As a fan of psychological battles, one
of the best settings for an interesting psychological manga is an exclusive
room with all the participants slowly knowing each other’s true colors. Include
a little violence, intelligence and interesting characters equals a pretty good
psychological manga.
Synopsis:
One billion, and death ...? To get a surgical bed for his sister, Meguru has chosen to participate in an underground community. Between illegal gambling and games, he will participate in a nightmare.
The idea is that, you have to
participate in this psychological game with no physical violence and a
run-by-luck dice-decided handicap. How are you going to lose? When your brain
gives up, you lose. Rather than saying lose, you actually die. But looking on
the brighter side of things, the people who will survive this so-called game in
10 days receives a favorable amount of money. With Meguru’s problem, he joined
this game and was greatly surprised with how it all works. With no turning
back, 10 participants face this thriller game.
Going to the 3rd chapter which decided
Meguru’s handicap, well actually he got the lucky no.6, the spirit which means
he won’t be handicapped at all. As the main hero of this series, he’s such a
goody-goody and a scared-to-death kind of guy. Somehow, he reminded me of Hiro
from Judge. He’s starting to befriend one of the players. Also, as expected
from a psychological game, someone has to break the peace to give an actual
meaning to all of this. With the ration of food being really small, the fat ass
guy (whose name I forgot) went to the room where their food is given early and
took everything. When everyone came, he’s hogging all of the food for himself.
However, he made a compromise for everyone. He’d give food to anyone who’d give
him a share of their price money if ever they are able to survive this
so-called game. With everyone’s self greediness, of course none of them gave
in. Now, I’m pretty sure that some mental battle is about to begin and this fat
ass is definitely getting beaten. Now this businesses attire guy looks like
some tough guy who could possibly survive this mental game and could probably be Meguru’s greatest opponent.  |
| oohhh.. the psycho face >:] |
This manga is definitely getting
interesting with just 3 chapters in its belt. Verbal violence = a pretty good
way of indirectly killing someone inside but for this game, even literally kill
them. Probably what made me read this is its interesting concept and catchy yet
simple title which practically says it all. After reading Doubt by YoshikiTonogai, I’ve liked psychological manga and anime. With Life is Money, I wouldn’t
say that it’ll reach my top manga but I have to admit that it’s pretty
interesting. It’s got this Enigma (only the first part of Enigma though) feeling because of the enclosed room kind of
feeling and still having the opportunity to help each other as well as the
Judge feeling because of the idea that they can actually look at each other’s
past (rather their reason for accepting such game and win a huge amount of
money) and have the opportunity to kill them (or something like that..). In an
overall recommendation, I have to admit that this isn’t a manga for everyone
but certainly psychological genre fans can grab and probably enjoy reading
this.
