While winning prizes with one’s first feature film surely helps opening doors – Seiji Tanaka, for instance, was tasked in helming Demon City (2025), the adaptation of Masamichi Kawabe’s manga Oni Goroshi, for Netflix, it also brings a lot of pressure – a pressure some directors succumb to.

Given the fact that Seiji Tanaka now present his third feature film, The Man Who Failed to Die, it is safe to say that Tanaka did not succumb to the pressure and succeeded in re-affirm his directorial talent with his second feature film. In interview with Eigachannel, Tanaka underlines that Ippei Sekiya reflects his neurotic inner-self and that he integrated the anxiety and despair he felt in the gap between Melancholic (2018) and second film – Am I even needed in the Japanese film landscape? – in the subjective trajectory of his protagonist. The pressure he felt, on the other hand, seems to be personified by Tomohiro, the ghost wandering around him.

One night, Ippei Sekiya (Katamari Mizukawa), a comedy ghost-writer, slowly walks to the edge of the platform to throw himself in front of the next train when the speakers announce the temporary suspension of services due to a personal injury accident at the previous station.

Suddenly overcome by a wish to know who thwarted his suicide attempt, Sekiya delves into the net and discovers, after a long search, that the victim was Tomohiro Moriguchi (Bokuzo Masana). After attending the funeral and witnessing the awkward interaction between Aya Moriguchi (Erika Karata) and her ex-husband Wakamatsu (Yutaka Kyan), he returns home. Yet, his evening takes a strange turn when Tomohiro suddenly appears in front of him to ask him to murder Wakamatsu. 

The Man who Failed To Die is a narrative that puts a funny spin on the famous Hamletian premise – a ghostly apparition demanding the living to do what he cannot: to enact revenge. Besides the similar premise, there is one other similarity to be noted between the Shakespearian tragedy and Seiji Tanaka’s buddy comedy-drama: the reluctance of Ippei Sekiya to murder Aya’s abusive ex-husband echoes Hamlet’s inability to act in accordance with his dead father’s wishes.   

Yet, despite these two vague similarities, The Man Who Failed To Die delivers, beyond any doubt, a very different experience. The central difference between the two narratives is the fact that in Tanaka’s story the ghost, a father, and the subject tasked to take revenge share no blood-bond – they are, in other words, unrelated.

However, Ippei Sekiya is, just like Hamlet, haunted by the demand to carry out the revenge – in Tanaka’s narrative quite literally as Tomohiro’s ghost keeps wandering around him. While Hamlet feels bound by filial obligation, Sekiya feels forced to go along with Tomohiro’s demand for vengeance because his death thwarted his attempt to commit suicide – his death gave him a second chance at living.

While Ippei goes along with Tomohiro’s demands – following Wakamatsu around town to track his coming and goings, he still, albeit silently, refuses to kill. Even though he has a debt to repay, he secretly hopes to avoid to exact Tomohiro’s wish for revenge. Will Tomohiro, whose death ensures the failure of his suicide, be able to force Ippei to act? Or can Ippei subvert Tomohiro’s demand and avoid committing a criminal act?    

The Man Who Failed To Die is a perfect example of a film that succeeds in perfectly blending different genres together. While the buddy comedy forms the spine of Tanaka’s narrative, the director also plays with horror, infuses some drama, delivers thriller sequences, and adds, to top it off, a dash of romance to his mix.

However, as a narrative-structure, The Man Who Failed to Die is split in two parts: the preparatory phase and the resolution-phase – i.e. the phase where the narrative threads are knotted together and subtle allusions are resolved. The first half of the narrative perfectly fulfils its purpose: it sets all the narrative elements in place and allows the spectator to gain a grasp on the personality of each individual character. Yet, it must be said, the preparatory phase does little to excite the spectator. 

