Hey there, I believe you remember me.
First off, I think that I never really got a chance to know Kikyo as she truly was. Even if it was the same mind altogether, death is a truly traumatic experience, and there's no way you can die violently, be abruptly yanked out of oblivion and reincarnation into your old form, and come out of it all, as a person, unchanged. In general, I think the inner emtpyness from having a medly of absorbed substitutes in lue of her own soul makes her appear cold and generally limits her capacity for emotion. Whenever we see her her face is unexpressive yet tinted with tragedy, a kind of depression and self-mourning deeper than normal feeling.
Now, Kikyo is of course undead. As an open-minded necromancer, I don't hold that against her. There's nothing morally wrong with being undead, and she shouldn't be chastised or hated for it.
However, what I do have a problem with is that she absorbs or eats (take your pick, the net meaning is the same) the souls of newly dead tragic maidens for sustanence. As a tragic maiden herself, this kind of spiritual cannibalism seems all the more abhorrent.
Unfortunately, like I said, we never really got to know Kikyo. Everything about her character now is defined by her death.
Kagome. Alright, a lot of people dislike Kagome for being annoying. A lot of people say she's too weak, and she cries for "Inuyasha!" too much.
In her defense, she is something like sixteen. She doesn't consider herself a preistess, she's a girl trying to recover the sacred jewel shards to correct her mistake while still making an ultimately futile attempt to pass high school. If you're a teenage girl, and, while you may have some budding spiritual powers, you've got a big, powerful, half-demon who will tear through demonic swarms to defend you, you're going to use that guy any chance you get.
Coming back to that half-demon, one thing that does bother me is she gets a little trigger happy with the sit commands. Since the whole point of the necklace was to subdue him when he was in the "I'm going to kill everybody and everything around me" phase, that thing really doesn't need to be on her, and removing it would be a nice courtesy.
One of the reasons why I enjoy the manga is that its a little less over-the-top than the anime. Kagome does less shouting of "SIT!", Inuyasha's not as blatantly stupid/insensitive, etc.
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