So, I wanna talk a little bit about this, since I'm aware how Japan has been handling this stuff for re-airings, and really, it's fairly a simple thing.
Essentially the basic gist of the situation is this: Japan does not edit or censor any legacy material that is simply a "re-airing". This includes things that are no longer considered okay to broadcast (certain gestures, nudity (though I do need to note this is a network to network thing, and some don't have an issue with this, while some do), racial and homophobic content, etc.). What they do instead, is prior to the broadcast of these shows, they air with warnings. These warnings are worded differently, depending on the network, and each network may have different things that they may see an issue, while others don't.
Kids Station, for example, doesn't have an issue with nudity and stuff, and often shows that have full nudity, won't result in these warnings. However, racist content, certain inappropriate gestures, and some other things, will warrant these warnings. TV Asahi seems a bit stricter about this, and nudity is also included with these warnings (even Crayon Shin-chan episodes that aired 5-6 years ago, often carry these warnings for re-broadcasts).
Rockman.EXE, for example, for the re-airings on Kids Station, carry these warnings, due to imagery and certain terminology being considered racist and problematic. And this is a show that aired back in around 2002 or so, for the record.
Warning messages that the two above broadcasters often carry for their re-airings:
There's definitely more, but I've only had access to these recordings that carried these messages. I believe TV Asahi used to have a slightly different message at one point, but I'd have to dig it up since it has been awhile.
DVD and Blu-ray's often come with similar warnings as well.
Honestly, as a openly gay man, I get that a lot of these things used to be acceptable to show on Japanese TV, even if in hindsight, many of these could be considered harmful for LGBT groups. I'm not gonna judge Japan for what they did in the past regarding this. Really matters how modern media as a whole handles it. Plus, sometimes a lot of this was simply due to ignorance and sometimes not an ill intended act to demean people, but there obviously are examples in media that show otherwise.
And yeah, it's important that these things aren't edited or censored, especially for video releases, because these are, ultimately, products of when they were once released during the time frame. It can be an opportunity to look back in the past and reflect issues that were presented in these media.
Somehow I'd never heard about that until now. Geez, I didn't think anything would beat out the nunchaku editing in the UK for the original run of TMNT material, but that...that one takes the cake.
