Best movies & TV Shows like IS: Not a Boy and Not a Girl

Haruna Wakagusa is a high school student who lives with her mother. Ichiro Yamada is gay and Haruna’s classmate. He is bullied at school, but Haruna sticks up for Ichiro. They become intimate and Ichiro tells Haruna his secret. He found a dead body along the riverside. A new body is soon found.

A passionate teacher, Kumiko Yamaguchi, a.k.a. Yankumi, is now overseeing the new students of Class 3D of Akado High School, who still have not opened up to her and are giving her a hard time. Current and former Class 3D students collide in this epic finale to the Japanese TV series.

Akari is a first grade high school student. She is positive, realistic and outgoing with romance. Akari though is not good at expressing her feelings. She become friends with Yuna, who attends the same high school. Yuna has a hard time talking with strangers and she is passive with romance. She has never been in love, but she dreams of having a romance like those drawn in manga. Even though Akari and Yuna have totally different personalities, they are now good friends. Yuna gets attracted to Rio who is Akari’s stepbrother and attends the same high school. Akari becomes attracted to Kazuomi, who is Yuna’s childhood friend and attends the same high school.

Problem student Haru Yoshida sits next to the cold and studious Shizuku Mizutani in class. Without any other friends to turn to, both of them start to get to know each other and grow closer. Haru eventually develop feelings for Shizuku and confesses his feelings to her. Will Haru and Shizuku get their happily ever after?

Sota Nishino is a good-looking high-school student. He meets Mai, who is his friend Yukihiro Nanase's younger sister. She is also a high-school student and somewhat naïve. Sota Nishino mutters to Yukihiro Nanase, "Your sister is cute." Mai overhears Sota's remark through the thin wall between her room and her brother's.

Six high schoolers stuck in a murderous time loop must find the scattered remains of an unknown victim to break the curse and finally see another day.

A group of high school students are forced into a game where they are hypnotized to commit suicide on an unknown command. Where no one is safe from a sudden death, how can they avoid their fates?

Upon entering college, Narumi forms the Asunaro Group along with four other boys and girls. In time, she starts to date Tamotsu, whom she felt attracted to when she first saw him at the entrance exam. Although the two are happy together at first, their very different backgrounds cause them gradually to fall out and ultimately break up. Immediately following the break up, a member of the group dies a terrible death, and this brings the group to an end. The members go their separate ways, but Narumi and Tamotsu do not forget each other. Four years later, when the group reunites on the anniversary of the death of their friend, Tamotsu proposes to Narumi. The story follows the Asunaro Group members’ growth into adulthood as they struggle with the boundary between friendship and love, deal with bitter experiences, and find love for the first time.

Japanese-American track star Mizuki Ashiya transfers from a school in California to Japan, but not to just any old school. The school is Osaka High School—an all male high school! Mizuki Ashiya must disguise herself as a boy, all to get closer to her hero, Izumi Sano, a high-jump athlete who attends Osaka High. Now with short hair, flattened chest, and deeper voice, Mizuki becomes roommates with Izumi Sano, but trouble soon starts to brew. Izumi Sano discovers by accident that Mizuki is a girl and falls in love with her, but Mizuki is unaware of the fact. Complicating things, fellow classmate Shuichi Nakatsu starts to develop feelings for Mizuki, unaware that she is a girl!

Adapted from Keiko Suenobu's manga "LIFE," this drama delves into the dark side of high school life. The story focuses mainly on bullying, but the manga also touches on subjects such as self-mutilation, suicide, and rape. Kitano Kii stars as Ayumu Shiiba, one of the students bullied by a group of classmates led by Ayumu's former friend, Manami Anzai (Fukuda Saki).

A struggling lawyer, Kenji Sakuragi, takes a position at private school Tatsuyama Gakuen to pay off his debts. Kenji decides to try to turn this hopeless school into one of the elite institutions in Japan to help rejuvenate his career. His barometer of success will be to get five of his students admitted to the prestigious Tokyo University the following year. But rather than cramming them with lots of general information, his down-to-earth class concentrates on unknown techniques for passing the entrance examination and how to live a good life in these turbulent times. His refreshing outlook and strategy may just be what is needed to turn around the future prospects of himself and his students and teach the rest of us a thing or two as well!

A story about a talented child actress who wins back her dream after retiring from acting. Keito was once a popular child actress, but she had shut herself away from society for 10 years after a traumatic acting incident. She is now 17 years old and incidentally enrolls to a free school for dropouts where she makes true friends. Together, they build trust and find the meaning of life. --NHK

Based on the comedy manga by Abe Shuji, "Elite Yankee Saburo" tells the story of Ookochi Saburo (Ishiguro Hideo), a plain and shy boy entering high school. Unfortunately for him, his two older brothers had built a reputation as legendary troublemakers at that school. When Saburo arrives, he is immediately misunderstood and treated as an "elite yankee."

