You're a new transfer student who's late to Hourai High School on the first day of school because the captain of your airplane does not think much about overshooting his destination (an island in the middle of nowhere) 'coz he overslept.
In order to fix that, the stewardess straps a parachute on you and sends you right out the emergency exit door ('coz you're...y'know...annoying the crap out of her)...and you land right on top of a student after crashing through the auditorium ceiling thanks to parachute failure.
You're fine, but the guy you land on is out cold. After clearing up stuff with the principal and staff and introducing yourself in class, you're recruited into Hospo, Hourai's very own National Enquirer. Well, forced to join may be a better word, and you can't refuse since the guy you land on happens to be a somewhat neccessary member of said paper.
And thus, your high school adventure (and wacky hijinks) begins.
It's notable for its modern-day highschool setting, plenty of comedy and references to pop culture of the time. Also, Hitoshi Sakimoto did the music. Highly irreverent, the game never pretends to take itself seriously and plays around with plenty of High School tropes, sometimes using them straight, sometimes deconstructing them, and sometimes, we just don't know. Rule of Fun seems to be the one thing the game takes seriously.
AEON Genesis has translated the whole game for us, though, unfortunately, not perfectly.
Provides examples of:
- Absurdly Powerful Student Council: Three of them. Two of them, The Patrol Squad and The Musketeers act as security forces (who are rivals) while the biggest acts as an administrative body for the whole island.
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: It didn't look that big at first glance, but then you find there's a club down there... not to mention an entire secret base. And then you find a second one - and that one doesn't even make any sense!
- Adults Are Useless: Hourai High School is run almost entirely by students. The faculty are mostly just there to teach, with some acting as heads of clubs. Other adults are shopkeepers and people who provide boarding (in the towns that aren't part of the school) for those who chose not to stay in the boarding houses provided free of charge by the school, segregated by gender.
- Attractive Bent-Gender: Akiko, this year's Miss Hourai and potential party member, claims she used to be a "he" until some occult club member turned him into a she. She's happy about it.
- Berserk Button: Most characters has a special person who, when defeated in battle, will make them Turn Red. For your character, it's whoever you invest the most relationship points into.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: One of the student councils early in the game. This is also the goal of the Big Bad. Ayame seemed to be this at a certain point of the game, but see Evil Twin.
- Chekhov's Gun: You know that hole you created in the auditorium roof... Guess how you get in to stop the last Regulation from being ratified.
- Cute Ghost Girl: Misato. She doesn't really fit the 'cute' part, however.
- Disguised in Drag: Attempted by the male Hospo members to get into the girls' dorm. It didn't work.
- Dynamic Entry: You start the game by crashing through the auditorium ceiling. Also happens several times through the game.
- Eat That: It's heavily implied that Adachi, stranded on a raft, ate a live fish, scales and all.
- Evil Twin: Ayame, the principal, has one who's raised by the Big Bad. She gets better.
- Expy: The Patrol Squad is basically The Shinsengumi In Highschool.
- Face–Heel Turn: Roku, the guy you landed on. Ayame seemed to do this for a while, but it wasn't her.
- Game-Breaking Bug: The translated version can freeze during certain scenes if you set text speed to maximum. Also, you better hope the last boss doesn't use his One-Hit Kill attack.
- Also in the translated version, if you use an item that revives an ally, the text goes all screwy, causing the game to freeze.
- Gone Horribly Right: The Big Bad had a large idol made of papier-mache which come to life thanks to his Artifact of Power and kill him.
- Heroic Mute: The Protagonist doesn't speak.
- Hospital Hottie: Julia has the unique club Nursing by default.
- Hot Teacher: Adachi, though she herself doesn't seem to think that highly of her looks and is apparently jealous of Ayame.
- Humongous Mecha: One of these serve as a dungeon for you to explore. According to its makers, it's incomplete.
- Idiot Hair: If you're a male main character, this is your character sprite's defining trait. Otherwise, you'd look just like every other generic male student with brown hair.
