Syukusho Gakuen

Get used to it, you're going to be seeing a lot of this.

Syukusho Gakuen, known as Shrink 'High in its English incarnation, is a Japanese game created in RPG Maker VX. The plot revolves around the detective, Chijinda You, investigating the mysterious events and disappearances at Yabaize High School. The game plays itself out like a straight JRPG, where you explore for clues and items and engage in various battles for the first part of the game. You'll find yourself running into familiar characters from Japanese anime left and right. You can even get Kyon as a party member. It seems quite innocent enough.

Then you find out just why it's called "Shrink 'High".

Needless to say, the focus of the game takes a sudden turn. Suddenly, 90% of the cast is bigger than you. And most of the 90% will either mistake you for an insect, or be a part of the secret society that's behind it all, and will do anything to ensure you don't meddle in their plans anymore.

If you sometimes dream of a gigantic Tsundere, or Haruhi, or Konata...then this game is for you.

This game was until recently Japan Only, but a fan translation was created with added content.

Tropes used in Syukusho Gakuen include:
  • Academy of Adventure: Yabaize High School and the surrounding area. No, this is not just because of the A.S. Society's shenanigans; there's a fair bit of paranormal activity going on that has nothing to do with them.
  • Affably Evil: The Director.
  • Amazon Brigade: The Advanced Sciences Society. All its full-sized combat members are female.
  • Anti-Villain: The majority of the high-ranked villains, in contrast to the rank-and-file Mooks.
  • Artificial Stupidity: Shamisen the cat is an uncontrollable party member, and he's usually not very helpful to your party. When you want him to leave someone alone because you have them caught in a Sleep/Poison lock, Shamisen will helpfully scratch them awake with his claws. When you want him to attack, Shamisen might just decide to use his "Catnap" ability, going to sleep and allowing him to recover HP and AP...whether or not he needs any and whether or not you need him fighting.
  • Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: THIS a thousand times. It's essentially the entire point of the game, and once you're shrunk you'll be hard pressed NOT to run into this. It's not just humans, either...
    • Most of these are just POV specific though, as the game DOES focus on shrinking. For this trope played completely straight see the Director snapping and enlarging herself to ran rampant in the endgame. And, while missing the 'attack' part, Narue possibly enlarging to help fight her off.
  • Author Appeal/Playing to The Fetishes: The entire intention of the game was to create a high quality RPG that catered specifically to the Macrophilia community, as well as all the sub-fetishes involved.
  • Big Bad: The Director herself.
  • Breather Level: When playing as full-size Narue against Mouse World opponents, the battles are (obviously) the easiest in the game.
  • Charles Atlas Superpower: Kyon lacks Chijinda's Psychic Powers, and his abilities primarily revolve around developing his raw stats to higher-than-normal levels.
  • Charm Person: The "Moe Appeal" and "Tsundere Appeal" attacks can inflict the "Love-Struck" status effect (essentially Paralysis that only works on men). So can Kanon's "Call Me Queen!" attack, which is a charm effect delivered via a whip strike. The player characters are made of sterner stuff than most, though; the average shrinky gets Love-Struck just by getting a glimpse of a giantess' panties.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Almost EVERY enemy in the game has an ability that will give them two physical attacks in one if they choose to use it, and some bosses will even be able to attack twice separately in the same turn.
    • Even worse, in later sections of the game, certain enemies are able to launch off rather potent combos of status effects. Alone, and used once, the status effect is generally ignorable, but when two enemies somehow get two attacks per turn, and each enemy uses the incapacitating attack twice on different characters, they can rather effectively prevent your entire party from attacking. Most noticeable upon the eventual regrowth of your characters and all the girls are suddenly accompanied by genetically mutated lions.
  • Covert Pervert: Narue.
  • Dangerous Forbidden Technique: The Death Note.
  • Dark Action Girl: Kanon.
  • Death Mountain: The mountain.
  • Degraded Boss: You can fight a C-rank fighter early on, first at human size, then as a shrinky. You don't fight any other A.S. members until much later.
