So, the purpose of this group is to debate (in a friendly manner) those items that make us go "hmmm" about the InuYasha world. I'm going to get it started, but please feel free to start new threads, answer this one etc... I made this a separate group because I wanted people to join who understood what a debate was and not think it was a platform for anyone to attack anyone else.

The first topic:

Kikyo... we all love to hate her. However, is she really a bad person or is she actually a good person? What makes her tick?

I don't think she is evil. I also do not remember her telling inuyasha to go to hell with her thousands of time like I see on the fanfics.it is ridiculous. However, there is also the fact that she has harmed kagome thousands of times in the magna.But she is probably just jelous.

To me Kikyo was a good woman--a model priestess, compassionate but calm and pure. So when she fell in love with Inuyasha, she lost her self control and fell to demise. Even when she became a clay doll, however, she still had the ability to love, and she did not do evil to the common people (despite using souls of the dead, which further increased her bitterness because of her contradictory undead existence).

Kikyo always stirred my pity. Her good deeds in life, saving the sick and starved, produced no fruitful rewards; even her second death occurred so tragically. She could have used her powers for self-gain but she always helped others. I can't really blame her for the times she tried to kill Inuyasha and Kagome. Well, it was on purpose, but she was emotionally hurt and confused. Despite being a cold woman her heart was good.

Her coldness differs radically from Sesshomaru though. His coldness seems more like control and reclusiveness despite his hotness while Kikyo is just calm, too cold, inherently

I just don't like her. She's not actually a horrible person, actually I'm sure that while she was alive she was a very nice person, if not a very cold one. In her undeath however, I believe she was more hateful then anything.

She didn't constantly tell Inuyasha that she was going to take him with her, but she did say something like it at least once. I can't remember if she said it to him or just in one of her random scenes. Still, she's rather remorseless early on.

Overall I rated her as a boring character, and in many cases a useless one. At least to me.

In my opinion Kikyo is good, just reserved and strict because of the demands that have been placed on her shoulders; though, she is also compassionate and has a loving. However, she died thinking she was betryaed then was brought back by evil magic, her soul still thirsting for vengeance for a wrong committed against her. Being with Inuyasha was the first time she was given the chance to really dream and do something selfish and for herself, but it was taken from her in such a brutal way. Then when she found out she had not been betrayed but set up, her heart and soul slowly went back to her true nature. It takes time to heal hurts so of course it wasn't going to be an instant thing for her when she realized she had been set up.

It depends on what you view as good and bad.

For me, overall she isn't inherently evil or malicious.

I believe that in life she was probably a good woman who held selfish desires but duty kept her at bay. I think by those desires and the fact I don't think she and InuYasha were truly and completely in love she was able to be tricked by Naraku.

I also believe that when she is brought back she is a completely different person. She was not the same person. In the manga it was clear that she was set for her own goals and didn't really matter how she achieved them, whether helping the 'good guys' or helping the 'bad guys' I think when she came back, she came back more less of a person. Hollow and empty with only memories of the past and old feelings.

I think maybe that's why she was so set on the feelings and memories of InuYasha because it was her only link to truly being the way it was before.

Idk I'm rambling a bit, sorry for going on so long.

I don't think she was good or bad just human. She was forced into a life she did not want at a young age. She had too many expectations piled onto her without any true outlet. And wasn't she only 18 or so when this all went down?

The question made me think for a while and this is the answer I came up with.

Kikyo embodies the other woman historically hated by the moral society(friends, relatives, strangers even) and the good woman (Kagome). So it is very easy to hate her and very easy to pity Kagome, since that is the author's intention.

While I love the severity of Sesshomaru's character, the other characters in Rumiko Takahashi's Inuyasha are quite unremarkable. The plot-line is also replete with stereotypes.

There is so much freedom to the male character, while females are simply there to enhance it. For instance, take Inuyasha, he is allowed to traverse the lines between good and bad. But at all times, he remains the proverbial hero. Now take Kagome's character and you will notice that the roles she is limited to are 'good daughter, supportive sister, defensive mother to Shippo, nice friend to Sango, nice woman being wooed by Kouga... but the most submissive tinge to her character comes from her supportive role to Inuyasha not as a friend but as a lover. Friends should support friends, but lovers do not have such parallels, else the relationship protocol collapses.

Sango would have been a great character but the incessant wailing when she cries for Kohaku is simply jarring. I can assure you, no God has programmed females to wail and males to silently cry. The ideas of what constitutes masculinity and femininity are constantly thrown on viewers that we accept it and even expect. needless to say I loathe chewed food.

But I also realise Rumiko Takahashi cannot be blamed, we are all products of the same said society after all. Most mainstream products tend to openly wear these colours due to popular demand I imagine.

And that is why most of us love Sesshomaru. Because he represents the reaching of impossible ends--the Man and the Beast, a symbol of sexuality as ancient as human history. He also does not live by Human morality. He does not understand what it means being a different being. He defines and decides for himself 'what is right?'.

And that in principle is what makes him so irresistible and why he is the focal point for most of our fantasies.

It's always been my personal opinion that what made Kikyou 'Kikyou' was never there after she is resurrected, because it is in Kagome. When Kagome takes back her soul, the parts of her that she leaves behind in Kikyou is her conceit, anger, jealousy, and other 'bad' emotions. This is why Kikyou is so hell-bent on killing Inuyasha, and why she so easily betrays everyone by giving Naraku the shards.

It is also why Kagome, even though she feels some anger and jealousy, is always able to let it go, which seemed unrealistic to me. There aren't many people who can let go of bad feelings so easily, and so I think Kagome could because all of the jealousy and angry parts of her soul were left in Kikyou, and that is what keeps her animated. When Kagome heals Kikyou, and Kikyou confesses that it is the only warm part of her body, it is because Kagome gave a little of the good parts of her soul to heal Kikyou.

This is only my opinion, but it would be a fun thing to explore.

Like most of you, I've never really viewed Kikyou as evil. She's not a particularly likable character, especially after she was resurrected. Her life and duties required her to behave a certain way and make sacrifices that most women did not have to make, and that does shape a person's personality. That does not mean that she is evil, and it does kind of bother me that I see so many stories casting her in an evil role or in the "other woman" role.

If a story is set in the canon universe, then Kikyou is not really the other woman, in my opinion. After all, she knew Inuyasha first, and he pledged his love to her first. It is understandable that Inuyasha would feel a greater pull of loyalty to her because he has not even really had the time to process and grieve his loss of her after realizing that they had both been tricked. I like to think that Kagome understands this about their relationship, and that is part of the reason why she can be so forgiving. Although, I will agree that the fact that Kikyou held on to the darker part of her soul does help Kagome to be more forgiving.

My take on Kikyo is based on the fact that she feels she has the right to pass judgement on others, namely, Kagome. I also got bad vibes when we were shown her relationship with Kaede, back when Kaede was a young girl. To me, she seems smug, condescending, and judgmental. I want to attribute the fact that Kagome is willing to accept this cultural differences, but remember Kagome's interactions with Grandpa? She's pretty feisty with her Grandpa and even disses Grandpa outright on several occasions, and Grandpa's a temple priest. I agree that Kikyo is not, in canon, the archetypal "OTHER WOMAN". I do think she is, personality-wise, a pathological narcissist, and as such, feels the need to denigrate and judge others, while not judging herself by the same standards.

PS~ Anyway, canon or not, other woman or not, I love to read stories that capitalize on the writer's negative take on Kikyo, especially "Unworthy One" by Vyncent. If you are an adult reader, you can't miss this classic fanfiction on A Single Spark.