Title: Idol Dreams Vol. 7
Author: Arina Tanemura
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 184
Genre: Sci-Fi, Romance
Publication Date: July 6, 2021
The Story
It’s been two long years since the last volume of Idol Dreams but it is back and things have taken an interesting turn!
When we last left our characters, Tokita was about to get married when Hanami couldn’t go through with it. She ended leaving Tokita at the altar and Deguchi blamed herself because she was in a position to stop it, yet, she didn’t. After the wedding, Tokita ends up getting gastroenteritis and winds up in the hospital. Deguchi visits him; however, he tells her not to see him ever again!
Enter Haru. He sees this as his chance and moves fast. Like… really fast. He goes from a dinner date to confessing his feelings, to proposing to her all in one night! Deguchi isn’t sure if she can accept his feeling as all she can think about is Tokita. Then… the problem comes up that Tokita is her supplier of I-Dream and she’s running out. She bites the bullet and goes against Tokita’s wishes so she can get a refill but Tokita, now that he’s healthy, gets a good look at Deguchi and realizes something is wrong.
Deguchi ends up with a side effect from taking the drug: Permanent reverse aging. If she keeps taking the drug, she will revert back to being 15 permanently. She now has to make the decision to continue living as 31-year-old Deguchi or 15-year-old Akari. After knowing everything that Hibiki has just gone through, the decision is a lot tougher for Akari than it seems!
Characters
Our three adult main characters get all of the attention in this volume with Deguchi being at the center of everything.
For Tokita, he is heartbroken over losing Hanami at the altar. He tries to play it off as everything is okay but it, obviously, wasn’t. He told Deguchi not to see him because despite dating Hanami, deep down, he still had feelings for Deguchi and he didn’t want to mix those feelings in after what had just happened. You can’t really blame him since Tokita and Deguchi have been friends since school. It was hard enough for him to seal away his feelings before for Hanami but now that she’s gone, he begins to realize that maybe Deguchi should have been the choice all along. The fact that he didn’t want to admit it nor did he want Deguchi to see him shows that he’s a bit of a coward and would much rather take an easy way out of a problem.
Haru, on the other hand, was way more direct. I sense that since he knew about Tokita’s position, he needed to act fast in order to secure his own feelings before Tokita could make a move (if he could even bring himself to do so). I believe that Haru sensed that Tokita was wavering and saw that as his opportunity… so he took it. It’s a bit of a jerk move but sometimes if you feel certain about someone, you want to be with them and not see them with anyone else. So, it’s a bit understandable at the same time. He went through a lot of trouble for his confession so it’s a bit sad to see him get rejected in the end.
Then there is Deguchi who went through a roller coaster of emotions in this volume. She felt guilty for not preventing Hanami from running off. She blamed herself for Tokita’s failed wedding, then she had to deal with her feelings for both Tokita and Haru, and now she’s faced with a decision about taking I-Dream and what that means for her job as an idol and her friendship/possible relationship with Hibiki. Deguchi is being pulled in so many different directions at once that it’s almost impossible to think where she’s going to end up and what kind of decision she’s going to make.
Final Thoughts
Even though it has been so long since the last volume, it was great to see the story continue and it did so in a big way. I didn’t foresee the drug’s side effect being a plot point as I thought that she was simply growing her hair out. I didn’t really piece it together until Tokita brought it to life. It makes sense that if a drug can revert your body to a younger age then ending up in that state permanently would be a detriment to taking it. As sci-fi as the plot is with miracle age-reversing drugs is, it’s a logical twist when you really think about it.
Poor Deguchi, though. She was put through the wringer in this volume. Now, she has an important decision to make. I’m assuming we may see that decision next volume but, then again, we may not. She notes that she still has a few pills left so I’m assuming we’ll see her reverting a couple of more times. The big question is… are those remaining pills enough to make it a permanent revert? That’s the danger here so it’s kind of odd that she’s willing to keep taking them yet she’s refusing a new refill of them knowing the dangers. No one said that the remaining pills would cause her to not permanently revert, either.
There are a few ways this could go… all of them are pretty interesting! I just hope we don’t need to wait until 2023 to find out!
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This item was provided for review by Viz Media