High school senior Heita Fukai doesn't know what to do with his life. Having been seriously ill until recently, he never had the opportunity to think about his future. He leads a mundane existence among his classmates, all of whom are struggling with their own issues. There's the popular guy with secret hang-ups, the boy who can't afford the tuition, the girl with bulimia and the pathologically shy kid. The teachers don't fare much better. The high school is a microcosm of our troubled modern society. One day Fukai stumbles across a mysterious and attractive new girl in school, Q10, whom he soon finds out is actually a robot. Assigned by the principal to be her mentor and told to keep her true identity a secret, Fukai tries to teach Q10 about human feelings. In the process, he becomes aware of his own complex, emotional makeup. Fukai realizes that he is learning about life from an android, and that he may be falling in love with her.

Tomoya’s father remarries to another woman, giving him a stepsister, Ichika. However Ichika is 17-years old and has completely fallen in love with her stepbrother who is only 13!! Families will collide in the most unusual fashion this season, in the new anime short: ONEE-CHAN GA KITA!

In high school, Sakurai Haruka, Mirei and Kanata are good friends whom everyone envies. The three of them believed their relationship would remain like this forever. Then Haruka’s stepsister Ririko suddenly returns from overseas. After several years away, she has become beautiful to the extent that classmates call her “goddess”. Although Haruka has often built walls around other people, Ririko deliberately gets close to him. One night, she barges in all of a sudden and starts to cry against his chest. “I have no where to go. You’ll let me stay here, right?” Haruka is baffled by his pushy stepsister, Mirei secretly loves Haruka and Kanata has become aware of Mirei. The distance between Haruka, Mirei and Kanata who had taken it for granted that they would always be close, starts to change little by little

Koizumi is a mysterious and attractive high school student. But what most people don't know about her is that she's a ramen master who is always on the lookout for great ramen restaurants. Everyday, she goes hunting for real-life places serving the best ramen dishes and delightfully eats the delicious noodles. The way Koizumi downs a giant bowl of ramen–more adeptly than any large man—will amaze and delight you!

Yoshioka Yuiko begins the first grade in high school. She gets sick with the cold and stays in bed. At that time, she gets a phone call from class president Matsubara. Yuiko becomes flattered by his kind voice on the phone. The next day, she goes to school and meets Matsubara. He is a mysterious boy, wearing a paper bag over his head. Her high school days begin with pounding heart.

A juvenile delinquent code-named Saki Asamiya is taken in by the government and forced to fight crime to redeem her actions. She is sent to various high schools to infiltrate and neutralize gangs and other forms of crime as a police officer using her metal yo-yo badge as a weapon.

Isao Komori is a college dropout who spends his days cooped up in his apartment playing video games. The highlight of his day is visiting a convenience store where an angel-like high-school girl called Mari visits every night. One morning Komori wakes up in Mari's body. Another "Komori" inhabits his old body, and Mari has disappeared. Komori struggles to maintain Mari's ordinary life and starts to investigate Mari's disappearance.

Children from influential families in politics and businesses attend the Hyakkaou Private Academy. There, the hierarchy of the students are classified by a series of games. Students that win the games are on the ruling side and the students who lose become slaves. One day, a mysterious girl, Yumeko Jabami (Minami Hamabe), is transferred to Hyakkaou Private Academy. She looks pure and pretty, but she is actually a compulsive gambler and seeks out the thrill of taking calculated risks.

When Arihara Tsubasa enters Rigahama Municipal High School and learns that it has no baseball club, she starts up the Girls' Baseball Club on her own. Drawn to the club are girls who have never played baseball before, girls who once played it but quit, and girls who are constantly tackling great challenges. The Rigahama Girls' Baseball Club races through the trials of youth, periodically clashing and quarreling, but supporting each other all the way! And so begins the hottest summer the world has ever known...

Hinata is an introverted high school girl and Mikage is the "gal" who sits next to her in class. Hinata realizes Mikage is her friend from elementary school, and she wants to strike up the friendship again.

Miyanaga Saki, a first-year student at Kiyosumi High School, lacks enthusiasm for mahjong and plays it so that it will end with neither a win nor a loss. One day, she is influenced by Haramura Nodoka’s genius mahjong tactics and decides to join the mahjong club. Nodoka is the titleholder of the national junior high school mahjong tournament. Together with Nodoka and the other club members, Saki contends for the title against formidable opponents.

