Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-31190419-20170130180218/@comment-25047329-20170131222015

After re-reading chapter 89 and skimming the chapters after until the end of the arc here are my two cents:

I think when approaching "cliffhanger" deaths Ishida handles them in two ways.

A) Ambiguity. Leaving out details like how a character specifically attained their injuries, not showing a body, contradicting information, etc.

or

B) Misleading. Scenes heavily suggest that a character is dead or we're outright told they're dead until we get the "plot-twist" that they're alive.

With the former Ishida usually makes it clear that a characters' fate is in question e.g. Koma and Irimi. It's implied that they might have died because they were sent to V14 where Arima was and we saw a field of dead En and BD members. But Koma and Irimi's bodies were never shown nor was it revealed if they encountered Arima.

With the latter, Ishida usually at least shows us a portion of what went down to try and convince the audience that characters are dead. e.g. Amon and Takizawa. We saw the fight, how they sustained their injuries, the reports that marked them dead, and their friends mourning. Them being alive was the plot-twist, but we were supposed to believe they were dead.

Tatara falls in one of two categories: "misleading death" or "actual death". Unlike the characters who we decide to mark as "unknown", Tatara lacks the major signs that his fate is supposed to be ambiguous. We see the fight and how he specifically attained his injuries, his opponent went after him with killing intent, he had a "dying flashback" and thought about his regrets in life, we saw him collapse, there's no strong contradicting information, no ambiguity to what went down etc. The whole thing is framed as his "dying moment".

Now, whether or not Ishida reveals that "he was alive all along" is a different matter. I think it's clear that Tatara is either dead or we're supposed to believe he's dead. Ishida has done this before, but the way he portrays "misleading death" is much closer to the way he portrays actual death than when he goes the more ambiguous route. With the information that's been presented to us, I think it makes sense to mark him as "deceased". And if it turns out he's alive? Well...we just mark him as alive, simple as that.