Gakuen Heaven (School Heaven) Episode 1 - An Out-of-Season Exchange Student
OP - School Boys (YAMOTO) - the OP song is indescribably gay, it’s quite incredible - come on, the title!. Animation is standard dating-game anime stuff, shots of all the characters and so forth.
ED - Panorama (Takahide Fujoka) - cheeeeeeeesey Latin-tinged song with a blue teddybear floating on a river (it makes sense in context, seriously)
BOY’S LOVE HYPER! You already know if you like this show, don’t you?
Okay, so we’ve got some kid called Keita who is entirely normal in every way (aka PROJECT YOURSELF ONTO THIS CHARACTER, PLAYER!)that gets invited on a scholarship to the prestigious, elite Bell Liberty Academy (BL…can you tell what they did there?). He has some kind of Angsty Past involving someone going somewhere but this is obviously something to last for the whole series so we don’t get any mention of it beyond a flashback - suffice to say there will be Angst.
Meanwhile, we get introduced to all the other chareacters in the harem….school…thing, but I didn’t get most of their names and it’s not like they really matter anyway - there’s a computer hacker guy, an annoying young one with fangs who rides a bike everywhere, the twins, one who’s really good at tennis, the usual. There’s some stuff going on with some encrypted data and a couple of other relationship-based subplots but I didn’t care so I can’t remember what they were I’m afraid. But at least I have captured THE ONE WITH A TEAPOT, which for some reason I find to be the funniest thing imaginable.
It’s been a long day.
Well, that was boring. Apart from the hilarious OP and the utterly bizarre bit where it appears that the school headmaster deals with people via a blue stuffed toy that answers questions for him, there wasn’t very much of interest going on in this first episode at all. With that said, though, Gakuen Heaven is better than other reverse-harem shows like the turgid Meine Liebe in that it isn’t quite so gloomy and depressing - there are actual colours and stuff, and vague attempts at humour! Animation isn’t up to much, but the character designs are really good - they’re by You/Yuu (never quite sure which) Higuri, mangaka behind the popular Seimaden, and they’re treated pretty decently in the show.
Gakuen Heaven really isn’t my kind of thing at all (although one of the most embarrassing “secrets” I have, which I’m now blabbing to the Internet, is that I’ve actually played the Gakuen Heaven dating game in a moment of insanity; I managed to get a date with the tennis player but reset in disgust because he was boring. What?) However, I think that for fans of this genre of anime, it’s a pretty decent adaptation, so I don’t think you’ll be too disappointed in it; I just find this kind of anime horrifically boring.
Oh, apart from the next episode preview, which takes place in Ham Ham Heaven. It rules-hamu.
(PS You can tell they’re really being careful with this show when they forget to put the sponsor information in at the beginning and the end, so you’re left with 10 seconds of just a still picture with music playing and no voice-over/sponsor subtitles…)
April 1st, 2006 at 10:54 pm
Sukisho made me very wary of this kind of game –> anime conversion (would it kill them to have ONE female character of some significance?). But I have a feeling that I’ll probably end up watching the first episode anyway. At least I now know to keep an eye out for the dude with the teapot.
April 1st, 2006 at 11:30 pm
Speaking of BL, did you happen to catch Type-Moons april fools joke this morning? ^^
April 1st, 2006 at 11:49 pm
I did! I’m amazed at how much effort some companies put into April Fools; didn’t they do something NekoArc related last year?
It looked awfully similar to Gakuen Heaven, actually; nearly indistinguishable characters in school uniforms are pretty much the BL cliche!
April 2nd, 2006 at 12:03 am
Last years was a promo poster for “NekoArc - The Movie” IIRC. Unfortunately I think I lost the image when I switched PCs - that one was awesome.
April 2nd, 2006 at 1:18 am
You’re a braver soul than me, I guess. I couldn’t get past the first part where you meet the King and Queen in the game because the boredom was just killing me.
Supidly, I had vaguely higher hopes for the anime. Key word there being “stupidly”. Maybe it’s just that once, before I die, I want to see a BL anime adaptation with a good budget and a watchable plot. I’m…uh, going to live a long time, aren’t I?
April 2nd, 2006 at 10:56 am
That was boring indeed. Although Live-evil’s joke subs made it much funnier than it actually was.
April 8th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
Hmm….well….I liked Gakuen Heaven and I liked Meine Liebe :d
Oh and for shounen ai with plot, Loveless is pretty good :D
April 16th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
“the OP song is indescribably gay” XD *lol* well it is, that was my first impression as well. And come on, “BL Academy”? >_> gotta adore the name! “Bell Liberty” my ass. XP
I haven’t gotten my hands on the game for Gakuen Heaven, but I think it’s a pretty good for entertainment series so far. :) (I watched a few eps raw.. not that I undertood most, but eh…)
Btw, you’re really good at reviewing series ^^
May 10th, 2006 at 6:28 am
awww…. okay … maybe you cant accept.. i found this anime very cute and entertaining to me @_@ its like you see beautiful boys everywhere … and this is FIRST girl’s harem anime that i saw that have NO SINGLE female character at all *wheee~* for every shounen-ai fans .. i think this anime is a must for the collections!!!!!! ^o^
May 14th, 2006 at 2:14 pm
Hey… Gakuen Heaven is pretty cute… And for the shounen-ai fans, there really is no offensive yaoi anywhere… so it’s pretty safe.
And this is my second all-boys’ school anime, with the first being Suki Na Mono Wa Suki Dakara Shouganai!! And both animes has their charms…
I like the hillarious suggestive intros in BL, and a bit like Sukisyo!!, there’s this mystery that lasts almost throughout the series.
July 31st, 2006 at 5:41 am
Well, i saw all the serie, and, come on… I really liked!
Well, if you like of very action, fight, and these stuffs, you wont like this anime. Its a Shounen-Ai, so it is very calm… But in dont think it was boring or nothing like it.
December 19th, 2006 at 5:54 am
Gakuen Heaven is a good serie shounen ai is special for me. It reminds me of the good thing about falling in love with a boy… but girls rock!
May 4th, 2007 at 8:33 am
anou… where can i download the manga of this one…
love it so much..
weeee….