Gakuen Heaven

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

It all started when Keita Ito received a letter sealed with the initials for BL Academy, the most sophisticated all-boys academy in the country. Keita Ito has been accepted into the school with an average GPA, as well as average skills in sports and writing, and doesn't think that he belongs there. But with help from the other students, will he be able to make it in BLA? (summary taken from ANN)

Gakuen Heaven: Boy's Love Scramble! (or Gakuen Heaven for short) started as an (explicit) Boys Love Game, then adapted into a considerably less explicit PlayStation 2 port, a similarly tame Anime and a Manga series which resemble the original game (available in English from Tokyo Pop's BLU imprint), as well as various drama CDs and other ancillary merchandise.

Tropes used in Gakuen Heaven include:
  • Adorkable: Keita and Taki.
  • Bespectacled Bastard Boyfriend: Nakajima
  • Bleached Underpants: Adapted from a Boys Love H-game.
  • Born Lucky: While all the students at BL Academy are supposed to have some kind of ability or skill, the only thing Keita has is his freakishly good luck.
  • Boys Love: Essentially the whole point of the show.
  • But Not Too Foreign: In the anime, Shichijou is half-Japanese, raised outside Japan, and initially spoke no Japanese, permitting a touching flashback to when he was befriended by "Queen" Kaoru.
  • Cast Full of Pretty Boys: Given its Boys Love content it is not surprising that there should hardly be any females, plus all of the action takes place at an all-male academy. Why they are all different flavors of smoking hot is unexplained.
  • Club President: Who is even nicknamed "King".
    • Almost all the main cast actually. However "King" the Student Council President and "Queen" the head of Treasury do get a certain amount of deference among all the other club leaders.
  • Custom Uniform of Sexy: "Queen" Kaoru wears a white gakuran uniform rather than the red blazer of the rest of the cast.
  • Cutting Off the Branches: The anime plays this straight, pairing Keita with his childhood friend Kazuki Endo, with the other guys being more-or-less interested but never serious contenders. The manga handles the problem by following a different plotline in each volume; the first hooks Keita up with "the King" Niwa and the second shows what would have happened if he had ended up with the Bespectacled Bastard Boyfriend Nakajima instead. Coming soon in English are volumes revolving around Kazuki and Shichijou.
  • Dueling Hackers: Nakajima from the Student Council and Shichijou from the Treasury frequently engage in this.
  • Eyecatch: In some cases there is action in them. One had student council president (called "the King") approaching the treasury president (called "the Queen") as if flirting or asking for a date. The next Eyecatch is the King on the floor holding his cheek, as the Queen walks away looking irritated and with a sore hand.
  • Eyes Always Shut: Shichijou, although he opens them whenever he's required to look handsome or sexy.
  • Fun with Acronyms: The school's name: Bell Liberty Academy.
  • Gratuitous English: In the flashback between "Queen" and Shichijou, The Queen speaks some hilariously accented dialogue.
  • Handsome Lech: Yukihiko Naruse, captain of the tennis team, is constantly after Keita.
  • Hey, It's That Voice!: Most of the anime cast-
  • Hot Springs Episode: Bonus points for "a bunch of men calls for some naked socialization".
  • Humiliation Conga: A small but humorous example happens to Iwai in the onsen when everyone is trying to figure out what pervert used Shinomiya's toothbrush. Each result is consistently ruled down to him and by the time they figure out it was just the cat they only then realize he has been drowning himself for the past few minutes out of embarrassment.
  • Indirect Kiss: Parodied: at one point the whole cast discusses who was it that used a character's toothbrush, something that would constitute an indirect kiss of the creepy kind. Bonus points for this taking place while everyone is naked. As it turns out a cat was the culprit. Of course.
  • Innocent Innuendo: Several episodes of the anime open with different couples doing this.
  • Kansai Regional Accent: Shunsuke Taki, the game's token Uke (should you feel like making Keita Seme); and an annoying version at that.
  • Legal Jailbait: Umino.
  • Naive Newcomer: Keita
  • New Transfer Student: Again, Keita. Made very plot relevant since most of the anime deals with Keita trying to adjust to his new school.
  • Playful Hacker/The Cracker: Nakajima of the Student Council and Shichijou of the Treasury constantly hack and backhack each other. They straddle the line between these tropes in that for them it is Serious Business but at the same time they only do it to each other, and they generally don't try and hurt other people by it but then it caused a major accident at least once...so yeah. Rule of Funny anyways.
  • No Export for You: Because Tokyopop's Boy's Love label, BLU, is closing down along with Tokyopop, the "Shichijo" version of the manga will not be released in English.
    • MangaGamer attempted to get SPRAY on board with translating the game, but their offer was denied. Our only hope now would be a Fan Translation, and that looks very unlikely considering the game being somewhat overshadowed in the BL game fandom.
  • Porn with Plot: The game, although there's not much in the way of porn and it's mostly fairly non-explicit.
    • Not to mention the various manga.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: The two semi-evil twins, Kakeru and Wataru.
  • Situational Sexuality
  • Taste the Rainbow: The cool guy, the sporty guy, the Bespectacled Bastard Boyfriend, the childhood friend, the shy arty guy, the upright traditionalist, the impossibly beautiful and elegant "queen", the cute kid...
  • Technicolor Eyes: The anime features red, purple and violet eyes, as well as the more usual blue and green, but no brown, despite being set in Japan.
  • The Anime of the Game
  • The Promise: Not as eventful as most examples of the trope but The fact that Kazuki promised Keita that one day they would attend the same school is the whole reason why he is attending Bell Liberty Academy. It almost seems to overlap with Childhood Marriage Promise.
  • Two-Teacher School: Satoshi is the only teacher ever seen.
  • Older Than They Look: Biology teacher Satoshi Umino, who is functionally a Token Loli despite being the oldest member of the main cast.
  • Vague Age: He doesn't look it, but Kazuki is several years older than his "classmates." How much older he is, though, is unknown. The ambiguity of his age is Lampshaded at the end of the anime.
  • Victim Falls For Rapist: In Nakajima's storyline and in the manga. Cleaned up for the anime to a scene of sexual harassment via elbow licking.
  • Vocal Dissonance: "Queen" Kaoru, despite his extremely pretty and extremely feminine looks, has the second-deepest voice in the cast, as befitting his status as a sexy Seme.