Despite all of the trouble it causes, and multiple threats from her family members, Ran continues to use her magic sneakers to age up and use her magic in the imprudent way any kid would use magic. Her brother can’t always keep an eye on her, especially when other things come up in his life, and both of Ran’s parents are busy as well so none of them can stop her from visiting adult playboy Otaru for adventures of a more mature kind.
Aki Irie seems more interested in writing vignettes than a connected story. I’m used to slice-of-life stories where individual chapters don’t have a huge bearing on each other (like two other magic-themed manga, Natsume and the Book of Friends and Flying Witch) but even calling this series “episodic” is a bit of a stretch. For instance, there is a chapter which is completely unrelated to Ran and her family and it’s the story of a teenager in the neighborhood whose hair has grown so long that it’s practically a sentient, extra limb. We’ve never seen this character before, the conclusion has no effect on the main characters, the family in this chapter has yet to reappear, and this is a chapter in the mainline story, not a cute extra at the end of the volume! It left me wondering if somehow the magic Ran’s family uses caused this situation, since the setting is typical, modern-day Japan (aka, distinctly un-magical) but Irie doesn’t sweat the details about magic even when magic is the focus so any speculation is really a moot point.
Irie has also set up multiple hooks that she then seems uninterested in fleshing out — like how the impending appearance of Ran’s magic teacher Tamao sent everyone into a tizzy at the end of volume 1, but now that Tamao has appeared she’s only popped up three or five times in these following two volumes and never for very long. She certainly has a backstory, like how she doesn’t actually have any magic. But Irie seems as uninterested in following-up with that plot line as she does with the plot line concerning magical police force (/tengu maybe?), that Ran’s father leads. It’s a subplot that Irie sets up with aplomb, talking about dangerous forces from another world that Ran’s mother is constantly trying to predict the Earth from, and then Irie doesn’t touch this concept again after a single adventure.
That single adventure does involve the one thing that Irie does seem interested in actually writing about however: the adult, non-magical Otaro who is still very determined to get in Ran’s pants and at one point even calls her a minor, admitting that he even knows she’s underage but still pursuing her (although he probably does think she’s 17, not closer to 12, but at this point it doesn’t show he’d really care). Seeing Ran transform into an adult body and run into trouble is fun, like the time she can’t find the family seal or write out the kanji for her family name to sign for a delivery, but Irie constantly draws her as this ingenue seductress, putting her in positions so obviously flirty that you really can’t achieve them by accident (ask anyone who’s ever tried to do similar poses for a photoshoot, you don’t achieve those without a lot of practice). I’m still skeeved out by Otaru, Ran is just an awkward kid who wants more friends, and Ran’s brother Jin actually enters a serious relationship so if Irie needs to just draw some sexy times to get it out of their system they’ve got the perfect outlet!
Irie’s art is the one thing that’s keeping me from dropping the series like a hot potato. Her art continues to be stunning on every page, gracefully flowing from one panel to another, and it makes even the most mundane moments magical. She’s truly one of my favorite manga artists right now. Maybe Otaru will fade out of Ran’s life after all or at least stop pursuing her romantically, as Ran does have a classmate who is being set up as another potential love interest after all (although in the very “boy is rude because he can’t handle emotions” kind of way), but I’m not holding my breath. I want to keep reading Ran and the Gray World but in some ways I wish I could just look at the art and turn off the rest of my brain while doing it.