In one line : When the work on the art biases my judgment.

With such a headline, things seem to be already settled. Yes, my enjoyment mainly came from the art. While "pretty" seem to be a sort of common criteria, I consider it to be a rather limited view. If art and beauty can go together, they aren't an outmust necessity. Art can also be about distortion, abstraction and symbolism. "Life Is Money" uses those aspects pretty well and has therefore this "different" feeling to it. And sadly, it is the only strong point of the manga.

Nothing much can be said about the story, it is a rather typical story of "people brought up together to participate in a lethal game" and brings nothing interesting, different or new to the subject. Though it had potential, I didn't feel it was well developped or used, or that it even attempted to it. Putting it in perspective, it could be argued it's due to its lenght, but even the first chapters didn't seem to go too deep into it, despite promising premises of losing one or several of your senses.

The characters are even less mentionable. While I applaud one of them, I cannot say their personality and archetype wasn't written all over their faces right from the start, bringing close to no surprise to the various "twists" or events occuring. I would only want to kudo a devil-like chara, who I expected a few things from to only be denied and to raise an eyebrow at the main's protagonist sudden change of attitude toward the end. Let's not mention pairings as in 15 chapters, two charas get close enough to want to get married and have children together.

So yes, there's, overall, nothing good or bad to say about story and characters, except they are a good excuse for the chosen art style. It's a manga that misses an opportunity as with its art style it could have really brought something to the genre, which has a usually more conventional design. However, an art style alone isn't enough, the story/characters have to bring something as well, or, at least, be a little more than average.

(6 in the review, to tone down my biased judgment, but 7 on my list)