I could see them bumping her up to 15 for whatever reason. Sometimes they do things like that. I don't think they would try to get away with pretending she's 18, though. I also think it's fitting that everyone in Bravely Default (even characters who were over 18 to begin with) was aged up by three years, so I was asserting that the increase would at least be a smaller one in X.

If I'm reading your last paragraph right, I think you're saying that there's no need to make changes to such a niche game? If that's the case I agree. I don't think there's any reason to make changes to this game no matter how much it would sell, though sometimes a tweak is made here and there to avoid the possibility of upsetting people, like the tiny edit made to one of the FE: Awakening DLCs.

Make up your mind. At once you argue that outfits and poses alone can be sexual in nature, while noting the obvious difference between simple nudity and pornography. How can you reconcile this disparity? If nudity can be non-sexual, can't lingerie?

The outfit in Bravely Default is presented in a sexual nature. That's the whole point. The villain of that subplot seduces and exploits women with essentially a date rape drug. One of the main characters uses a sexy outfit to seduce him (or pretend to be seduced by him) and lure him into a trap. That's the plot. As for "why sexualize a child in the first place," as this is a single subplot of many in the game, I doubt this character's age was determined for that purpose. Naturally the outfit could be altered slightly and still be 'sexy', the character could have her age increased a bit without changing anything significant in this or any other part of the story -- in fact, for the localization this may have actually maintained the meaning better than keeping her original age. At some point I remember him saying that children don't interest him. In Japan, the age of consent is younger than in America, so I think the seduction of a 15-year-old might provoke different responses from different cultures... I'm no expert in world cultures though so this is just a thought.

Anyway, regarding the way the character's age was decided independently from her sexualization in this subplot, I think the same holds true for the outfit in Xenoblade X. They wrote a story involving a teenaged party member. All party members can wear the same outfits just like in Xenoblade, and it seems like this time rather than changing the outfit's appearance completely depending on which party member is wearing it, the outfits will have the same appearance across all party members of the same sex. This way each outfit only needs two different designs rather than one for each party member. They could have changed some of the outfits just for this one character, but it's really unnecessary. The first game also had a teenage (17) party member who could be stripped to her undies. I don't remember people getting mad about that? I think the absurd jiggle physics on the adults in Xenoblade were much more worthy of negative attention. I hope they fixed that shit in X, it was dumb watching them flop all over the place every time a woman turned to face a different character. Back on-topic, developers can do whatever they want to try to limit the player's ability to sexualize characters, but I think it's kind of like trying to prevent people from pirating your game. A wasted effort that won't really stop anybody and only inconveniences the player. After all, perhaps the best way to prevent the sexualization of any of the characters would be to remove camera controls entirely from the game. Obviously the developer wants the player to be able to equip their characters with 'sexy' outfits, and whatever you think about that, at least they're equal-opportunity about it. The dudes can run around in boxers and stuff.

Please explain the phrase "it looks like a 10 year old with an adult body." If she has an adult body, in what way does she look like a 10 year old? If you feel the sexualization of people or characters should be determined by how old they look and not how old they actually are, aren't you edging somewhat close to the ridiculous Australian censorship laws?