Clockwise from top right: Kanji, Taketo, Yasuto, Nagisa, and Homare
Class Trip Crush is a Romance Game Visual Novel from Voltage, Inc. for iOS and Android devices. In it, the player takes the role of a teenager attending an all-girls high school. Her class is just about to embark on the traditional class trip when their school faculty makes an announcement: going forward, all school functions will be held with the neighboring all-boys school. Beginning with the class trip.
The protagonist and her two best friends thus unexpectedly find themselves grouped up with five boys for the duration of the five-day trip - most of whom seem pretty pleased by the prospect and interested in getting to know the girls while they have the chance. It's up to the player which one of them the protagonist decides to spend her time with - the soccer star, the baseball star, the flirt, the bookworm, or even a genuine celebrity.
This game includes examples of the following tropes:
- Always Identical Twins: Averted and lampshaded by the Kanzaki brothers, who are well accustomed to people being confused that they don't look alike.
- Always Second Best: Taketo and Yasuto, mutually. Taketo is good at everything he puts his hand to, where Yasuto is rather clumsy outside of baseball and quite conscious of that fact. Taketo, however, describes Yasuto as a "genius" and observes that no one can possibly match him at the one thing he's devoted all of his effort to. The feeling that he couldn't measure up to his brother led Taketo to switch from baseball to soccer to avoid competing with Yasuto, and his route shows that he has something of a complex about it.
- Annoying Patient/I Can Still Fight!: In Taketo's sequel, the Daikanyama soccer team is just about to compete in a national tournament when Taketo ends up in the hospital with a cracked rib. Most of the plot of the route involves Taketo's determined efforts to get back on the field in time to play in the tournament, and the efforts of everyone else around him to keep him from injuring himself even worse in the process.
- Artifact Title: The game's storyline stretches across several "seasons," and from the main route through the various epilogues, sequels, and side stories it covers a period of a good thirteen years, following the characters from high school into their adult lives. Only the initial main routes have much of anything to do with a class trip.
- Attempted Rape: More implied than stated, but when a group of troublemaking delinquents at study camp forcibly drag the protagonist to their room and pour shochu down her throat in Homare's sequel, it's not hard to guess what their ultimate intentions are. Fortunately, Mr. Hayakawa comes looking for her before things get that far.
- Big Brother Instinct: Homare has a younger sister, and a habit of playing the big brother for anyone around him who seems to need it, although it's not always obvious since he does his best to hide it with sharp words. On his route, the protagonist quickly begins to notice how much he goes out of his way to take care of her.
- Big Eater: Yasuto puts away an ungodly amount of food, even by teenage boy standards. His brother and friends are used to it, but it causes a few double takes with the girls at first.
- Birds of a Feather: One of the things that causes the romance between Yasuto and the protagonist to grow is that they're pretty similar, both in the sense that they're nice, friendly people, and in specific things such as that they both like the same dolphin keychain and have the same sense of humour.
- Chocolate of Romance: Key to the Valentine's Day side story, which focuses primarily on the protagonist's efforts to present her boyfriend with handmade chocolate for Valentine's.
- Class Trip: The initial main routes take place on the traditional high school class trip, a six-day excursion including visits to Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe.
- Closet Shuffle: More like "futon shuffle" - on several occasions in Taketo's route the girls sneak over to the guys' room, only to have to scramble for hiding places when Mr. Shindo comes by to check in on them. The protagonist ends up getting up close and personal with Taketo this way thanks to Taketo hiding her in his own futon.
- Clueless Chick-Magnet: Yasuto routinely receives dozens of Valentine's day presents, yet he insists until he becomes good friends with the protagonist that the only two girls in his life are his mother and Miyo, from daycare.
- Continuity Nod: In Taketo's Season 2 route, the protagonist puts together a photo album for Taketo's birthday and fills it with pictures of both of them. Many of them are moments from his Season 1 routes, such as the "Taketo Genji" cosplay photo from the class trip.
- Cute Sports Club Manager: The protagonist becomes the manager for the baseball team at the end of Yasuto's route.
- The Determinator: Yasuto is very, very focused on baseball, rarely allowing himself to spend time on anything else.
- Ferris Wheel Date Moment:
- The Super Happy Ending of Homare's initial main route ends with The Big Damn Kiss in a Ferris Wheel car.
- Subverted in Taketo's route of the "White Day" side story: he takes the protagonist to an amusement park for their White Day date, and their initial plan is to save the Ferris Wheel for last, the better to end the date with one of these. However, the park is packed, and seeing how long the lines are the pair end up deciding to skip the Ferris Wheel entirely in favor of finding a good spot from which to watch the park's fireworks display.
