, is an ongoing drama manga

Manga

Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...

 series by Chiyo Rokuhana, first published in Japan in 2003. The IS of the title stands for intersexual(s)

Intersex

Intersex, in humans and other animals, is the presence of intermediate or atypical combinations of physical features that usually distinguish female from male...

 and the story follows the pain and troubles such people go through in their lives, such as gaining acceptance for who they are and their inability to reproduce.

IS won the 2007 Kodansha Manga Award

Kodansha Manga Award

is an annual award for serialized manga published in the previous year, sponsored by the publisher Kodansha. It is currently awarded in four categories: children's, shōnen, shōjo, and general. The awards began in 1977, initially with categories for shōnen and shōjo. The first award for the...

 for shōjo manga.

Story

The first volume of IS is a collection stories about two different intersexual characters and their separate troubles. Volumes 2 and onward deal with the life of intersexual Haru Hoshino, starting just before his birth and continuing past high school

High school

High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....

.

Characters

Hiromi

Hiromi is an intersexual who was raised as a girl, who works as an office lady

Office lady

An office lady, often abbreviated OL , is a female office worker in Japan who performs generally pink collar tasks such as serving tea and secretarial or clerical work. Like many unmarried Japanese, OLs often live with their parents well into early adulthood...

. She is the focus of the first part of the first volume.

Ryoma

Ryoma is an intersexual who was raised as a boy, but later in the story changes her gender to female. She is the focus of the second part of the first volume. At the beginning of the story, Ryoma is a teenager.

Haru Hoshino

Haru Hoshino is an intersexual who does not have a surgery

Sex reassignment surgery

Sex reassignment surgery is a term for the surgical procedures by which a person's physical appearance and function of their existing sexual characteristics are altered to resemble...

at birth to make him look like more of one gender than the other, but at 10 months old he has to have his testicles removed due to a medical condition. From preschool through middle school, he always plays with the boys his age in school, and is raised as a boy because of that. However in high school, because his birth certificate shows that he was a female, he is forced to live as a female for three years.