  • Disc One Nuke: Subverted by a Magnificent Bastard of a game designer. The Death Note is an Easter Egg item that's not all that hard to find, and kills all non-boss enemies on the field when used. It also reduces your party's max HP if used too often, and doesn't tell you about it until you suddenly look at your HP and find that you're a hundred HP short of where you should be. There's a couple of times where it's really virtually necessary to use to pass opposition that's entirely beyond your level, but otherwise, use with caution.
    • Completing the witch quest early can get you a piece of endgame-class gear.
    • Save Scumming the Lottery can net you a legendary supersword.
  • Do Not Call Me Paul: The Dragon gets pissed off whenever people don't refer to her as her proper title.
  • Dronejam: The area behind the principal's fireplace is blocked off by maids. You have to wait for Kagami to move out of the way.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: After defeating the Director, she reveals she is actually from a distant post-apocalyptic future two centuries from now, and the atrocities she had committed were all necessary to her plan to ensure that it never comes to pass. With her defeated, humanity still faces the spectre of collapse, but the nations of the world are forewarned against the threat and the Vice-Director can help restore the surviving shrinkies to normal.
  • Elite Mooks: A.S. Society combat members.
  • Even the Girls Want Her: The Director. At least one girl at Yabaize is shown having heart-shaped thoughts of her.
  • Everything Trying to Kill You: From bugs, mice, birds, to robots, to giant high school girls, you'll be hard pressed to find something that won't try to kill you.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Shrink 'High, well...involves people shrinking. Pretty clear there.
    • The game takes place in Yabaize High School, which can roughly be translated into English as 'One Dangerous High School'.
  • Fetish Fuel Future: For some reason, everyone at Yabaize High (with the exception of Kyon) is into the giantess fetish. Every boy goes crazy with lust when he's shrunken and looks up at a girl, and every girl who gets a chance to play with shrinkies thoroughly enjoys it. (This may have been arranged by the villains.)
  • Forced Level Grinding: If you don't want to be killed by mice, you'd best grind your ass off. There's a Schmuck Bait item available that appears to assist in this. However, the Death Note will take away your Max HP if you use it more than a few times. And the worst part is that you won't even know that your Max HP went down unless you look. Did we mention that the game is Nintendo Hard?
  • Freudian Trio:
  • Fun with Acronyms: "Advanced Science Society."
  • Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: In between shrinking people, the villainesses create Cute Monster Girls in the lab, including a succubus, a fairy and a Catgirl.
  • "Get Out of Jail Free" Card: Erika gets off completely scot-free for murder and cannibalism, and Mia's probably getting released as soon as the stink dies down. This is justified: Mia's in an extremely good position to plea-bargain, being the only one who the authorities can turn to to restore the shrinkies to normal.
  • Giant Foot of Stomping: You'll be avoiding these.
  • Handsome Lech: Chijinda.
  • Deadly Change-of-Heart: The Director regains her sanity after you defeat her giant form, but by then it's too late to save her.
  • H-Game POV Character: Chijinda is a Type IIIB. He is perverted and often ethically-questionable, peeping on girls and even taking advantage of them while they sleep, but he's rather likable and not actually a bad guy except in the I Can Rule Alone ending.
  • Hot Chick with a Sword: Lady Masque.
  • Infinity+1 Sword: It exists, but the effort required to get it is almost as hard as beating the game itself. Essentially, there are five swords that can be forged into it, but you have to know where they are, which bosses drop them, and what the conditions TO get them to drop them are. If you miss even one, you cannot go back and try for it again.
  • Keep Circulating the Tapes: It was distributed via Megaupload, which is currently deceased as a site, and the translator has moved onto other things.
  • Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Characters from several anime and games cross into the game. Some are even main characters.
  • Mecha-Mooks: The majority of the A.S. Society's forces are composed of these.
  • Meta Guy: Kyon. He's in charge of Lampshade Hanging, Shout Outs and generally having an encyclopedic knowledge of anime, manga and video game tropes and memes.
    • Medium Awareness: Kyon is more or less aware that he's in a video game, though he doesn't bring it up too often. At one point, he even mentions that "there's enough holes in the fourth wall around here already."
  • Mini Game: Avoiding the Giant Foot of Stomping is done through a minigame.
  • Motive Rant: Chijinda encourages the Director to give one as she's dying.
    • Take Up My Sword: After she tells Chijinda her motives, she urges him to save the world in his own way and prevent her timeline from coming to pass.