When Kazusa enters high school, she joins the Literature Club, where she leaps from reading innocent fiction to diving into the literary classics. But these novels are a bit more...adult than she was prepared for. Between euphemisms like fresh dewy grass and pork stew, crushing on the boy next door, and knowing you want to do that one thing before you die--discovering your budding sexuality is no easy feat! As if puberty wasn't awkward enough, the club consists of a brooding writer, the prettiest girl in school, an agreeable comrade, and an outspoken prude. Fumbling over their own discomforts, these five teens get thrown into chaos over three little letters: S...E...X...!

Tanaka Nozomu is one of the three high school students. People call her "Baka" ("Idiot"). She isn't timid and she can't read between the lines. Her friends are Kikuchi Akane and Saginomiya Shiori . Akane enjoys anime and manga. Shiori is extremely smart, but her emotions have dried up. These three girls are also classmates. Their homeroom teacher is Sawatari Masataka.

On Christmas morning, Fujino Ryoko finds her classmate Kashiwagi Takuya’s dead body at their snow covered school. The police and the school conclude that Kashiwagi Takuya died by suicide. At that time, an anonymous letter is delivered to Fujino Ryoko. The letter states that Kashiwagi Takuya was murdered by a group of students including Ooide Shunji. The media and SNS begin to question whether Kashiwagi Takuya really died by suicide or was he murdered. The school principal tries to take control of the narrative, but this leads to a more chaotic situation. Fujino Ryoko is disturbed by people's reaction to Kashiwagi Takuya’s death. She asks for a trial and an unprecedented school trial begins.

The story happens in the near future of Japan, where sexual activity is forbidden by law. Inuda Hikaru is an honor student whose father is an executive at Setori (Sexual Misconduct Control Bureau of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare). Hikaru aspires to become like his father and finds sex unpleasant. Minase Yu is Hikaru's childhood friend who has a sharp tongue but excels in her grades. Yu is also a big fan of nationally known actress Uchu Misora, commonly known as Uchura. One day, Hikaru is invited by a classmate to a shady members-only club where he witnesses men and women engaging in illegal sexual acts. He is also surprised to see Uchura, who claims to be "pure" there with a man. Before he realised, Hikaru finds himself being caught in an "underworld organization" where sexual activity is performed.

Following a failed confession to her first love, female high school student Mikoto Ochiai contemplates jumping off the roof of the school building. However, her thoughts are interrupted by the arrival of Jin Haiba, the physics teacher known for being a slacker and the butt of students' jokes. Calmly, he lights a cigarette and asks for an explanation of the events that led her to this precipice. Rather than dissuade her from killing herself, he makes a request—will she enter into a romance with him before she dies? Together, the two gradually ponder why they should keep living and why they should not love each other in earnest.

A man killed himself. Due to his death, three of his former classmates from art school, reunite for the first time in a long while. These three people have connections to the man in different ways, including his ex-girlfriend, the manager of a rugby club where the man played, and his ex-boyfriend. While struggling with their own lives, these three people begin to meet and have meals together.

Sō Utsumi doesn't have many friends. After school and before going to a private institute, he kills time by doing nothing on the riverside. One day, Shōkichi Seto appears in front of him. Shōkichi quit the soccer team and has nothing to do. They spend time together. In front of the two guys, Ichigo Kashimura and Hatsumi, from the same high school, appear.

Bullied by his classmates, Ogino Yusuke lives his life in hell. After becoming obsessed with motorbikes, Yusuke starts attending driving school in secret where he meets Nagumo Yumi, and the two begin dating.

At the end of the first year of high school, Futaba Yoshioka meets Kou Tanaka who was her first love. In their middle school days, they attended the same school, but he suddenly transferred to another school. Three years later, he appears in front of her again with the different last name of Kou Mabuchi. His personality also seems to have changed from warm to cold. He is like a totally different person from three years ago. Futaba Yoshioka slowly learns what happened to Kou Mabuchi for the past three years and she become to have feelings for him again.

Tsurugi Hina, a first-year high school student who moved from the city, is an indoor person who is not good at living things. While walking along the embankment, she met her senior Kuroiwa, and was forced to join the mysterious "Teibo Club" and she decides to start fishing. With the support of unique club members, she gradually discovers the joy of fishing.

A live-action theatrical film for Hakuoki SSL, a spin-off of the popular Hakuoki otome game series that re-imagines the cast of Shinsengumi samurai warriors as teachers and students living a peaceful existence in modern Japan.