introduction to gakuen heaven

the tale of bell liberty

Hi! If you're wondering what exactly Gakuen Heaven is and why you should care about it, you've come to the right place! This is a somewhat brief explanation of the history of the series and the basic plot and themes.

Want MORE? This site's main focus is Gakuen Heaven translations, including game patches, manga scanlations, and tons of short stories. If you are interested in a specific flavor of GH, I strongly suggest checking out our translations page for details!

what is gakuen heaven?

The Gakuen Heaven series started as a humble visual novel that was released in 2002 by Spray, the then newly-formed BL (boys love) division of Visual Art's. This game, simply titled Gakuen Heaven, features writing by TAMAMI and artwork by Higuri You, with ten potential partners for the main character and 24 unique endings. The game was a huge hit, and it's hard to overexaggerate the immense popularity and influence that it had - and still has today.

Like many companies, Spray was quick to capitalize on the popularity of their product, and a huge variety of spin-off products was developed. Everything from collectible merchandise, to a series of manga adaptations, an anime, a musical, a fandisc that continued the story of the main game, novelizations, comic anthologies, artbooks... you name it, they made it.

And fans bought it. But even more importantly, they created fanworks - there's tons of stories, art, and doujinshi available for Gakuen Heaven, and some fans are still active to this day, producing new content for a game that is now over 15 years old!

After a long, long hiatus, the series returned with the release of Gakuen Heaven 2 in July 2014. GH2 has the same setting and a plot that ties in with the original, and carries on the themes and basic story elements established in the first game. A new cast of characters appears to breathe life into established tropes, while several key characters from the original make important cameo appearances. The entire game feels like a love letter to the original, with TAMAMI and Higuri You lending their talents yet again.

gh: the vn that started it all (2002)

Okay, that's an interesting history lesson, but what is Gakuen Heaven actually about?

Gakuen Heaven is set in 2010 - a bit of an odd choice for a game published in 2002. It's a story about Bell Liberty School (yes, that's BL School and yes, that's intentional), a private all-boys boarding school for elite high school students. The school is run by the Suzubishi Group, a fictional mega-corporation - think Mitsubishi - whose main business is pharmaceuticals, but they have a hand in everything from cosmetics to athletic products.

Admission to the school is by invitation only - something which sets it apart from the typical Japanese high school, where anyone can take an entrance exam for their schools of interest. The only way to get in is to receive a special invitation called a Platinum Paper. Only exceptional students with grand accomplishments are invited - literal geniuses, record-setting athletes, top-level artisans, and so on.

The story of Gakuen Heaven begins when an ordinary boy with no special talents (other than ridiculously good luck!) receives a Platinum Paper. This is Ito Keita, the protagonist of the first game. The letter that comes with the Platinum Paper doesn't state why he was invited, so as the game progresses, both Keita and other characters wonder why he's at Bell Liberty. He's eventually expelled by the assistant director, Kuganuma, who states that he's not good enough for the school and his invitation was a mistake.

The other students are furious at this development and rally to help Keita, which leads to the creation of a school-wide event called the MVP Battle. Students compete in pairs in order to win an amazing prize - they get to meet the director of the school and have a single wish granted. Of course, Keita's wish is for his expulsion to be nullified so he can stay at the school. But depending on who he pairs up with, that person might also have a wish in mind...

While the MVP Battle plot unfolds, another one quietly bubbles in the background. There's friction between two factions on the Bell Liberty board of directors - one group supports allowing the students as much freedom as possible (including financial freedom to pursue their talents), and the other is more interested in the business side of things, aka making money. And spending money on overseas trips for athletic competitions and building new facilities for student activites doesn't make money for the corporation.

In addition to the board of directors subplot is another, more sinister story. The Suzubishi Group's pharmaceutical research lab is located on the school campus, and the school servers house all the invaluable research data. Now imagine a disgruntled Suzubishi Group employee growing frustrated and deciding to steal and sell that research data to a competitor in order to line his own pockets.

