Attempting to justify this sort of censorship on an ethical level is a moot point because it was never done for ethical reasons in the first place.
No one was wrestling with their conscience in fear that Habu or some other franchise representative might get assassinated by religious fundamentalist the next time they visit the US or some other far fetched scenario.
They are worried that some conservative parents or relatives might feel about 15% less inclined to buy little jimmy those games or cards for his birthday and so they attempt to avoid that loss in profits. The point is a company increasing their profits is not an inherently ethical matter. It
can be when profits are the result of exploitation of workers for example but I'm going to go out on a limb and claim that the working environment at Bandai isn't really influenced by whether they are producing cards and games with a black or a blue nun.
It's the same posturing as companies trying to appear "woke" in their ads when it's all just about locking in markets. Most people realize that there's no actual moral high-ground there, just business. Why treat this any different?
Saying that taking a step back to recognize that actions have consequences is stupid and pointless is rather tone-deaf especially when the magazine's actions had lethal consequences, whether you agree with the magazine's response or not.
I don't think it's possible to get any more tone deaf, to the point of basically victim blaming, to even implicitly compare a terrorist attack to social consequences. (And I'm not sure if you realized that the scenario they described was hypothetical and the exact opposite of what actually happened.)
The responsibility literally doesn't lie with the magazine, the responsibility lies with the government to protect their citizens from terrorists in general.
As Tara likes to reiterate on What the Fuck is Wrong with You: Freedom of Speech is not freedom from consequences.
I don't get how namedropping some random web show most people probably don't know exists constitutes any sort of authority or proof for anything.
Anyway besides the plethora of biblical beings adapted in Digimon, I am not sure about the merits of the "misrepresentation of
people" argument earlier in the thread. In the case of CS/HM you could make the same case against misrepresenting the majority of hackers as a bunch of digital hoodlums. Or the less than flattering portrayal of Otaku in general.
And regardless of the inherent artistic value of those portrayals, a double standard remains in that some professions or people are clearly getting special treatment in comparison... and that is where you can question the ethical implications.
And as far as any potential dissenting religious groups go: They are free not to buy the product, they are free to tell other people not to buy it and those other people are free to dismiss that criticism as overreacting and out of touch, that's how free expression goes.
And the more often their efforts are inevitably shut down or never even get off the ground, the more companies should realize that they have nothing to panic about.