- Also occurs in Yasuto's route, complete with a moment where Yasuto says the view is beautiful but then admits he was talking about the protagonist. The romance is a little muted by the fact that the protagonist is worried that Chii will see them and be jealous, however.
- Get a Room!: Once they're officially dating, Taketo has no sense of shyness whatsoever where it comes to showering affection on the protagonist in front of other people, with the result that his sequel involves multiple instances of their friends suggesting they either tone it down or - you know.
- Healthcare Motivation: Homare's set on becoming a doctor due to his mother's heart condition, which has required frequent hospitalization.
- Hot Teacher:
- Shindo, or so we are told.
- Homare's sequel adds Mr. Hayakawa, a hot young teacher at the protagonist's cram school who is very popular with the female students.
- I Am Spartacus: On Homare's route, the protagonist and all of the other guys each jump to claim that they were the ones responsible for causing the group to sneak out at night, in an effort to keep Shindo from punishing Homare by sending him home from the trip early. Homare spoils it by pointing out the holes in their stories, but Shindo is impressed enough by the unanimous gesture of solidarity that he decides to let Homare off with a slap on the wrist.
- I Didn't Mean to Turn You On: Yasuto is occasionally prone to this due to his awkwardness with girls. For example, when the protagonist gets sick and he tries to take care of her, he at one point spills his rice porridge and tries to clean it up - including the porridge on her chest. He notices it pretty quickly and backs away, however.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Leads to drama in Homare's sequel thanks to Homare's misguided notion that, since he knows he's going to have to struggle financially for a long time to put himself through medical school while also supporting his mother and sister, the protagonist would be happier with a wealthy guy like Mr. Hayakawa. Needless to say, the protagonist isn't having any of it.
- Also features in Yasuto's route. When the protagonist finds out that Chii likes Yasuto, she attempts to hold herself back, but he already likes her enough and keeps approaching her and she can't turn him down. Eventually, Chii notices this and agrees to back out since Yasuto is clearly not interested in her.
- Keet: Kanji, the noisiest and most energetic of the guys in the group.
- Kimodameshi:
- The cast participates in a "guts test" in Taketo's route. The protagonist is paired up with Homare, who keeps her so busy with his sideline observations regarding the current state of affairs between herself, Taketo, and Yasuto that she doesn't have a chance to be scared at all.
- They do it again during Homare's route. This time it's not a school-sanctioned event; the students decide to sneak out at night to walk through an abandoned temple near their campsite. The protagonist is once again paired with Homare, and when it starts raining they end up stranded in a mountain cabin for several hours.
- Also in Yasuto' route, sanctioned by Shindo. This time she is paired with Yasuto (which the rest of the group loves) and it turns into a more typical Intimacy Via Horror sequence. However, at one point the protagonist does finally get to confront Yasuto on whether he really sees her as a girl, and gets some insight into how he feels about her.
- Kimono Fanservice: Mostly the Costume Porn variety. The girls take the the opportunity to get dressed up in twelve-layer kimono
for photographs, to general acclaim as "heian hotties". Eventually genderflipped when "Taketo Genji" steals the show. - Leaning on the Fourth Wall: After Yasuto and the protagonist get together, Homare comments that it was 'like watching people act out a teen love story.'
- Locked in a Room: In Homare's epilogue, he and the protagonist accidentally get locked in overnight at the library.
- Lost Food Grievance: Referenced in Taketo's route of the "White Day" side story when Taketo tells the protagonist a story from when he was a child: during a trip to an amusement park, he ate half of Yasuto's cotton candy, and in retaliation Yasuto abandoned Taketo in the park's haunted house. Hearing this story, the protagonist comments that taking someone's food is Serious Business.
- Lovable Jock: Yasuto is both an extremely good pitcher and also the game's clearest Nice Guy.
- Love Triangle: In Yasuto's route, Chii also gets a crush on him and this causes tension between her and the protagonist.
- Meditating Under a Waterfall: An incident during the group's visit to a Kyoto temple in Taketo's route leads to the guys being made to sit under a waterfall and reflect upon themselves.
- Moment Killer: Kanji inadvertently interrupts a make-out session between the protagonist and Homare during Homare's sequel, dropping by to deliver a batch of chestnut rice made by his mother. At least he has the decency to call first.
- My Greatest Failure: Yasuto pitched at Koushien, but the opposing team hit a winning home run off one of his pitches in an important match and he's never been able to forgive himself for it.
- Nice Guy: Yasuto's main charm is the fact that, both on the surface and deep down, he is really a genuinely nice guy who likes making other people happy.
