The first post was a little rambling, but I'll try to address the major points:

1) Plenty of people dislike Aeris as well. See many of the posts above.

2) LunarWeaver covered most of the translation issues, but I'd like to add that Japanese doesn't have a th sound, so they have to make due with su or tsu when rendering borrowed th words phonetically.

Say I named a character Smith. In Japanese it would be rendered Sumisu. Now if some other person had to translate it back into English they could be forgiven in thinking it was Smis. Without context, it's often hard to know what the creator intended.

3) I agree about the boots being inappropriate for both her outfit and character design, but I'm a little suprised you didn't mention the greater injustice done to Tifa with her ensemble, which I submit is not appropriate for either a bartender or a martial artist. At least they gave her something a lot less ridiculous in Advent Children.

4) Great Gospel is simply the best Limit Break (Overdrives are FFX btw) in the game. Doing damage is good and all, but invicibility makes any battle a cakewalk.

5) I would be the first to admit that Aeris is my favorite character (although I like Tifa almost as much), I still feel that her death actually made the game better. Her sacrifice enobled her beyond her silly faults.