I think Fry's employee is mistaken. Here is the Japanese listings straight from Mediabank themselves the ones that do White Bear productions formerly D3 (or at least the ones that hold the right to their productions).
Discode v1 20 mins
Discode v2 20 mins Mediabank didn't have it but DMM did and I personally clocked it at under 19 mins.
Discode v3 20 mins
Note the times are all 20 minutes.
And here is the complete collection from them:
Discode v1-3 60 minutes
All these releases seem to be Region All. Plus I directly veiwed these show today from start to the end of credits and unless they added a lot of material they were all under 20 minutes each. There were no strangely edited scenes or huge plot gaps that over 10 minutes of missing material would have made.
Discode is 3 episodes at just under 20 minutes runtime each. Oh and your friend couldn't have Region 1 versions since none exist yet.
Oh and just to make sure I checked out over a dozen Japanese or asian etailer sites and all list them as 20 minutes long including the back cover when allowed to bring that up. Now the only way more runtime could be added would be with either trailers, extras, or stuff from the PC version of this show.
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ape2020