  • Multiple Endings: Three endings. Two depend on whether you enlarge Narue for the final battle. The final one has Chijinda take over from the Director and enlarge the remaining girls to reduce humanity's population.
  • Naughty Tentacles: Invoked by the "Tentacle Rape" attack, which is actually more a case of Combat Tentacles.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Kyon invokes the trope by name inside Erika's stomach.
  • Nintendo Hard: If you're not careful, mice can murder you if you stray too far without grinding. Not to mention the widespread status inflicting enemies, as well as the instant death scenes you can trigger.
  • Noble Demon: Lady Masque.
  • Nonstandard Game Over: Plenty of them, usually involving giantess-related deaths. Sometimes you survive... as a plaything.
  • Panty Shot
  • Peninsula of Power Leveling: There's an area on Death Mountain that, early in the game, spawns endgame animal monsters. Using a certain Disc One Nuke, it's possible to accelerate your Level Grinding a fair distance, but don't do too much of it.
  • Perky Female Minion: Erika
  • Press X to Die: When you're shrunk, save often to separate slots. The game does not play fair.
  • Psychic Powers: Chijinda develops them early on, and they form his personal suite of special abilities.
  • Psycho for Hire: Kanon doesn't care about the Society's vision, goals or organizational culture. She just likes to hurt people.
  • Quirky Miniboss Squad: The Four Heavenly Queens.
  • Redemption Equals Death: Possibly. The Furyou Brothers can make a Heroic Sacrifice to ensure that you get to the enlarger. It's possible to avert this by defeating Reina, however.
  • Romantic Two-Girl Friendship: The Vice-Director and Erika, to the point that they're able to channel The Power of Love in their boss fight. Digging into the story makes it clear that they also share this relationship with the Director.
  • Schoolgirl Lesbians: Kyon accuses Kanon of "getting off on making other girls call her Onee-Sama," but it's unconfirmed whether this is the case.
  • Shrink Ray: What you run into after the first quarter of the game and a weapon of choice for the villainesses.
  • Swallowed Whole: Usually a Nonstandard Game Over when done by a giantess, though on one occasion it's required for the plot to progress. Also an attack used by slightly less super-scaled monsters.
  • Too Dumb to Live: When you're shrunk, you can die quite often just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You can also die by deliberately getting too close to a giantess, in which case you have nobody to blame but yourself. This is even Lampshaded if you get killed by the first giant schoolgirl you meet: the game offers you a Teach Me, Narue-Sensei! session, in which Narue points out that you pretty much had to have gotten yourself squished on purpose.
  • Tsundere: The Vice-Director, big time. The Director, Kanon and Reina also have the "Tsundere Appeal" attack, but none of them precisely fits the trope.
  • Units Not to Scale: Individual intestinal bacteria act as opponents to 2cm tall heroes, and enchanted mitochondria are about the size of bullfrogs. (Outside of the Womb Level, there's a -fairly- standard scale in use.)
  • Universal Driver's License: Kyon's suspension of disbelief is shredded yet again when Chijinda suggests driving tanks. Chijinda tells him not to worry about the details.
  • Useless Useful Spell: Usually averted. Status effects are extremely useful against bosses; in fact, poison is by far the most powerful and reliable weapon you can use against giantesses.
  • Utopia Justifies the Means
  • Victoria's Secret Compartment: Narue provides this convenient and comfortable means of getting around.
  • Villainous Breakdown: The Director completely loses it when she's defeated.
  • Villain Pedigree: Unrelated animals and supernatural creatures --> Big Creepy-Crawlies --> Mecha-Mooks --> A.S. Members.
  • We Can Rule Together: The Big Bad offers the player a position within the Society at one point. If you accept, it's a Nonstandard Game Over. She offers it again near the end after you know the full extent of her plans, but you aren't given the option to accept this time.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: The majority of the leading villains.
  • White Magician Girl: Narue, who serves as The Medic and as Chijinda's plucky assistant.
  • Womb Level: One of the villainesses eats you. How do you get out? You don't want to know.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The Vice Director. Needless to say, her past isn't exactly sunshine.
  • Woolseyism: Much of the original Japanese script was simple and bare bones dialogue. Several lines were expanded or added in the English translation.
  • Worthy Opponent: The Vice-Director and most of the Heavenly Queens view Chijinda this way. In the former case, it leads to a rather blatant crush.
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