Fair enough, take Aerith out of the examples then. Hell, take the "fridging" gender-politics issue out completely.
For me, the issue still remains that you can kill off characters in your story...but you need to put in adequate leg-work to make me give a damn. When Jarred died, I wondered why they were all so broken up. When Luna died I actually did feel a little sad, but not for Luna since I didn't give a damn about her, but for Noct who seemed sad. Otherwise, her death has such a little emotional investment that it just seems so anticlimactic.
We had this discussion in the other thread about the game's treatment of women, but this is the exact issue I think many people will end up having.
She's not actively that bad of an inclusion in the game (compared to something like how actively gross Cindy is). She's just kind of "meh," and while I wouldn't want a complete rehash of her, the problem is that we've kind of already seen this type of character before and done better too. It was Yuna. She was strong, and dynamic (had some appropriate flaws), and in love with Tidus, but she didn't exist solely for Tidus' sake, which is what Luna seems to be. She existed more than a simple narrative contrivance to move along the story.