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.

the main selling point of animal crossing shouldn't be that it's a building simulator, it should be the interactions you have with the villagers and getting to experience seasonal events alongside them. this game has a very pretty exterior that might charm someone into buying it but when you open it up and look inside it's got absolutely nothing to actually do. the updates that it got were kind of fun to experience in real time (i got this game at launch originally) but years later they added nothing besides gyroids. like i can't remember a single thing that was added besides gyroids, which should've been there from the beginning?

yeah, the cities people are able to build in this are kind of cool, but it really just spits in the original spirit of animal crossing as a "small town social simulator". if you can control everything about your residents' lives like WHERE THEIR HOUSE GOES and they never do anything besides saying the same four passive and genial lines (the A and B personality subtypes do little to mitigate how stale villagers have become) then what reason is there to really play this

most irritatingly of all, this is the first game in the series that allows you to choose your skin tone (and hair texture) instead of just tanning during the summer so i can't even really be like "pick up the original or new leaf instead" because a lot of people like the ability to actually play as themselves. thank you nintendo for delivering a completely mediocre product with features that people have wanted for years so they're forced to play it anyways

tl;dr: this game is literally just the phrase "why does studio ghibli food look so good" and a whole bunch of air.

if you didn't buy it during the pandemic when people were actually excited to play it, then keep in mind that you will be burning 60 dollars. the best way to preserve your enjoyment is to not speed through the progression because believe me there is very little to actually do when you're done with that

i miss my boyfriend who's really handsome and swedish and i wish we could go to each other's islands but i can't and that's partially why i am so angry while writing this review

Apart from the fact that it feels like a loveless Animal Crossing, there's something that won't let me go.

In the city there is no crime, no cars or other traffic, no demos and no border controls (at least there are none when you enter the city). So why is there a policeman?

Actually, it's quite obvious. He is there to monitor the residents. Furthermore, since there is no judiciary and he alone embodies the executive, I assume that the old woman who represents the legislature has only de jure power but the game takes place in a de facto police state.

Now you can take that seriously or not.

the one that started it all. i have a distinct memory of the winter of my third or fourth grade, around the time a blizzard was going in new york. i remember being curled up in my bed and playing harvest moon sunshine islands and style savvy all night. when 5 am rolled around, i heard my dad get up to shovel the walk, as the snow was starting to cease. i knew i couldn't contribute anything, but i got up to go outside with him and help shovel (really, it was just pushing snow around).
"why were you up?" my dad asked.
"i was playing style savvy" i said. "the clothing game."
my dad was shoveling in front of me as i was kicking snow away with my boots. "all night?"
"yeah. all night"
"must be fun"
"yeah, it's so good. and it never ends either. you can keep having customers forever."
in the freezing cold weather i began to tell my dad all about my style savvy (and harvest moon) escapades that night. i don't think he cared. it doesn't really matter that he didn't care. but the point is i rambled on and on and by the time i was mainly done, most of the walk was shoveled.
i went back upstairs and played a little more and then fell asleep, and then woke up around noon. instead of notifying my family i decided to play more style savvy while in bed and everyone left me alone thinking i was catching up on my sleep until dinner time that day.

style savvy, the original, will always make me think of that winter feeling, even though i played it literally everywhere. in school. in the car. at a funeral once i think. it has a cozy vibe to me that most ds games cannot match.
is it the nostalgia? maybe. the game isn't perfect. it looks like nintendo 64 and the story is pretty barebones, also i swear that last fashion show is rigged. but still. i love it. i love you style savvy. i wish i coulda dated dominic