Hello, My Dolly Girlfriend 2013

Kentaro, Tasuku Emoto, is an introverted office worker who becomes the target of a brutal corporate scapegoating when his company suffers a massive revenue loss. After being fired, he endures a fresh round of humiliation when the woman he secretly admires at work publicly shames him for his supposed failures. In a haze of sorrow, he seeks solace at a strip bar, where he mutters complaints and spirals into a drunken outburst that nearly harms a performer, earning him a final eviction.

As his world tightens around him, a confrontation with a rough, masculine woman and her girlfriend escalates into violence. A chance bump leads to a brutal moment: he strikes the butch and shoves her into broken glass, drawing blood, and he escapes to a nearby building’s fourth floor. There, the butch, fueled by pride and anger, relentlessly pursues him despite her companion’s protests. Inside, he encounters a remarkable sight—a mannequin dressed in a sailor suit that feels astonishingly real, from its skin’s softness to its lifelike features. In a torrent of repressed longing, Kentaro stages a rape fantasy with the doll, a scene that unfolds with unsettling intensity.

The moment doesn’t stay private for long. The butch and her girlfriend discover this unsettling scene, igniting a fresh round of violence. A three-on-the-run encounter with thugs fleeing the yakuza erupts, and the room becomes a battleground. The butch is wounded by gunfire, and two of the attackers turn their fury toward the butch’s girlfriend, intending to violate her. Kentaro hides beneath a bed, trying to stay out of sight while the chaos swirls around him. When the butch reappears, she is shot again, and the thugs drag him out to finish him off. In a shocking turn, the mannequin Kentaro had assaulted appears to come alive, saving him and turning the tide by killing the attackers. Overwhelmed, Kentaro faints and sinks into a troubled sleep.

The next morning, he awakes to find the mannequin now wearing a fresh set of clothes beside him. He realizes the night’s events may have been a dream or a hallucination, yet something about the experience lingers. In an impulse born of both longing and fear, he brings the figure home and names her Kokone, Kokone Sasaki. What follows is a fragile, fragile bond that grows through Kentaro’s loneliness. He talks about his daily life, his disappointments, and the quiet ache that accompanies his isolation. Kokone’s presence begins to fracture the boundary between what feels human and what remains a prop, as she sometimes speaks and moves, and other times stays motionless. This fluctuating behavior fuels Kentaro’s inner conflict, and a troubling fantasy about the doll resurfaces, stirring his sense of desire and control.

With work prospects failing and the weight of his reputation still clinging to him, Kentaro borrows money from loan sharks and sinks deeper into gambling. The losses mount, and the thought of suicide crosses his mind. In a dramatic twist, Kokone intervenes once again, saving him at a moment when despair seems overpowering. Her intervention rekindles a stubborn resolve in him, and he redoubles his efforts, eventually triumphing at mahjong through a string of near-miraculous plays, including a legendary “nine gates” victory that feels almost fated.

Ecstatic over the win, he hurries home to share the news with Kokone, only to discover that she has vanished. His relief shifts to curiosity when he hears a voice—Kokone’s singing—on the rooftop. He climbs to find her dressed in a wedding gown, playing a piano, and the moment swells into a vivid fantasy where he marries Kokone and the dead figures from his nightmarish experiences—the butch, her girlfriend, and the three thugs—come back to life to celebrate with him. But the dazzling illusion is interrupted by a stark flash of reality as he heads home after the celebration, hitching memory to a broader question: a woman who looks exactly like Kokone crosses his path on a street, and he rushes to protect them from an oncoming truck.

The sequence drives Kentaro into a psychological tunnel, with the sense of danger giving way to a harsher truth. When he returns to Kokone’s place, he discovers a damaged mannequin, devoid of hair and with tear-filled eyes, a stark sign that the entire rooftop wedding, the dreamlike reunion, and the cascade of miracles were manifestations of his own psyche. The film closes on that jarring revelation: the entire experience has been Kentaro’s fantasy, a product of his desperate longing to reclaim meaning, love, and a sense of control over a life that has felt chaotic and dehumanizing.

In the end, what remains is a quiet, unsettling meditation on loneliness, desire, and the fragility of perception. The film leaves Kentaro standing at the edge of reality and dream, where the line between human connection and a lifelike doll blurs, and where even a fantastical resolve may be nothing more than a coping mechanism for a man who has experienced far too much at the edge of his own world.