#oops i rambled...

omg yes yes yes absolutely !! @fvae, tasfia is joining us!

(I think you're unaware that TSR and Sigma came out about the same time and both are based off novels, so I'll go into all the details =P)As far as design differences between Sigma and TSR go, I prefer the anime version of the twins. Though funny note, the twins in Sigma are named 'Julia' and 'Lena' and the girls from t.A.T.u. are Yulia and Lena.Between all three, I prefer the novels. (Though we never saw what they looked like)In the novels they were boys named Fei Jau (pilot) and Fei Hung (assassin), and, well, I won't go into the details, but Fei Hung had some extra orders in regards to Kaname that Gauron told Sousuke, so the impact on him at the (fake) news that she was killed was even stronger. Of course Fei Hung never got to carry it through, the events on that rainy rooftop were pretty much identical. Though I feel it also adds to Kaname's constitution, that even with a guy pursuing her, she still abandoned her robe. That impact was sorta taken away in the anime and manga when they were changed to girls, but it's something that Kaname has shown often would be a huge deal to her.Blueno was a guy in the novels, so the change to a girl was actually exclusive to the manga. The anime kept it the way it was originally intended. So it wasn't that the anime was 'censoring' anything, the manga was actually fetishizing it.Honestly, I don't know why that change was made, or who chose it. It could have been something Ueda wanted to do, or maybe the publishers/editors told him to, I don't know. He was given freedom in some places, but was told to do certain things in others. (The Christmas arc being a flashback much later was NOT his choice. He wanted to do it where it was supposed to fall in the timeline, but was told not to!)As far as how the Japanese perceive women kissing... I'm not qualified to answer that. I'm neither Japanese, nor have I ever been there, and my exposure to how they feel on the subject is limited to the anime/manga I check out. I would tentatively say that they seem to be on the homophobic side of things, but I could be very wrong. It's an outsider's perspective with limited knowledge.