So I've heard that the Japanese and American versions of this game are inherently screwed. For instance:

Input lag, I constantly end up firing spells on my own characters.

Random battle order, characters are skipped or have two turns in a row.

Kain can one-shot Brachioraidos with Abel's Lance (as in, literally kill him with Tornado).

Flan Princesses x8 only show up two times maximum in the "Flan room" in the Lunar Ruins.

When you open a chest in the Lunar Ruins and get a Golden Apple, it turns into a Lunar Curtain.

Getting the Rainbow Robe in the Lunar Ruins is pure chance.

Flan Princesses in the Lunar Subterrane NEVER drop a pink tail. Ever. I've invested 150 hours into three different save files and never gotten one.

Yang never exceeds 6,000 HP.

Anyone else having these issues?

Hmm, the only ones I've been aware of are the jerkiness with the airship (particularly flying side to side, and during the opening sequence), and the random character turns being out of place. Other than that, the rest of those must've been fixed in my copy.

Anyone else having these issues?

Nope, I've played it on GBA and my friend has played it on the DS and I've never had problems (other than the mind numbing level grinding) and my friend hasn't had any problems either. Perhaps you just got a bad game. If you got it from GameStop or EBGames you can always return it in 7 days, assuming you still have the reciept, you're in the 7-day window and you got it from one of the mentioned stores.

I've been told the European version of the game functions just fine.

It's just incredibly irritating to invest so much time into a game just to get one damn drop, and never get it. 8[

You just have bad luck. I went at the Pink Tail for days, killing hundreds of the things, before I got it.

I've killed well over 999 of them, I must have the worst luck in history.