IS 〜男でも女でもない性〜

IS: OTOKO DEMO ONNA DEMO NAI SEI

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
17
RELEASE
July 25, 2009
CHAPTERS
82

DESCRIPTION

I.S. (Pronounced "Aiesu" in Japanese) is not your everyday manga, I.S. stands for "Inter Sexuality". This manga deals with very serious issues with intersexuality people. The pain they go through, the troubles they confront, and ultimately their inability to reproduce and even find a partner who will accept them as they are - It's all there in a form of manga. The series is consisted of 3 cases, each deals with different people though some cases are much longer and more dramatic than others.

(Source: JanimeS, edited)

Notes:

Includes 1 extra chapter.
Won the Kodansha Manga Award for Shoujo in 2007.

CAST

Haru Hoshino
Hiromi
Kenji Ibuki
Taro Hoshino
Youko Hoshino
Miwako Ihara
Hajime Usami

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

Boreduser
100/100
Being different doesn't make one bad
IS (Aiesu)

Intersexuality. Defined as being born with the sexual organs representing both male and female, making an individual sometimes neither or both sex. Much like many things in life, intersexuality is a spectrum. One can lean heavily into being male or female. They can look female but be mentally male and vice-versa, or they can even be androgynous. The main thing to know about intersexuality is that the person is born with both sexual organs. This manga, IS, was written in 2003 and then meant to be a well researched story about intersexuality and how that affects people in Japan. That is to say, how society does not acknowledge Intersex at all.

IS starts as a sort of look into individual case by case lives of intersex people. Volume 1 is two different stories of just that. Then Volume 2 starts case 3, which encompasses volumes 2-17 of this manga. The whole thing pretty much. Volume 1's short stories are a good read by themselves, so I'm not going to tell you to skip them, but I won't be discussing them any further. I'm interested in talking about case 3 or the actual manga in this manga. Haru Hoshino is an intersex person. He believes himself to be male, so I'm going to use he/him pronouns when discussing Haru. Haru was born with 1 ovary and 1 teste, but early in his life, he needed to get his teste removed due to it causing problems. Haru's body leans more towards being female, with him having an irregular period and growing breasts. I'm sure you can imagine this causing many problems for Haru. A complex about his gender, not being able to change in front of people, and this is all before considering how Haru would go to school and how his peers would treat him. In primary and middle school, it was simpler. Kids, when exposed to this type of thing early on, are much more willing to accept and learn. High schoolers, who are much closer to that closed off two track society of Japan, are not. The school faculty are again another problem entirely. Haru doesn't let any of this get him down permanently, however. Every time there's an issue, or somebody is being purposely mean or obtuse, he gets back up and explains everything about himself. Haru believes that no matter how different people may be, we can all learn to love and accept each other. It's a lofty ideal for sure, one I'm certain some of us still dream of today, yet seeing Haru go about all of his problems and navigate through life, you sort of feel like it's possible. This person who, despite the odds, has a life full of dreams and love. If Haru can have that, then so can we, right? If Haru can open up doors for himself through never giving up, then we can do the same, right? It's that sort of message that I believe IS is trying to tell us.

Being different and marginalized can feel stifling, suffocating, and lonely, but no matter what, we can still have love if we want to. That is why I love this manga. I'm sure you noticed I only talked about one character in this review. That's because I want you to understand that every character here is as interesting and well written as Haru, while getting across what makes him so fun to follow. You, dear reader, should read this manga, even through its bad qualities to find the heart, and what makes up its core.
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