- Noodle Incident: On Taketo's route, mention is made of an incident in which Taketo dressed up in drag, and apparently looked quite good. Yasuto is dismayed to have missed it.
- Oblivious to Love: Yasuto is terrible at noticing when people are interested in him, whether it's Chii or the protagonist. However, it's implied that it may be at least partially Selective Obliviousness due to him feeling guilt at the thought of focusing on anything other than getting better at baseball.
- One-Gender School: The protagonist and her friends attend an all-girls school, while the guys are students at a neighboring all-boys school. As a result, almost all of them are excited about the class trip becoming a joint venture between their two schools, since it provides a rare opportunity to spend some time with members of the opposite sex.
- Polar Opposite Twins: Another twin trope that Taketo and Yasuto both avert and lampshade. Taketo really doesn't like it when people try to look for contrasts between himself and Yasuto just because they're twins.
- Promotion to Parent: Homare's father died when he was little, and his mother has been hospitalized for some time, leaving him playing the role of parent to his younger sister.
- Puppy-Dog Eyes: Nagisa is a master of the tactic, and uses it on the protagonist frequently.
- Romantic Runner-Up: Homare's route has two - his classmate and self-appointed rival Takashi develops a crush on the protagonist, which given Takashi's awkwardness serves mostly to bemuse her and give Homare something else to snark about. Nagisa also expresses an interest in the protagonist at a couple of points during the route, but when he finally gets the chance to make an overture in her direction, Homare immediately makes it clear in no uncertain terms that she's already spoken for, and Nagisa backs down gracefully.
- Sex as Rite-of-Passage: Played with in interesting ways in Taketo's sequel. The main reason Taketo is so anxious to play in the soccer tournament in spite of his cracked rib is that he and the protagonist have agreed to have sex if he wins the tournament. In fact, the protagonist is looking forward to it almost as much as Taketo is, and there's no particular reason that winning the tournament has to be a requirement, but Taketo wants it to be something particularly momentous and special. In the sequel's Good Ending, after the team fails to win the tournament, he suggests that there will be another opportunity at the summer tournament... rather to the protagonist's disappointment.
- Shipper on Deck:
- On Homare's route, Kanji is very enthusiastic about getting Homare together with the protagonist, and takes every opportunity to encourage her.
- Homare's sister Yui also gets in on the action during his sequel.
- In Yasuto's route, by the camping night everyone's pretty aware that there's something going on between him and the protagonist and Taketo and Kanji especially love to rib them about it.
- Shout-Out: In Homare's sequel, mention is made of the protagonist's cram school classmate Yazuka reading Basilisk.
- Sibling Triangle: On Taketo's route, things get awkward fast when Yasuto starts developing a crush on the protagonist after she and Taketo have already started falling for one another.
- Single-Target Sexuality: Homare has no interest whatsoever in relationships until he meets the protagonist, and is at most vaguely annoyed by the attention he gets from girls when he even notices it at all.
- Sweet Tooth: Homare insists his preference for sweets is because the brain needs sugar after mental stimulation. The protagonist just thinks it's cute.
- Tall, Dark, and Snarky: Homare is observant, extremely intelligent, and always ready to snark at everyone and everything around him.
- Teacher/Student Romance:
- Mr. Shindo is also a potential love interest in the original Japanese version, although his route was not included in the English localization. Naka develops a crush on him which lasts well into the side stories, although it mostly seems to make Shindo uncomfortable.
- In Homare's sequel, Naka also takes an interest in Mr. Hayakawa. He ends up falling for the protagonist, but she doesn't reciprocate because she's already in love with Homare.
- Teen Genius: Homare Midorikawa, to the point of being a minor celebrity both at Daikanyama and Ebisu High Schools for his incredible intelligence.
- Teen Idol: Nagisa Ichinose, a teen actor who is actually filming during the class trip.
- Through His Stomach: She's not actively trying to win him over - in fact, at the time she's trying to hold herself back - but Yasuto's feelings for the protagonist definitely take a boost after he tastes the curry she makes during the camping trip. After he confesses he even brings it up again and says 'I love you, and I love your curry!'
- Valentine's Day Episodes: The "Valentine's Day" side story.
- Won't Take "Yes" for an Answer: In his Happy ending, Taketo confesses his feelings to the protagonist and tells her he wants to go out with her. He has himself so convinced that Yasuto is the one she wants, however, that he gets a good ways into a speech about how he understands that she doesn't return his feelings and he just needed to get them off his chest before it dawns on him that she just said 'yes'.
- Your Favorite: At the end of Taketo's Season 2 route, the protagonist makes his favorite meal - karaage and potato salad - to reward the effort he's put into his studies.
