I"s Review: A High School Boy in Love with an Aspiring Actress Navigates the Purest and Most Sincere Romance Manga of Its Era

Quick Take

• Katsura's pure romance — no supernatural premise, no altered programming, just a boy who loves a girl and the specific difficulty of telling her
• The aspiring actress storyline gives Iori genuine ambition and the romance genuine obstacle beyond simple shyness
• 15 volumes complete in English; the definitive Katsura romance work for readers who want no complications beyond the emotional ones

Who Is This Manga For?

• Readers who want pure romance manga without supernatural elements
• Anyone interested in 1990s shonen romance at its most emotionally careful
• Fans of Katsura's art who want his romantic storytelling at its most focused
• Readers who want completed romance where the full emotional arc is available

Content Warnings & Age Rating

Age Rating: T (Teen) Content Warnings: Teen romance; mild mature content consistent with the era; aspiring actress storyline; love triangle element with Ichitaka's childhood friend Itsumi

T rating — some content reflects 1990s Shonen Jump romantic conventions.

Yu's Rating

Category	Score
Story Depth	★★★★☆
Art Style	★★★★★
Character Development	★★★★☆
Accessibility for Non-Japanese Readers	★★★★☆
Reread Value	★★★★☆

Story Overview

Ichitaka Seto is a high school boy who has been in love with Iori Yoshizuki since they sat next to each other in first year. He has not told her. His reasons are real — she is beautiful, he is ordinary, and the gap between them seems unbridgeable except by the fact that she is consistently kind to him in ways he cannot interpret clearly.

Iori is an aspiring actress. Her career may take her to America. The window for Ichitaka to say what he feels has a deadline he doesn't entirely control.

His childhood friend Itsumi Isozaki complicates the situation — she has her own feelings and a history with Ichitaka that Iori doesn't know about.

The series follows Ichitaka's attempts to close the gap between what he feels and what he's able to say, across 15 volumes of accumulated missed moments and small victories.

Characters

Ichitaka Seto — A protagonist whose ordinariness is his most honest quality; his love for Iori is genuine and his inability to act on it is genuinely relatable rather than frustrating.

Iori Yoshizuki — A female lead whose ambition — her acting career is real and serious — gives her identity beyond the romantic object; what she wants for herself creates genuine tension with what Ichitaka wants from her.

Itsumi Isozaki — The childhood friend whose feelings and history add complication without becoming a distraction from the central romance.

Art Style

Katsura's art in I"s is exceptional — the character designs, particularly Iori's, demonstrate his ability to draw female characters with genuine interiority expressed through expression and posture. The romantic scenes are drawn with sensitivity. This is the cleaner, more focused version of the style that appeared in Video Girl Ai, applied to a story with fewer supernatural complications.

Cultural Context

I"s ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1997 to 2000 and represented Katsura's return to pure romance after Video Girl Ai's supernatural premise. Its success demonstrated that Shonen Jump's readership would support romance manga without genre complications — the relationship between Ichitaka and Iori was sufficient story. The title's unusual typography (I"s rather than I's) reflects the three girls in the series whose names begin with I.

What I Love About It

Iori has somewhere to be. Her acting career is a genuine ambition that she takes seriously, and the series respects it — she is not waiting around for Ichitaka to figure out his feelings. She has her own life and her own trajectory, and his romance must find a way to exist alongside that rather than replacing it. That makes the eventual moments of connection feel earned rather than inevitable.

What English-Speaking Fans Say

Western readers describe I"s as the most emotionally precise of Katsura's works — specifically noted for Iori being a better-developed lead than most romance manga female characters, for the missed-connection pacing being painful in a productive rather than frustrating way, and for Katsura's art being at its peak. Frequently recommended alongside Video Girl Ai as essential Katsura.

Memorable Scene ⚠️ Spoiler Warning

The sequence where Ichitaka finally says what he has been unable to say — and the specific way the series constructs the moment so that its arrival is genuine rather than convenient — is the series' most earned moment.

Similar Manga

• Video Girl Ai — Katsura's earlier work with similar emotional honesty and a supernatural premise
• Suzuka — Athletic romance with similar honest treatment of the gap between feeling and expression
• Kare Kano — Romantic comedy that becomes emotional drama; similar sincerity
• Strobe Edge — Later pure romance with similar careful treatment of first love

Reading Order / Where to Start

Volume 1 — Ichitaka's situation and first genuine interaction with Iori establish the romance and its specific difficulty.

Official English Translation Status

VIZ Media has published the complete English series. All 15 volumes available.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Pure romance with no supernatural complication
• Iori's ambition gives her genuine identity beyond the love interest
• Katsura's art is exceptional throughout
• Complete — the full emotional arc is available

Cons

• Ichitaka's hesitation can frustrate readers
• Love triangle adds complication some find unnecessary
• Some 1990s sensibility in content

Format Comparison

Format	Notes
Individual Volumes	VIZ Media; complete series available
Digital	Available

Where to Buy

Get I"s Vol. 1 on Amazon →

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