I'm not saying it's physically impossible, I question the legality of it though. I don't think there are exception in their laws for providing uncensored assets to foreigners. A western company that asks for those assets are kind of asking someone to break the law. I imagine it's worth asking for if all things can be kept on the down low but doing so long term across many devs, you'd be bound to come across devs not willing to break the law.
Perhaps I'm wrong and there are provisions in their laws that allows for them to do that but I don't think so. Rather it's more like a gray area that those that provide it, don't do so publicly and probably justify it since its distributed outside Japan. I'd like to be wrong, if anyone can point to something concrete that indicates that its legal for them to do so then that would be awesome.
Genuinely I am curious.
Latest Kamichichi game was also made with uncensored content straight from the source. I recall reading it on ci-en sometime or other.
I've read from other DEVs saying the same thing.
All the Empress games that have been officially licensed outside of Japan have also been released with uncensored content. I assume straight from the source.
Back in the day Peach Princess even publicly stated that they were cancelling the release of an Empress game due to the company having lost the original uncensored content. So yeah, they didn't do any redraws or something like that.
So no, it's NOT illegal for a JPN company to 'sell off' or 'license' it's content to foreign companies/distributors.
So long as those don't get released in JPN (or by the actual JPN company) it's all good. That's also why Evenicle 2 was released censored (since AliceSoft did the localization AND distribution rather than MangaGamer or JAST).
So yeah, I'm not saying that '(AI) decensoring' or even full on redraws don't happen. But it's certainly not going to be any company's preferred approach I'd assume.
But I also don't think it's as grey a zone as you seem to assume it is.
Also ... how could they even enfore such a thing. The content can exist ... but the original author can't have made it?
As a freelance author/artist, you could just as easily get hired to do the 'uncensoring' of any game. And it just so happens to be your own game for your foreign publisher.
You can draw whatever you want in the comfort of your own home, you just can't distribute it in the country.
And finally ... there are other Japanese artists who draw for foreign companies, that publish fully uncensored content ya know.
Take Remtairy's artist for example.
Anyway, I'll leave it at that ... this post seems to have gotten a bit long.
