>>280566192nta and I don't know Japanese laws and ratings (especially at the time) but if we assumed this was in the U.S., you'd have to show ID to buy an OVA. A minor can still go to a movie theater to watch a rated R movie, they just can't buy the tickets themselves. The same cannot be said for an NC-17 movie, which the vast majority of theatres won't play. OVAs were a huge risk because they were super expensive to make and didn't sell to very many people, but something like Gunbuster had a huge potential to make bank on merchandise. It didn't make sense to go the fringe route with Fist of the North Star because it was a well-known property that was in both Shounen Jump and on TV, so they went with the route that more people would see to not have to rely on merchandise as much.e
Is it retarded that a bunch of pearlclutching PTA cunts would cry about their children being tarnished by a movie they would have to let them watch? Absolutely, but that's how public expectation works.
Japan has higher bars for violence in media yes but they still have upper limits. Americans cry when there's blood in /co/ shit. A good equivalent would be if the Powerpuff Girls movie (where the show did have blood, just not a lot of it so it aired on Cartoon Network just fine) suddenly had gore in it and was rated R. Moral guardians would lose their shit and while maybe not have it pulled from existence, still make a big deal out of it because it was a children's property that was commonly understood as such.
Now a couple years later when the ATHF movie gets made with equivalent amount of gore and the same rating, no one gives a fuck because that's what ATHF is known for.