So, we have three layers of plot:
1. Keita trying to figure out why he was invited to Bell Liberty.
2. The struggle between the students and the board of directors.
3. Uncovering who's stealing research data, how, and why.

Depending on the character route, we also get a fourth layer:
4. Keita helping his partner resolve a personal issue.

Of course, there's always a romance between Keita and his MVP Battle partner. Unless you screw it up, that is. And depending on the character route, you'll uncover answers to the questions raised by some of these plots, but not all at once. The game is built so that you're required to play multiple times to get all the answers.

gh fandisc: another helping! (2005)

The fandisc, Gakuen Heaven: Okawari! (roughly 'Gakuen Heaven: Another Helping!'), is a direct continuation of the original game and contains many of the same themes. Again, there's someone trying to steal Suzubishi Group research data, set against the backdrop of a main plot about Keita losing his good luck due to a cursed ring. Like the original, it takes multiple playthroughs to piece together the full story. In a nice twist, the 'mandatory' characters in the fandisc are not the same as in the original game, giving players more incentive to try out all the routes to discover the story.

One nice addition to the fandisc, aside from the typical extra minigames and character data sheets, is how the game deals with Keita's personality. Keita can come across as a weak and inconsistent character in the original game depending on which character route you follow, but Okawari! is much more consistent with his personality. Even better, the routes directly address Keita's main weakness: his lack of self-confidence. The result is a refreshing new look at his character that makes him more likeable and sympathetic.

gh anime: school boys (2006)

The GH anime, titled Gakuen Heaven: Boys' Love Hyper was released in 2006 in response to the popularity of the original visual novel and the Okawari! fandisc. This anime was officially released with both English dubbing and subtitles, and is the reason why many non-Japanese BL fans are aware of the existence of Gakuen Heaven at all.

The anime roughly follows the plot of the original game with a focus on Kazuki's character route, and introduces some major changes and additions to keep it from being a carbon copy of the game's plot. The anime adds several new characters: Ozawa Wataru and Kakeru, first year identical twins in the tennis club; Dr. Matsuoka Jin, the school nurse with a tragic past; and Dr. Yoshizumi Hiroya, Matsuoka's friend who is in a mysterious coma. The familiar plot is changed a little: the MVP Battle still happens, but the competition's rounds are wildly different from the VN's simple minigames; and while the data theft plot still exists, the culprit and his motives are completely different.

The anime was so well-received that the new characters were added to the PSP re-release of Gakuen Heaven, though in a somewhat 'bolted-on' kind of way. Dr. Matsuoka's tale is reduced to a post-game bonus story that is resolved peacefully, without any of the conflict from the anime. The tennis twins are introduced along with Naruse but play no real role in the plot aside from a few brief, optional scenes.

gh manga: mini stories (2006-2009)

Gakuen Heaven was so popular that three short manga series appeared in the BexBoy family of magazines from 2006-2009. In 2006, there were stories for Kazuki and Nakajima, and in 2009 a third entry about Omi was published. These stories go beyond the familiar plots and showcase additional developments between the featured character and Keita.

It is not known if more of these short series were planned. It's reasonable to assume that there may have been one planned for each of the five main love interests of GH, but if so, the stories for Niwa and Saionji never appeared.

gh musical: bell liberty prince (2008)

Yes, there really was a (very) short-lived musical for Gakuen Heaven! It was titled Bell Liberty Prince and ran for about a week - July 25-30, 2008. Unfortunately, the production was never released for sale on DVD, so the content of the musical itself is lost to the sands of time. All that remains is a defunct website and a pamphlet from the venue.

The story section in the pamphlet indicates that the plot is a summary of the Kazuki route of the game, with a focus on how young Keita and Kazuki first met. All of the actors are shown in the pamphlet, including a child actor for young Keita. There are no actors for Shinomiya or Umino, suggesting that they did not appear in the musical at all.

gh manga: revolution (2011)

A longer manga series titled Gakuen Heaven: Revolution began running in Princess Gold in 2011 and ran for 18 chapters, finishing in 2013. Revolution is yet another retelling of the original Gakuen Heaven story, and attempts to incorporate all character routes from the original game PLUS the new content from the anime. It is an ambitious and reasonably successful attempt at gathering the entire canon of GH into one coherent storyline.

