So recently I'very been watching Inuyasha which is a very good anime. I love the action, the drama, the romance, everything but there's one thing about that show that always confused me it was Kikyo. In episode 15 when Urasue brought Kikyo back to life using Kagome's soul because she was reincarnated Kikyo tried to kill Inuyasha however Kagome called her soul back to her yet Kikyo was still alive so that made me wonder if Kagome really is Kikyo's reincarnation then wouldn't Kikyo die once Kagome had her soul back? Now some of you may say this is because some of Kagome's soul remained in Kikyo but if that was true then why didn't the rest of Kikyo's soul return to Kagome after she died for good.
But then I noticed something else in the episode Kikyo was able to move and speak even before Kagome's soul was used to bring her back to life so that made me do some thinking and digging and I came up with this conclusion. The Kikyo who was brought back to life wasn't the real Kikyo.
How did I come up with this theory you ask, we'll first let's take a look at what we know about Kikyo. Kikyo was a young priestess born in the feudal Era who was charged with protecting the sacred jewel and keeping it purified. Sometime when she was a young woman she met and fell in love with Inuyasha who she wanted to be with but this dream was shattered when she was killed by Naraku and later reincarnated into Kagome. Years later she was resurrected by Urasue but was completely different and this is where my theorizing starts.
What I noticed first was the personality difference. When Kikyo was alive she was a lot like Kagome. Kind, compassionate, caring, forgiving, and marciful. She loved her sister Kaede dearly and showed kindness to anyone even the low life thief Onigumo. But when she was resurrected she was different. She was cold, cruel, unforgiving, and selfish. When she was brought back the first thing she wanted to do was kill Inuyasha which us understandable since she died thinking he killed her but then it was mentioned on several occasions that Kikyo before she died wished to be with Inuyasha which explains why she was reincarnated so yeah she would be angry but if she wanted to be with him even after she thought he betrayed her wouldn't she have let go of her anger sooner. Another thing I noticed was that she didn't seem to care at all about her sister Kaede, she took the souls of other women to keep herself alive, tried to kill Kagome, and became obsessed with revenge.
After looking at these I began to look up the popular trope of people who were resurrected but we're more sinister than they were in life and from most of the information I found said that they were like that because in actuality these people were not the ones who had died. The souls had moved on were in fact just the bodies of those people inhabited by demons so here's my theory.
When Kagome called back her soul and Kikyo's body fell it was still able to move due to Urasue's magic which explained why she could move even before she had Kagome's soul and her anger toward Inuyasha. Her anger made her cruel and revenge seeking, almost like a demon had been formed from her negative emotions, so she was pretty bad in the beginning however when she learned the truth about Kikyo's death, saw Inuyasha's undying love for Kikyo, and Kagome's kindness the demonic hatred began to purify. When the body started dying it wasn't because of miasma it was because Kikyo's hatred was starting to cease and her anger was the only thing keeping her moving. When Kikyo finally accepted Kagome as an ally instead of a rival her anger had finally been let go and her body could no longer live in this world.
So that's my theory. The real Kikyo died when Naraku killed her and was reincarnated into Kagome. Her soul remained in Kagome's body. When Kagome called Kikyo's soul back that was it, she stayed dead and what we saw for the rest wasn't the real Kikyo. But a clone, a copy, her dead body which fed off the anger and hurt of the real Kikyo. Does this make sense?