- Improbable Age: Ayame, principal of the school, is younger than most of the teachers. As in, straight out of university. Lampshaded by Adachi, a Hot Teacher, and herself, saying she has no idea how that happened...or what she's supposed to do.
- Intrepid Reporter: The Hospo is a group of 4 Intrepid Reporters, helped by their buddies.
- Japanese School Club: The many clubs on the school act as the game's Job System, providing you with abilities that range from increasing your stats to giving you
Game-Breaker spells and attack skills. However, characters have limitations on what kinds of clubs they can join. Athletic, Cultural, and Science are the main ones, with a couple of 'Human Only' and character-specific clubs as well. - Killer Rabbit: Killer pineapples, killer walking sunflowers...
- Level Grinding: You can if you want to - your characters' club ranking increases with the same experience as their levels, but the encounter rate is so bloody high that you're just as likely to do so accidentally, in the normal course of play.
- Forced Level-Grinding: The Chapter 2 enemies (overworld and jungle) will hand you your ass unless the main character and Daichi have enough HP, or you bought a sizable pile of healing items... with money you won't have unless you grind a bit.
- Anti-Grinding: If you fight every battle, you're grinding. Don't be too proud to run.
- Low-Level Advantage: Averted. You will get your student/teacher/robot/alien/cat ass beat if you don't have the HP/Defense to survive battles you can't escape from.
- MacGuffin: The 100 Year Old Pencil, the Sayings of Hokita, and the Student ID of the Ancients
- New Transfer Student: You. Mitsurin and D-51 as well, for a certain definition of 'transfer' and 'student', respectivelynote .
- Nebulous Evil Organisation: The Subterra Society
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No Export for You: It took 15 years before we got a translation, by Aeon Genesis. - Official Couple: Isaac and Julia.
- Ordinary High-School Student: You're supposedly one, but character creation lets you play with that a bit.
- Permanently Missable Content: Some of the seven "wonders" in the game. One, for example, can only be found during the class trip chapter.
- Personality Blood Types: You can select one of four blood types, with each one getting a personality descriptor in-game — A (sensible), B (sociable), O (chilled out), or AB (totally warped).
- Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits: By the end of the game, your group is made up of the Hospo members, two foreign exchange students, a ghost (if you're female), a member of the student council (again, if you're female), Miss Hourai (if you're male), a giant cat, a kid Tarzan, a robot, two teachers, and a Starfish Alien.
- Random Encounters: For some reason, the encounter rate is pushed up really, really high, and the game does not give you a means of altering this. There's an auto-battle option, where the characters attack physically until you press 'B' (they're reasonably smart about who and how they attack), and escaping isn't too difficult - but still. The rule of thumb is, if you're fighting every encounter to the end, you're Level Grinding.
- Recycled Soundtrack: The airplane music
takes its melody from Round 3-1's theme from Super Back to the Future Part II (which was also composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto). - Ship Tease: The special someone system should give you a good idea who can be shipped with who.
- Shout-Out:
- Joe's Glove, Ranbo Gurobu (translated into Violence Glove, unfortunately, so the reference's lost, Sarinja, etc. Akiko may also be a reference to female Ranma. There's also a guy in the male dorm who's developing a summoning program.
- Haru notes that the Invincible #22 is 57 meters tall and weighs 550 tonsnote , then comments that that's way too light.
- The 'Android' enemies are pretty blatantly based on the Aphrodite A. (The 'Oppai Missiles' kinda clinches it.)
- Starfish Aliens: Hitoderon and Hitoderomi, his partner. Literally.
- Status Effects: They're given setting-relevant names (Amnesia, Embarrassment, etc.), but they're there.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: Adachi did NOT eat the fish.
- Token Minority: Issac who also embodies Eagleland type 1: Valuing Sports, Mom, and Apple Pie over most everything else aside from his girlfriend Julia.
- Turns Red: See Berserk Button above. You can also turn yellow or pink. Certain enemies have attacks that begin this way.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: The Resonator Stones amplify the desire of the holder, releasing it into energy
