Re: RE Village - I don't think it's ambiguous, but I'm not saying sex sells, I'm saying, people's desires sell, so long as they're sold with sufficient subtlety. It helps with the Village lady that she's the villain and hasn't been "sexed up" - so long as the audience is doing it, not the company, the audience is into it. But we're probably not disagreeing much.
With RE8, I dunno what the issue is in Japan, but my guess would be censorship. RE8 got hit pretty hard with violence-related censorship in Japan (most REs largely avoid this, perhaps surprisingly, IIRC - last one I recall was RE4, which also got hit pretty hard this way). The Japanese version is heavily censored.
So what I strongly suspect is happening is that hardcore RE fans in Japan are importing NA/EU versions of the RE8 (or just not buying it), because modern consoles are region-free.
Re: Jakandor/Ghostwalk, sure but it's pretty funny that these two "peak weirdness" D&D settings would probably be easier to get adapted to 5E than DL. I honestly think Jakandor might even sell better, with the meme factor taken into account.