Yui spent 40 years saving for a future she thought she had. A cancer screening changes that in the trailer for One Year to Live, Buy a Man, Netflix’s new Japanese romance. Told she may have only a year left, she decides it is time to spend some of the money she has guarded so carefully.
Then she meets Sena, a pink-haired host who asks to borrow money. Yui responds with a deal of her own: she will “buy” him for ¥720,000. The arrangement sounds outrageous, and the title leans into it, but the trailer’s question is gentler. What happens when two lonely people start showing up for each other?
Yui’s first big splurge is not what you might expect
Yui, played by Ko Shibasaki, has treated romance and marriage as bad investments. Once she makes the deal with Sena, played by Eiji Akaso, she does not immediately chase a luxury vacation. She tries the little things she always talked herself out of: better seats at a movie, a trip to a game center and food bought simply because she wants it.
Sena has money trouble and a difficult family history of his own. Netflix’s announcement makes clear that the pair begin with a contract, not a fairy-tale meet-cute. As they spend time together, the relationship becomes less easy to define. The film is selling romance and humor, but it does not hide the weight of Yui’s diagnosis.
Who made the film?
Hiroki Kazama directs from a screenplay by Yoshikazu Okada. The story is based on Toriko Yoshikawa’s novel With One Year Left to Live, I Buy a Man. The supporting cast includes Michitaka Tsutsui as Yui’s former boss, Naomi Nishida as a coworker and Mari Hamada as Sena’s mother.
The poster shows Yui and Sena facing each other in a bright red bathtub. It is an arresting image, but the trailer gives it a different mood from the title’s transactional joke: the two seem to be looking at one another without their usual defenses.
When and where will it stream?
Netflix says One Year to Live, Buy a Man premieres November 5, 2026. The company has released its trailer and key art but has not announced a running time in this update. There is no need to guess how Yui’s prognosis or the relationship resolves before the movie arrives.
The premise could have been played as a cruel joke. Instead, the early material focuses on a woman discovering that spending money is easy compared with letting someone into her life. That is the emotional bet the film will have to make work.
Find the cast and release information on our One Year to Live, Buy a Man movie page.
Quick answers
The movie reaches Netflix on November 5. Ko Shibasaki plays Yui, and Eiji Akaso plays Sena, who is also known as Ryuma.
