Ran

Ran
Information
Kanji Name	蘭
Kana Name	らん
Age	14
Affiliation	Gabe, Lux
First Appearance	ROGUE: 01 Stranger
Final Appearance	ROGUE: 22 Myth
Voiced by	Shizuka Ito (Japanese) Carrie Savage (English)

“

After all, nothing changes.

”

Ran is a flower girl from the village of Gabe chosen as her generation's seer. She is able to see the future and is revered by many people in the city, including Keigo Oonishi. However, as the series progresses, she grows increasingly uncomfortable with her role after meeting Ichise. In the 21st episode, it was said that her "real name" is Theoria.

Appearance

Ran is a young girl with a light complexion and dark yellow eyes. Ran has red hair, which she usually wears in pigtails that emphasizes her youth and naiveté. She is always seen wearing her maroon coat. Usually her facial expression are very calm and emotionless. Ran is often seen wearing a white fox mask and wherever she has been, a white flower is usually left behind.

Personality

Ran is extremely calm, just like Ichise. Her face usually doesn't express any emotions. Ran often doesn't even answer questions when she doesn't want to. Ran is quiet, dignified, and always somber and depressive. While she is fairly self-sacrificing and dedicated to her role as a seer, she is also the most fatalistic of the cast, albeit for good reason.

Her way of thinking is very difficult to define. Ran is technically the "big good" of the show, but given that she can see the future, and Kazuho Yoshii flat out asked her about it, it's all but outright stated that she knew who Yoshii was and still let him loose on Lux. She probably just believed that she can't fight fate as her village believed. But there is also a theory that she believed Yoshii was necessary to Lux's preservation in some way. Additionally, she often covers her own face with a mask, which makes it even more difficult to determine her emotional state. Her painted fox mask is deemed to be quite disturbing, considering that it makes her look very ominous.

A quite important establishment is her depiction as a guide. She is shown explicitly guiding Yoshii with a wave of her hand. As a bit of trivia, if her wave looks peculiar, that is because she is using a traditional Japanese gesture to ‘follow me’ or ‘come here’. Ran’s role as a guide is very important to her character. Later, we see her guiding Ichise through the sewers with a path of flowers. Towards the end, we realise her connection to the ‘voice of the city’, so she can be understood also as a kind of guide to Keigo Oonishi and the city as a whole.

Ran's gift of foresight grants her insight into Lux's dark future, even though it pains her to see a future she's unable to change. During her conversation with Ichise, she admits that she would never want to have any more visions. She has a profound interest in Ichise who she prophesied to be the "destroyer" of the world. Despite this, she helps him escape from the sewers when Ishii's men throw him down there. Seeing Ichise's future causes her to scream in horror and faint. Considering how quiet and composed she is all the time, it seems pretty jarring. The relationship between Ichise and Ran can be defined as affection siblings could have for each other. Each looks out for the other, is concerned about the other, and hopes for the best about the other. Ichise does not treat Ran like a little girl or a goddess, like almost everyone else does. Nonetheless, Ichise is 19 and is always considered an adult. Ran is only 14 and is always considered a teenager, albeit a girl who has a heavy weight on her shoulders, but a young girl all the same. There is a difference in the mindset between them, even if both are mature for their age. However, all musings about Ran are restricted to her pronouncements about him. If they are about her, it is about how he gained inspiration from her fighting spirit. It is about her giving him a direction in life. Likewise, Ran sees in Ichise a man who dares to do what she cannot do herself: go against the establishment and fight her destiny. She warns him about his future; he does not accept it blindly, but tries to do anything to stop it from happening. She sees him trying to understand who he is, but not take just anyone’s word for it.

She goes every now and then into Lux to sell flowers, but later she seems to just follow people around. Ran is often seen watching events unfold from afar and always seems to be where the action is. She seems to be almost completely apathetic to the fates of many of the people in Lux and allows many unfortunate things to happen. However, she is still quite young and overwhelmed by her lot in life. Especially at the end of the series, it cab be seen that she is a person who suffers greatly in life, which may explain her depressive character and the seeming indifference that can be seen in her apathetic eyesight. And unfortunately, her suffering continues until the very end. She's forcibly removed from the protection of Lux and delivered into Kano's hands. She has to contact Oonishi to get a "mercy kill", and after Ichise kills Kano, her mutilated corpse is dropped into the river where the Raffia stems from, in an effort by Ichise as a makeshift funeral.

It is unknown what relationship Ran and Kano really have. Both have yellow eyes, while other characters have realistic eye colours. Kano refers to Ran as his sister, but he may speak metaphorically.

Biography

Ran appears for the first time with a fox mask on her face. She unexpectedly meets a mysterious wanderer named Kazuho Yoshii. The girl leads the stranger to some kind of village (Gabe), the entrance watched by an armed guard. There, she leads him to an old man who appears to be a village elder. Before they have time to engage in conversation, the girl has a distressing vision, which appears to be a vision of the future. In this she first sees the guard being shot, and then the elder murdered. The elder, trusting of the girl’s foresight without her needing to say a word, instructs her to hide herself. As predicted, a gunman emerges from up high, chanting the phrase, “Soul! Body! Truth! Salvation! Vengeance!”. He proceeds to shoot at the elder. Yoshii, taking cover, reveals a gun from his luggage. He manages to get a shot on the two attackers, protecting the elder and therefore preventing Ran’s prediction from coming true.

Later on, she was eventually captured by the Shapes and taken to Kano. She refuses Kano's offer to merge with him, causing Kano to convert her entire body to become a Shape cyborg, save for her head. Ichise then manages to retrieve her from Kano and gives her a mercy kill.

Abilities

Ran is this generation's prophet in Gabe and, therefore, she has the ability to see into the future. Ran predicts the future, but it is just one of many possible futures. Unfortunately, if it is a long-term prediction it is almost always correct. It's not that there is a higher power, it's just that the inevitable succession of human actions leads to the result she predicts. In any case, this ability pains her since she often sees a bad future which she's unable to change.

Gallery

Trivia

• Her name can translate to "chaos" or "rebellion".