Highschool Romance

Highschool Romance is a 2015 romantic Visual Novel developped and published by AJTilley ^[1].

Shoji, a male student, has been sent by accident to an all-girl school. Oops. But Lea, the head teacher and principal, has an idea: dress up Shoji as a girl and pretend he is one. Thus starts a journey of friendship and romance for Shoji, as he chooses between a sassy athlete, a shy class rep and Lea herself.

Tropes used in Highschool Romance include:

• Artistic License Linguistics: Shoji sounds like a boy's name, and he is supposed to be a girl. Naming him "Shoka", as in the suffix "-ka", like in Japanese form for female names, would have solved the inaccuracy.
  • Although using false information in a school is probably very risky and illegal, both for the student and personnel. That would have caused more trouble than necessary.
• Can't Hold Her Liquor: Hoshi, during her karaoke trip with Shoji. Lampshaded by him.
• Gratuitous French: "C'est la Vie"
• Mood Dissonance: If Shoji decides to have lunch with Selina, Hoshi will appear a while later, looking sad and hurt at the whole situation (Shoji thought so himself), even though her sprite shows a smile on her face.
  • The epilogue with Hoshi is pretty romantic, even though a sombre piano piece is playing.
• Plot Twist: Selina, on the common route, puts Shoji in a compromising situation by asking him to take a shower. If he admits the truth and says he was a boy all along, Selina will say that she knew it the entire time he was here and will suddenly kiss Shoji, even if he didn't go on her route.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Lea zigzags this trope. On one hand, she goes out of her way to make Shoji's life at an all girls school go as well as can be expected and genuinely worries about his academic future, which was what prompted her idea to have him crossdress instead of delay his education with the ugly truth getting out and possibly holding him back due to the resultant trouble. On the other hand, she's the principal and is even more a delinquent than some of her students.
• School Festival
• Teacher-Student Romance: Lea and Shoji, if her route is taken.
• The Reveal Prompts Romance: When Shoji tells Hoshi his secret, she will all of a sudden kiss him and say she did know that Shoji was a boy, at least after their summer break, and that she was just waiting for him to tell her his feelings.
• Unknown Rival: Played With. Hoshi is really bad at being a rival to Selina, as the sporty girl says many times. It doesn't help that Hoshi is not really jealous of Selina, who wants Shoji's love and is trying her best to antagonize her "rival."
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Shoji, who is only doing so out of necessity and still manages to pull off looking pretty girly. He also winds up having his potential love interests get attracted to him because they figured this trope was in effect and didn't think less of him for it.

1. ↑ Dissolved in February 2016, its IPs transferred to Dharker Studio.