The second half, inaugurated by an energetic montage of Tomohiro and Ippei working together, delivers the goods – luckily! The twists and turns transform the emotionally subdued and allusive first-half into a thrilling roller-coaster, the blandness of the first drink is washed a way by the subsequent emotional cocktail. The ending has the potential to be quite divisive. While some will argue that Tanaka fails to top his emotional ride off with a satisfying abreaction, the restrained ending of The Man Who Failed To Die does, in our view, right by all the characters, delivering an evocative sketch of character-growth while avoiding creating a narrative tangle of irresolvable contradictions (Narra-note 1).      

What makes the composition of The Man Who Failed To Die so compelling is its versatility (General-note 1).  In the opening sequence of his narrative, Tanaka effectively interweaves stylistic devices common in horror films – e.g. slow creeping spatial dynamism adorned with threatening sounds, framing that equates the camera with a hidden presence, … etc. – into the visual frame (Cine-note 1, Cine-note 2). Later, near the end of the film, he wields the camera in such a way that the spectator cannot but sit on the edge of his seat.   

While Tanaka never let his narrative veers into horror-territory, the thoughtful reliance on stylistic horror-elements proves that he knows how to create a narrative frame that effectively supports a variety of genre-elements, e.g. the moments of comedy, the dramatic sequences, the ebb and flow of horror atmospherics, the subtle surges of mystery, … etc. 

The darkish lightning design, on the other hand, serves both the dramatic import of the narrative as well as the stylistic horror elements. The darkness within the frame evokes the darkness of the psyche – i.e. the inner conflicts, the violent signifiers erupting from the imaginary ego-alter-ego dynamic – and the darkness that structures human desire, the transgressive desires which lie in wait in the shadows of the frame until they are acted upon.

The way Tanaka decorates his visual fabric with sounds and music also serves both the dramatic side and the stylistic references to the horror genre. While non-diegetic sounds are utilized to turn certain visual moments into threatening signs, music is used to evoke the emotional state of the main-character or to infuse a sense of mystery into the narrative fabric.    

While the performance of Mizukawa Katamari, who gives life to Ippei Sekiya on the silver screen, stands out, it would be wrong to state that he carries Tanaka’s narrative. What allows him to shine are the well-structured conversations. The way the verbal interactions unfold – their natural flow brought to life by the cast – creates a frame where a variety of emotions can believingly be painted on and the subjectivity of the characters can be convincingly reflected by. Some interactions even attain a manzai-like flavour, a tongue-in-the-cheek referential play to the main character’s occupation and a subtle precursor to the hilarious manzai sequence later in the film.    

The Man Who Failed To Die is a wonderful narrative with a lot of heart. Seiji Tanaka refuses to colour within the lines of comedy, creating an eclectic collage of different genre-elements. What ensures that this genre-collage succeeds in engaging and satisfying the spectator is Tanaka’s versatile composition and the ability of the cast to convincingly breath life into the flow of the well-structured conversations. The Man Who Failed To Die should, in short, be on everyone’s to-watch list. And Seiji Tanaka, you are very much needed as director within the field of Japanese cinema.

  

Notes

Narra-note 1: The ending might miss its effect for some, because it plays too much on subtilties. Due to this, some spectators might glance over the logic of Aya’s performative act towards her ex-husband and fail to notice the power of the signifier, as supported by the physical act, to rewrite inter-subjective dynamics.     

General-note 1: What also elevates the pleasure of the spectator in the opening moments of the narrative isTanaka’s playful repetition with the signifier die. This repetition obtains a subtle comical effectnot merely due to its repetition, but because this repetition calls forth the title of the narrative – The Man Who Failed to Die.  

Tanaka’s tongue-in-cheek play with the idea of the ghost-writer also supports the light-hearted atmosphere of the narrative.  

Cine-note 1: Tanaka also relies, in some sequences, on shaky framing to emphasize and amplify interrelation conflict. 

Cine-note 2: The use of film-grain also increases the spectator’s visual pleasure.