Because the Japan Foundation Film Tour online has proven so popular I just booked whatever was still available. I have since been surprised to discover that the pairs of films I watched seem to have quite specific elements in common. This oddly-titled film has several elements in common with Hello World, although they each have a different appeal. Like the anime, this features an introverted young man who will be surprised to be brought out of himself by a ‘double’ and the twin characters will end up both protecting and in a sense competing for the attention of a young woman. Those are important elements of a narrative, but the two films turn out rather differently. The opening of Our 30-Minute Sessions introduces us to a high school/college band in the process of forming after meeting up at a festival in 2013. There are four guys and a girl. Later the lead singer/ band leader gives the girl a Walkman-type cassette player and a mixtape and then a montage shows the years passing quickly until 2018 when the band are due to perform at the same festival. But an accident means that the bandleader Aki is killed and his Walkman lost. A year later the Walkman is found by Sota, a young man in his last year at university who is struggling to get a job because he always fails to impress at interviews.
When Sota plays the tape on Aki’s Walkman something strange happens. There is no easily discernible sound on the tape but playing it conjures up Aki’s ghost. Sota sees himself as a body occupied by Aki. There are two Sotas, but the real one is invisible to everyone else and the other one accosts Kana, Aki’s girlfriend and fellow band member. When the effect wears off after the C60 cassette has played 30 minutes, Aki’s ghost becomes visible to (only) Sota and Sota regains control of his own body. The title now becomes clear and before I watched the film I had caught a video statement by the director suggesting the narrative idea comes from the fact that recordings on tape are never completely erased and can be recovered, although after they have been played many times they will eventually disappear. If I tell you that the band had broken up following Aki’s death and that Sota has some musical talent as well as channelling Aki’s ghost, you can probably work out the rest of the plot yourself. I don’t need to spoil any more of the narrative.
Our 30-Minute Sessions is an interesting generic mix. The narrative is driven by the idea of the double or doppelganger. I first thought of Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) but that is two sides of the same person. A better model might be Dostoyevsky’s The Double (1846) in which a clerk sees a second version of himself. Aki is more socially skilled than Sota but, as a ghost, he needs Sota’s body. Aki is not evil and doesn’t intend to harm Sota. On the contrary he wants to help him. But inevitably Sota is going to be ‘opened up’ by Aki’s behaviour, becoming more confident. While this odd haunting lasts, the two personalties need each other – but Sota has a future, Aki does not. The two main areas of interest are music, getting the band back together, and helping Kana to overcome her grief. This means that we have both a musical and a romance repertoire of generic elements and another genre structure, sometimes called the ‘coming of age’ film – or perhaps the ‘flowering of Sota’s personality’? Director Hagiwara Kentarô’s statement points to the philosophical question about how ideas and statements, feelings etc. don’t just die. They live on if others remember them. In this way the band’s music becomes richer over time as Sota’s creativity adds more layers and stimulates the others while not eradicating Aki’s original creations.
I enjoyed watching this film but I’m not sure how well it would perform outside Japan and its target audience, which I think might be teenage girls. We often think of popular music as linked to ‘sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll’ but we don’t get any of that here. The romance is remarkably chaste. The band members are all attractive and ‘nice’, the music is melodic and generic but a little bland. There is no ‘grit’ apart from a few generic spats within the band. What is also sad, I think, is that Kana is the only female character of note (apart from her mother) and as in Hello World, her part is underwritten. Both Sota and Kana are missing a parent and their single parents are supportive without interfering. Again the film is good to look at, almost like a live action version of a manga. I don’t know where it is set, but it looks a pleasant place to live with familiar images of Japan at peace with the wind rustling through the leaves on the trees. All the performances are good as is the cinematography by Imamura Keisuke. The pacing is a little slow, fine for a serious drama but not for this kind of genre film? The script by Ohshima Satomi just needs a little more spice.
Here is a Japanese trailer (English subs should appear via the CC menu):
The Case for Global Film 
thank u
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