From left to right: Makabe Yousuke, Ishimakura Takuo, Amazono Daisuke, Aiyori Aoshi, Utsuromiya Fuyumi, Nekomachi Miiko, Niko Akira, Shirakogawa Romero, Kukuri Momoko, and Fukurokouji Meguru
Imagine this: your little sister is dying. She needs 100 million yen for her surgery, and no matter how hard you work, you can't raise the money. A charity started, but the people who helped to raise it took everything without a word. As you sit in a bar at night, drinking to forget your worries, a mysterious man asks you if you would bet your life for money.
This is the start of Life is Money, a short psychological horror series by Asiniji Teru.
The story is about ten people who compete in "The Nightmare Game." If their anxiety exceeds a certain numerical value, they die. When a player dies, their prize money is divided among the survivors. However, it is possible for all players to survive, in which case each person will win fifty million yen.
Over the course of the game, the protagonists try to hold onto their humanity as they survive the mental prison, and learn a lot of things about the darker corners of the human mind along the way.
This series contains examples of:
- Absurdly High-Stakes Game: In The Nightmare Game, the characters will win millions of yen if they survive for ten days. Simple, right? Except for the fact that they have to roll dice every day which restricts one of their five senses, and will die if the bracelets on their wrists detect a certain level of emotional stress, with each death adding money to the final pot. While they can't back out after agreeing to participate, the contestants were made aware before agreeing to join the game that their lives would be at stake. The participants' reasons for joining range from crippling debt, needing money for medical expenses, or even just wanting the opportunity to kill people.
- And I Must Scream: The Dice Game restricts one of the five senses, depending on what each player rolls. (The sixth possible roll is "spirit," which removes all previous restraints.) When "taste" is rolled, the player's mouth is gagged so that they can't talk. The moderator proposes that losing all five senses will result in being driven mad by lack of human interaction.
- Attractive Bent-Gender: Utsuromiya is a cis-passing trans woman, and other characters remark that she's very cute and that she doesn't need surgery to look like a woman. (It's considered problematic to make statements like this in real life, but the depiction is arguably
Fair for Its Day.) - "Awkward Silence" Entrance: In one scene, when Shirakogawa enters a room where all the other contestants are chatting with each other, they go dead silent and stare at him. Considering that he had previously tried to murder Meguru, their reaction is justified.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Shirakogawa initially portrays himself as a sensitive Nice Guy, but it turns out that he's actually a murderous sadist who only joined the game so he could kill people, using his false persona as a way to get people to trust him.
- Blond, Brunette, Redhead: A variation with the three female participants in the game: Nekomachi is blonde, Utsuromiya has black hair, and Kukuri has pink hair.
- Break Them by Talking: The entire point of the Deadly Game, where enough emotional distress will kill the participants in what is called a mental over. Since physical violence is prohibited, the best way to eliminate the other players is to confront them with their psychological trauma by talking. Several characters are killed this way:
- Ishimakura is killed by being mercilessly and profanely taunted about his weight. Most of the other characters join in a chorus of telling him to die, which reminds him of his childhood experiences with bullying.
- Niko is killed by Meguru when he deconstructs Niko's religious worldview and taunts him for not truly having the will to live. He desperately tries to leave the locked room as Meguru reminds him of his chronic health issues and impending death, which disturbs him to the point where he triggers a mental over.
- Kukuri kills Aiyori by facing him in a mental battle where they each exchange words trying to expose the other's psychological vulnerability until one of them dies. The exact details of what Kukuri says to Aiyori are glossed over, but it emotionally distressed him enough to cause a mental over.
- Crazy Homeless People: Makabe is a dirty and unkept homeless man who spends much of his screen time mouthing off nonsense.
- Despair Event Horizon: Invoked. The mental over system is designed to kill players when they reach an extreme state of emotional distress, with the more conniving players trying to manipulate others into reaching the point where they have no hope left to kill them for various reasons.
- Drowning My Sorrows: In the first chapter, Meguru drinks away his sorrows about not being able to get enough money for Mawaru.
- Fat Bastard: Ishimakura is the fattest character in the cast and is drawn with unflattering, piggish features. One of the first things he does is try to steal all of the food for the ten days so that the others will become too anxious and have a mental over. While there are other villainous characters in the cast, Ishimakura's unpleasant behavior is explicitly linked with his weight.
- Rose-Haired Sweetie: The pink haired Kukuri is the kindest character in the cast, and Meguru’s Love Interest.
- Single-Issue Psychology:
- Shirakogawa was abused as a child, which led to him becoming a complete sadist in adulthood. When Meguru guesses this, he snaps and attacks him.
- As a child, Utsuromiya was outcast by girls for being male and by boys for dressing like a girl, so her best friend became a dog named Chappie. One day, she found her backpack covered in blood, and Chappie's corpse was inside it. In later life, she drew away from other people, and her only friend was a doll... named Chappie. Additionally, exploitation of the effect this had on her ultimately leads to her Despair Event Horizon and death.
- Trans Tribulations: Utsuromiya was bullied as a child for being a trans girl. Even though she looked feminine, her father didn't let her have a red backpack (which all the girls had), which made her stand out from the other girls while her appearance made her shunned by the boys. She is in such despair over being unable to afford surgery to change her sex characteristics that she signs up for a Deadly Game in a last ditch effort to pay for it. Her killer exploits this to cause her death by taunting her about her gender identity and giving her a Traumatic Haircut, which makes her emotionally distressed enough to trigger a mental over.
- Traumatic Haircut: The ultimate cause of Utsuromiya's death is when the killer puts her in front of a mirror and cuts her hair. As a trans girl deeply dysphoric about her body and unable to afford surgery, her long hair was one of the only things about her that she felt was feminine, so having it cut causes her so much mental anguish that she passes the threshold needed for the mental over system to kill her.
- Weight Woe: The characters speculate that Nekomachi had an eating disorder, based both on the bruises on her hand which could have been caused by repeated self induced vomiting, and her profession as a model where people often have to watch their weight.
