bring 18+ Japanes porn games to their console and neither should Nintendo, but what i am saying is that a lot of problems lie with self censorship out of fear of backlash, and i don't think that should happen with art, music or gaming.