This section is incomplete and will be updated soon!

gh2: perfecting the vn formula (2014)

Gakuen Heaven 2 takes place in 2017, seven years after the original game, and once again it's a story about an ordinary boy with good luck getting invited to Bell Liberty. Our protagonist is Asahina Yuki, a cheerful eating machine who becomes student council president by chance immediately after arriving at the school. But in GH2, the student council has almost no power, so it's a pretty meaningless title. At first, anyway.

Like before, there are multiple layers of plot. The most immediate is why and how the student council lost power, and how it can recover its former glory. Soon after Yuki starts rebuilding the student council's reputation, the board of directors rears its ugly head and proposes shutting down the entire school! The struggle over the Suzubishi Group's pharmaceutical data is back as well, also cranked up to eleven. And every single character route in GH2 is about Yuki uncovering his partner's personal (and often very tragic) past and helping them recover hope for the future.

There are tons of parallels and nods to the original game. A few are:

It's impossible to list all the subtle connections between the games, but the entire story is filled with them, creating a sense of comfortable familiarity for the player. It really does feel like returning to the same world, where all the same rules still apply, and it's filled with similar personalities. The connections aren't overpowering, though, and a newcomer to the series can enjoy GH2 without feeling like they're missing a ton of inside jokes.

There are also many notable differences that improve on the GH formula:

These improvements help to make every character route interesting by giving the player something to uncover in each. The subversion of tropes makes even characters who aren't the player's favored type fun to explore, because they end up being different from what's expected. And Yuki's strong and cute personality shines through consistently in every scene, borrowing the best of Keita's kindness and care for others while leaving behind his lack of confidence.

GH2 is essentially the same game, only better. Yeah, those might be fighting words, but I firmly believe that there's a lot of nostalgia haze around the original game that has made it difficult for GH2 to claim its rightful place as best of the GH series.

This doesn't mean that GH2 is flawless. A couple of the character routes are too long and could have benefited from better editing. There's some awkward CGs mixed in with the great ones. A few scenes are just weird. But overall, it's a great game with multiple interesting subplots that work together to form an excellent story, it has beautiful artwork and top quality voice acting, and there's lots of unlockable extras and fun references to the original.

gh2 manga: intro & Tomo (2014)

Of course, Spray wasn't going to release a new game without drumming up interest! One of the promotional works for GH2 was a short prologue manga that appeared in the June 2014 issue of Magazine BexBoy, shortly before the game's release. The prologue chapter is a brief introduction to the characters that is based on early common route scenes.

The 'real' GH2 manga continued in December 2014 with a five-chapter series focusing on Tomo's character route. The manga follows the plot of the game closely and adds some very special content. There's a short H-scene between Tomo and Yuki that was only a 'fade to black' in the game. The manga also incorporates the plot of a rare GH2 short story that was only available as a bonus with purchase of GH2 keychains during the Animate Girls' Festival in 2014, thus rescuing a rare but lovely short story from obscurity.

gh2 short stories & twitter (~2011-2016)

There were several series of GH2 short stories published in the months before and after the game's release. Some were promotional stories that appeared in B's Log or Cool-B magazine to help drum up interest for the game, and others were part of preorder goods or available at special events. All of these stories expand upon Yuki's relationships with his love interests from the game (with the notable exception of the secret character, sigh) and do not overlap with the actual game content.

Spray also actively promoted the game on Twitter in a fun way by registering multiple accounts for the main characters and having them interact with each other, mainly on holidays and birthdays. This activity began back in 2011, three years before the game's release, and continued through the end of 2016. Like the short stories, these events do not overlap with the game's plot and instead expand upon the characters and their relationships. The Twitter content is more general in tone than the romantic short stories, and tends to be light humor with the characters teasing each other.