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sabinemorans · 8 hours

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Regarding Kagome getting hate for being a Mary-Sue if she were more like Sesshomaru, you should know that she still gets the Mary Sue accusations as she is. People call her too “OP” just because she didn’t train enough and because Rumiko said her spiritual powers are naturally more powerful than Kikyo.

They also consider her a Mary-Sue in terms of how much the narrative “glorifies” her (according to them at least) because multiple guys are crushing on her and the fact that it seems the Inugang always takes her side whenever it comes to fights with Inuyasha and she supposedly never has to learn from her faults. They claim Rumiko making her out to be so pure-hearted is also Mary-Suesque and that the narrative pretends that Kagome has no faults that she has to grow from and is perfect personality wise.

Oh, believe me, I'm totally aware. I only used the comparation with Sesshomaru as an example to make the point that no matter what she does, Kagome will get bashed because an especific, biased part of the audience is already phrone on hating her and will make up any excuse to justify it. And you brought up great new other examples.

They call her overpowered but, while her lack of training is a valid criticism, it's not a crime to be naturally gifted. In fact, it's a pretty common trope. What they conveniently "forget" is that raw talent alone is not enough: even though Kagome had a lot of power, she obviously didn't know how to use them.

So in the beginning she had to work with what she knew and improvise, showing us other facets of her character, such as her intelligence, creativity, cunningness and inventiveness.

Nothing was handed over to her on a plate. She had to work for it. There was no official training because she was learning on the job and doing amazing at it. Not because of her reincarnation status or some deus ex machina type of thing, but because of practice, persistence and resilience. If her spiritual powers are naturally more powerful than Kikyo, it only proves that they are different people, who see the world — and by extension, themselves — through vastly different lens, which inevitably bleeds into how they relate with their powers and with other people.

That being said, the narrative never glorifies Kagome and they know it. On the contrary, I'd argue it actually holds her to higher standards than any other character. She's constantly getting tested about her flaws. Just on the top of my head I could list Mount Azusa, the infant incident and that time she saved Kikyo from miasma. But even if her main lesson is that it's okay to have feelings, the narrative will still paint her as wrong again when she does have them.

And even when that doesn't happen, Kagome herself is hyper aware of her own flaws. That's a huge part of her character, due to her feelings of inadequacy. But she's always the first person to hold herself accountable for her actions, admit when she's in the wrong, apologize and make it better.

Now, the Inugang could be more sensible about Inuyasha's predictment — especially Sango, for obvious reasons —, I'll give them that. But Inuyasha doesn't help himself with his poor communication skills, either. All his friends know is that he's hurting Kagome, whom they love, over someone dangerous who has a history of trying to murder him.

As for the "multiple guys crushing on her" thing... I mean, can we blame them? Face card never declines, my God!