Protagonist Keita Ito is accepted into the prestigious all-boys BL Academy despite his average grades and skills and meets various hot guys interested in dating him.
This property started as an (explicit) Boys Love Game, then adapted into a considerably less explicit PlayStation 2 port, a similarly tame anime and two manga series by You Higuri which resemble the original game (available in English from Tokyopop's BLU imprint- one condenses four of the VN routes into a single bound volume each note and the second, Gakuen Heaven Revolution, merges all of the routes' stories into one series of events), as well as various drama CDs and other ancillary merchandise (including a sequel of sorts).
This show provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Iwai's parents (psychologically) both demand him to give up his school life and continue painting so his father can claim them as his own - making him nothing more than a worker, which drives him to self-harm. Keita helps him defy his parents and eventually they (somewhat gracefully) cut ties with each other.
- Annoying Younger Sibling: Keita views his younger sister, Tomoko, as one when she starts acting like a brat and being rude to Kazuki when he visits Keita's house during vacation, because it's the first time she's seen Keita in a long time and he isn't paying her any attention.
- Attempted Rape: Nakajima saves Keita from Asano in his manga volume.
- Blackmail: Taki is blackmailed by the Vice President, so long as he does whatever the Vice President says (such as locking Keita in a shed so he won't be able to take the exams and have to drop out) he'll be fine.
- 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.
- Bridal Carry: Keita gets carried/held like this twice by Naruse in the anime.
- 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.
- Calling the Old Man Out: The conclusion of Iwai's story line. He tells his mother he's had enough of his father stealing his art work, wrecking his father's career and tells his mother to chose either her husband or her son. She picks her husband but Iwai's happy with the conclusion.
- 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 (though it's probably connected to Keita's luck).
- Club President: 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.
- Compressed Adaptation: Both the manga is like this for each separate route. Averted with Gakuen Heaven Revolution that manages to merge every route and sideplot into one story.
- 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 Nakajima instead. Coming soon in English are volumes revolving around Kazuki and Shichijou.
- Averted with Gakuen Heaven Revolution that merges all of the stories into one combined route.
- Distressed Dude: Keita needs rescuing multiple times across the series, from either being kidnapped (by the boys who Niwa refused to let into the Judo team in both the game and Niwa's manga volume (rescued by Niwa), or by Jin Matsuoka (rescued by Kazuki)) or locked in a shed for various reasons (by the twins in the anime for revenge (rescued by Nakajima) and Taki in Revolution to stop him taking the exams, meaning he'd get expelled (rescued by Kazuki)).
- Domestic Abuse: Iwai's father would hit his mother.
- Dude Looks Like a Lady: The "Queen" Kaoru, who Keita mistakes for a woman until he speaks (as he has a very masculine voice).
- Dueling Hackers: Nakajima from the Student Council and Shichijou from the Treasury frequently engage in this.
- Eye Catch: 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 Eye Catch 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.
- 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.
- Japanese School Club: Multiple members captain specific clubs: Iwai captains the art club; Naruse, tennis; Niwa used to captain the judo club; Shinomiya, archery and Kazuki is part of the crafts club.
- Keita has to introduce himself to each club at the start as a "mission" from Niwa to welcome him to the school.
- New Transfer Student: Again, Keita. Made very plot relevant since most of the anime deals with Keita trying to adjust to his new school.
- Older Than They Look:
- Biology teacher Satoshi Umino, who is functionally a Token Mini-Moe despite being the oldest member of the main cast.
- Kazuki is also older than he looks, though how old he really is isn't said.
- One-Gender School: Bell Liberty Academy is an all-boys' school, which is a natural set-up for a BL story.
- Playful Hacker: Nakajima of the Student Council and Shichijou of the Treasury constantly hack and backhack each other. They straddle the line between this and The Cracker 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.
- 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. Averted with Revolution (so far).
- 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.
- Rape as Drama: Umino's and Taki's rape scenes are both portrayed this way. In contrast to Nakajima's rape of Keita, which is played as fetish fuel (in the manga it's stated to be consensual and kinky).
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: The two semi-evil twins, Kakeru and Wataru.
- Ring of Power: In the sequel, Keita finds a ring that counteracts his natural luck and makes him unlucky.
- Secret-Keeper: Jin Matsuoka knows that Kazuki is the President of the school. When Keita discovers the secret, he becomes one as well.
- Secret Test of Character: When Keita is asked to deliver a letter all around the school without reading its contents. He succeeds and they throw him a welcome party.
- Tamer and Chaster: The anime and manga were adapted from a Boys' Love H-game.
- Taste the Rainbow: The cool guy, the sporty guy, the guy with glasses, 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.
- Third-Act Misunderstanding: The second half of Nakajima's volume, where Keita believes that Nakajima is doing some dodgy dealing with the Science Club when really he was trying to see whether or not the Science Club was doing its own lot of dodgy dealings. He just decided not to explain to Keita or anybody else what he was doing and let Keita get worked up about incorrect rumors - he apologized at the end that it was all his fault.
- Two-Teacher School: Satoshi is the only teacher ever seen (not counting Jin Matsuoka, the School Nurse).
- Uke: For every relationship he is in Keita is the uke, except when he's with Taki and Umino.
- 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.
- 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.
- Yaoi Fangirl: While not one herself, Tomoko (Keita's younger sister) knows all about boy's love from girls at her school and believes that Kazuki is out to "snatch" Keita.
