I was aware that this was only a short before watching, however I feel like I missed something completely.
What was with the lifting up of the skirt? Did they really have the same dream or did he hear that second track on her mp3 player and make it up/confuse it? And did the dream have any actual meaning..?
Probably really silly of me. Wondering everyone's thoughts on this?
your not really suppose to get all the answers from it. here's why every year japan pays to train some new animators (usually three projects) by walking them through the whole process of making an anime but they only get a certain time limit to work with. while some animes made like this are like short movies alot of them tend to end without explaination of alot of things to entice people to watch/write in so they can get picked up and fully made. (like death parade/death billard or little witch)
Since everything is pretty much up for interpretation at this point since its an unfinished work i'd say that the dreams are some kinda parallel world they can access in their dreams like black rock shooter. the music prolly plays a big roll in the full story. I think if they made this into a series the fact that he knew the colors of the containers from the picture would just be a misdirection for the MC to take longer figuring out whats going on
Harmonie is a bit of reality check on todays anime & manga cliche. The most important part is not the story nor the cliche itself but rather the nuance to bring forth how the cliche will be looks like if it were properly exploited in real-life setting. In this case? The heroine's world.
This world only exist within her and she alone. You can say it was an "imaginary world" in conjunction with the usual "imaginary friends". Or you can either say that it was a heavy Chuunibyo experience which kind of a thing back when this anime was made. I suggest you read very long essay about it which was written by fotc. Basically, Makina is what Rikka would be if she was cured from her chuunibyo syndrom. And what would happen if Rikka's case being brought IRL (or rather, in Yasuhiro Yoshiura's world).
About how our MC seems like having the same dream sequence. I believe its kind of sleep hypnotism. He listened the first track then went on sleep. But there was a second track which record Makina's therapy's session in which she described the world of her dream. It is possible that MC recreate Makina's word based on her description on it. Of course this still a speculation since our MC didn't exactly say that he saw. Rather, he was unsure wether it was his vision or just Makina's word.
Bottom line is: There is no actual meaning behind the dream in the movie sequence. But it do has a meaning in a way that "every person has a world inside them. That our heroine's is very peculiar one and our MC wants to get immersed in it".
I know I'm a little late to this, but I just interpreted it as an analogy for Akio (main guy) and Juri (main girl).
It's implied that Juri is putting up a front personality:
Judging by the girl with the glasses' comments about her "really [trying] to change when she started high school" (perhaps she was an old classmate).

Her noticeably strained/fake smile when her "friend" apologizes and she says she doesn't mind.

And the immediate outburst she had at the idea that someone else (Akio) finally could relate to her.

What it all means to me:
In the dream, we see a boy who falls for a robot girl (presumably Harmonie), ostensibly a "fake" person occupying a different world. This is further made apparent by their forced separation by the other figures (representing the classmates).
Effectively, the lifting of the skirt by Harmonie is Juri admitting to Akio that the person he thinks he has fallen for is not real, but that she still wants him to come into her world.

Ultimately, what she finds is that she doesn't have to hide herself anymore and that he possess the same ingredients (the jars of stuff) that make up her world (the colorful mix of stuff inside Harmonie).
Consider the opening monologue from Akio:
Everyone has their own world inside of them. I'd guess Yoshida's and Watanabe's (his friends) worlds are very similar to mine. That's why we get along so well. But Juri Makina is different. I doubt I'll ever step inside her world.
The girl & the boy both had the same interest in their own worlds i.e. music. In the dream, we see 3 colors when she lifts her skirt resembling the 3 bottles the boy had with the same colors (red, green & purple iirc?)
The boy recreated the dream listening to the 2nd track. Yeah it feels impossible but they're a 'made for each other' couple ig.
Yes. We see the girl in the dream feels out of place, without freedom among the robot-like persons and wants to get out of it. Then she finds the boy with the bottles & they spend their time happily together. This is all very similar to what happened to them in the real world.