Netflix’s upcoming Japanese film One Year to Live, Buy a Man follows 40-year-old Yui Katakura, a single woman who has built her life around saving money and avoiding romance and marriage. After a free cancer screening reveals that she has only one year left to live, Yui unexpectedly feels liberated from her financial mindset and decides to spend the money she has carefully saved.
Her new outlook takes an unexpected turn when Sena, a pink-haired host with a complicated past, asks to borrow money. Yui offers ¥720,000 to “buy” him, leading the pair into an unconventional arrangement as she begins fulfilling the everyday experiences she had always denied herself, from premium movie seats and game centers to indulgent shopping trips. As they spend more time together, Yui gradually opens up and their transactional relationship develops into an unexpected emotional connection.
Based on Toriko Yoshikawa’s novel, which won the 28th Shimazaki Romance Literary Award in 2021, the film stars Ko Shibasaki and Eiji Akaso in the lead roles. Director Hiroki Kazama, known for Silent and Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! The Movie, directs from a screenplay by Yoshikazu Okada, with the story exploring mortality, loneliness, love, and the unexpected ways people can change one another.
The film also stars Michitaka Tsutsui, Naomi Nishida, Mari Hamada, Yui Narumi, Yoko Moriguchi, Ryubi Miyase, Ichika Osaki, and Koen Kondo. Its newly unveiled key art shows Yui and Sena facing each other inside a bright red bathtub, offering a glimpse into the intimacy and complicated emotions that emerge as their relationship moves beyond their ¥720,000 agreement.
With humor, romance, and an unconventional approach to the subject of mortality, One Year to Live, Buy a Man invites viewers to reconsider what makes life worth living when the future is no longer guaranteed. The film premieres November 5, exclusively on Netflix.
