31☆Idream
Idol Dreams

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I had picked up the two available volumes of this manga and another manga. I had high expectations for the other and medium to high expectations for this one, as I do love my idol shoujo genre but this had a older aged woman in business clothing on one of the covers so I pre-judged it. Boy, was I blown out of the water. I hadn't really been reading manga recently at all, so reading every page was like a fresh and crisp page. It was glorious.

This manga is about a 31-year-old woman, and hence the title which I find pretty witty although slightly peculiar. ... "31, I dream," Haha! Get it?

Chikage used to be the class president and a beautiful girl. This woman feels unsatisfied with her life after graduating from high school and having a job in a workplace, she thinks that she has missed her chance to be something greater. After she meets her now successful, good looking high school crush (Haru, who vice-versa once loved her) at a reunion, she spills these confessions of lost opportunities to a previously introverted classmate friend of hers from years back. This friend gives her a way to turn back her body into that of her previous 15-year-old body by a mysterious medicine.

Art: 9, I sincerely love Arina Tanemura's art style for sure. One of my favorites. It's jampacked with glittery, cute backgrounds and it's always consistent that way I know how to easily tell off the bat that it's her work. The big eyes may scare people off, there's also the fact that many of her characters appear similar or a splitting image to her other characters in different mangas.

Character: 8, now the reason I am giving it a 8 is because this seems like there's not enough characters to play around with and it's a bit of a closed dimension as of now. You have three potential love interests, the two younger ones and the older friend who gave her the medicine. Chikage as an MC is easily likable, honest, and refreshing.

Story: 9, unique somewhat. The concept for a older woman turning into a younger girl that is. But if you're a bit experienced in reading or watching shoujo (specifically idol) then you will find that some of the situations that are happening in this manga aren't exactly new and have been done before. If you don't mind that and simply let go and enjoy, that's no problem.

Enjoyment: 9.

Overall: 8, even I find it weird that I'm giving rather high rankings for this barely known and only three chaptered (as far as scanlations go) manga. I don't even know what I'm doing right now.

So far, it isn't bad! The story is alright and the characters are well fleshed out, with my overall favorite being Tokita, as he really wants to help Chikage to get out of her depression. The art is nice, with a bit of an older art style as seen on the cover. The only thing I would consider to be weird would be the age difference between Chikage mentally and physically. It feels kind of predatory at some parts to be honest, which felt a bit weird reading since physically, she's 15, but mentally, she's 31, however, I would say that I overall enjoyed the ... story.

I would rate it a 7/10! Wouldn't read it again, but I would finish the series when it's fully published.

I found 31 Ai Dream to be rather disappointing. I've seen these types of middle aged person re-living their youth fantasies before, and often I find them awkward because they don't hold up from the standpoint of an older person, often because they feature a romance between the secretly older protagonist and an unwitting teen. Because let's face it, as the author herself admitted, to a 31-year-old a 15-year-old seems like a child. At first I came away with the impression that this one wasn't going to be like that, as despite what any of the other characters might feel, she didn't seem romantically interested ... in the younger characters. Instead, it seemed like she might relive her youth by being an idol, which I feel like would have been a direction with potential.

Bizarrely enough, this manga instead defied my early expectations, and opted for option "C": maximum drama. It seems like it spends more time setting up potential love interests and shooting them down (and possibly bringing them back) in the most dramatic way possible than in her being an actual idol despite the title. I feel like the drama isn't even executed that well because it's too fast paced due to the sheer number of dramatic events it's crammed in for it to even hit very hard emotionally.

The author said the intent was to write a magical girl manga for adults, but I feel like it fails at the type of wish fulfillment that adults would actually be interested in, and instead we ended up with a dramatic josei soap opera, but with a magical girl hat.