me pegou desprevenida sobre os temas abordados mas me conquistou pra krl na ost (que me passou uma sensação mt nostálgica??). tenho algumas criticas, mas a vn faz um bom trabalho no que ela se dispôs a ser: uma vn de horror e gore bl, ou seja só desgraça e putaria, sendo a primeira vn q me fez trancar o cu em certas cenas.
eu desenvolvi um carinho mt grande pelo youji slk esse mlk sofreu mais q jesus e queria que o tetsuo fosse pra casa do krl achei bem meh a relação dos dois mas acredito que o proposito do jogo era esse msm. acho que tinha um potencial bem maior principalmente com a lore do universo, mas foi bom

Sweet pool more like sweet poop (this is not hate, this is legit what is it about )

I was looking forward to Sweet pool, because I heard it's very similar to Saya no Uta, which I guess it is? Hey, Gen Urobuchi did help around this BL series too.

Now this is good visual novel, but unfortunately I didn't enjoyed it as I did with other Nitro+chiral games.
While the story and plot were much more serious compared to other Nitro+chiral games, I didn't really had that much. The art style was very bland and the BL themes were kinda weak.

My main complaint about this game is the way choices are made. Choosing between red and blue color is just not for me.

It's still a very depressing and tragic story. Trust me, it really is. There is no happy ending, at all.

It's a shame that I really didn't enjoy this one that much as I thought I would. But hey, maybe one day I will replay it and will like it.

Sweet Pool is a true act of artistry through transgression; it employs a variety of extremely disturbing subject matter depicted by rather visceral means including, but not limited to, sexual assault, torture, self-cutting, cannibalism, and necrophilia, in a manner that is not always mechanically necessary but rather used as means of metaphor for the emotional conflicts of the character. (By the way, consider that your content warning) It’s a game I felt incredibly unclean after playing the fanslation several years ago, and I still felt unclean after playing the official translation a couple years ago. This is not an uplifting game about how it’s okay to be gay, rather this is a validation of the pain and trauma that many queer men have experienced in a way that feels incredibly pointed.

It all starts with the setting, conveniently a Catholic school. The game weaponizes Christian symbolism to represent paranoia; it’s mentioned early in the game that the students don’t actively believe in Christian teachings, but still passively do in a manner that reflects many cultural attitudes of the era: no longer popular to be openly spiteful towards LGBT people, but the hateful words of before are something that is still passively believed by a majority of the population. Indeed, the story of Sodom is constantly invoked throughout the VN as a plot point, as a reminder of what God is often taught as believing about gay people.

Now, the core element of the body horror being “crapping maggots out your butthole” sounds incredibly alienating as a premise, and it is completely by design. Youji’s repeated “cleansings” leave him feeling disgusted by and dissociated from his own body, it’s his “dirty little secret” that he can’t express to others, at which point SP becomes not just a game about men-loving-men and reveals itself to also be a transmasculine narrative. At this point, as a cis man I’m deferring to Vrai Kaiser’s excellent article on the game, specifically the sections “Your Body, the Enemy” and “Diving Deep”. It’s a great article all-around even if I don’t agree with all the points, and I would be remiss if I didn’t concede on at least these well-thought-out points. (https://www.fanbyte.com/features/sweet-pool-best-cronenbergian-erotic-horror-game/)

It’s a good time to bring up the game’s interactive system as well: instead of being presented text choices at branches, you are merely presented with two lights at the corner of the screen representing instinct and reason. There are no words that can help you understand what they necessarily mean in each context. What’s really neat is that selecting exclusively one or the other leads you to the two bad endings belonging to the non-true love interests (more on that in a bit) that are uniquely suited for someone who only adheres to one. Selected only reason? Youji dies in a manner karmically suited to someone who cannot defend his own feelings and compromises himself way too much for the sake of “getting along”. Picked only instinct? Youji goes out in a horrifically passionate flame without any regard for his own self-preservation. These two endings contain the most disgusting content in the entire VN, and yet they work so effectively as pleas to not be like Youji nor his faux-love interests in these scenarios. One ending, the “all reason” ending, has some immensely triggering imagery to me that has managed to haunt me in a way that has lead to being a better person, because I never want to become like that.

So, Youji’s harem isn’t really a harem, so much as a pack of hormone-addled teens that can barely contain their desires to have sex with him and fight over their possessiveness. There’s a conversation to be had about BL’s tendency to overuse sexual assault, but something about SP that causes me to be more lenient is, again, tying back to its unique insight of the lives of gay men. They are all literally the only men-loving men that each other knows, and in particular Youji is the only, well, bottom in the story. I say this not to justify any of the more depraved sexual acts they perform on Youji unwillingly, but rather as an understanding that this is a very extreme metaphorical depiction of the desperation queer men can feel to find a partner, compounded with their hostile environment basically making it a miracle they discovered each other in the first place. They’re all convinced they’re each other’s only chance at being intimately understood and take pretty drastic measures in misguided attempts to assure it.

There’s a lot more I could talk about, such as the recurring theme of the characters being anxious of not living up to their legacies (hint: that’s also a gay-coded thing), the more particular struggles in communication between Youji and his canon love interest Tetsuo, the heart-wrenching true ending that served as a testament to all the gay men who couldn’t live to find their other and the gut-punching credits theme “Miracles May”, a jarringly gentle song performed by Kanako Itou that encourages reflection on what just transpired. For a rather short VN (it can be completed in under 15 hours), it’s so thematically rich and emotionally impactful. If you think you have the stomach for it, please play this game (and with the 18+ patch) for an incredibly introspective and, in my opinion, important piece of LGBT fiction.

P.S. I actually own official GIFT plushes of Youji and Tetsuo. They cost a lot and it's incredibly difficult to find someone even willing to sell them online but the fact I got the pair together was a small miracle in an of itself and I treasure them as my rarest official plushes.

This game (somewhat understandably) gets the rep of just being that weird yaoi mpreg omegaverse gore game. And I get that, because that is a large part of it, but it's also disappointing. This game has a lot more to offer than just the handful of niche kinks it appeals to.

It's a game about love, fate, religious fanaticism, devotion, gender, death, birth, chronic illness, mental illness, sacrifice, prejudice, queerness, ableism, adulthood.

It's a coming of age drama by way of Cronenberg. It shamelessly renders violence erotic and eroticism violent. It's a psychological horror and it's a heartwarming romance. Yes, it is that one game about the guy who gives birth to meat babies from his ass.

And it might be one of the most beautiful stories ever told.

i dont think i would ever read another visual novel like sweet pool. i read it back a few years ago, and while i'd attribute my nitroplus chiral craze to dramatical murder, sweet pool definitely hightened it.
one of the few issues i have with it are: i wish there was more catholic guilt and more catholic imagery! the entire premise of the game is experienced inside a japanese catholic school, but i feel like it wasn't used to it's full potential like it should. no catholic guilt, few catholic imagery, nothing. while i do love catholicism as an aesthetic, i feel like it was wasted potential to not expand more on how catholicism affects the protagonists.
overall, while i don't think it's art is very remarkable (though it is VERY 2008 yaoi, with young boys looking like full growns adults), the story is definitely one of nitroplus chiral best so far.
extremely disturbing and breathtaking, i couldn't help but find myself desperately obsessed with tetsuo and youji's rocky, sad and loving relationship. the way they end up growing extremely fond of each other made my heart ache like nothing else.
i definitely recommend reading it if you're looking for angsty romance with an extremely captivating and disturbing story.