If you got stuck in a time loop at work reliving the same week several times over, how long would it take you to notice? For the harried employees at a small creative agency in Ryo Takebayashi’s Mondays: See you “This” Week! (MONDAYS/このタイムループ、上司に気づかせないと終わらない, MONDAYS / Kono Time Loop, Joshi ni Kizukasenaito Owaranai), sleep deprivation and the mind-numbing sameness of their lives prevent them from realising that events have begun to repeat themselves and if it weren’t for the sacrifice of a suicidal pigeon they never might never wake up at all. Waking up is in many ways the point as the heroine is forced to reflect on the unintended consequences of her corporate drive while conversely accepting that sometimes you do have to take care of yourself for the good of all.
Yoshikawa (Wan Marui) is on the verge of landing her dream job at another firm, but is determined to see out a particularly problematic project trying to mount a campaign for a miso soup-flavoured soda tablet to please an incredibly picky client. When her colleagues try to explain that they’re stuck in a time loop, she thinks they’re just messing around and ignores them along with their warning not to take a taxi to her meeting because she’ll get into a car accident and hurt her head. After a series of failed attempts, they finally convince her using the smack of a poor pigeon into the office window as a device to snap her out of their collective delusion.
Amusingly enough, the plan to bust out of the time loop can only be enacted by following office protocol. Yoshikawa understandably asks why they can’t talk to the boss directly to discuss the problem, but soon discovers he won’t listen to her so they have to “escalate” the issue through the proper channels by waking each of the team members in order of seniority so the highest can bring the matter to the boss’ attention. The boss, Nagahisa (Makita Sports), is always the last to arrive at the office, though that might be a moot point seeing as the team are forced to work through the night even at the weekend and in fact rarely get to go home anyway. This level of sleep deprivation might fuel their belief that they’re stuck in a time loop, but equally they soon become to convinced that the boss is more directly to blame in wearing a cursed bracelet and unwittingly stopping time because he’s about to turn 50 and is realising that he has nothing to show for his life.
As some of the employees remark, it’s like time has been repeating for the last ten years. They find little fulfilment in their work and are often exploited, expected to work extreme overtime which damages both their health and relationships with others. Yoshikawa’s boyfriend is becoming very fed up with her workaholic lifestyle and is on the verge of breaking up with a girlfriend who never has time for him while she throws everything she has into getting her dream job working for someone who tells her success comes to those who put themselves first.
Yet being forced to work as a team alongside the colleagues she previously looked down on, Yoshikawa comes to a better appreciation of the values of community and recommits herself to pursuing their common goal of escaping the time loop even if it means sacrificing her big job opportunity. Then again, the team have a difficult time getting through to their boss in part because he’s too meek and incapable of putting his own interests first which is why he’s feeling maudlin about turning 50 while filled with regret in having failed to chase his dreams.
There may be a slight irony in the employees being trapped in their office while trying to vicariously fulfil the dreams of their dejected salaryman boss, but there’s also something quite poignant in the team’s genuine desire to help him out of an existential hole if only so they can climb out too. “There’s not much you can do alone” he admits simultaneously selling both the value of teamwork and the importance of fulfilling one’s personal desires for a healthy and harmonious life in the office and out. Slickly edited and perfectly plotted, Ryo Takebayashi’s quirky time loop comedy neatly satirises the mind numbing absurdities of contemporary corporate culture but ultimately makes the case that there are things more important than work and to find them you’ll need to find a way to escape the never-ending drudgery of life at the office.
Mondays: See You “This” Week! screened as part of this year’s Nippon Connection. It will also be screening in New York Aug. 6 as part of this year’s JAPAN CUTS.
Original trailer (no subtitles)