Yaoi Meat Dimension: let's talk about sweet pool

My first nitro+chiral visual novel (and also my first BLVN, unless you count Hanachirasu), at long last! I haven’t read that much BL in my life, and most of my knowledge of omegaverse is second-hand save the odd manga here and there, so I must admit I’m kinda out of my depth here—that said, it’s an amazing VN.

The game opens on a bible verse, which gives you some clues of what's to come: "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."(hear that one from my relatives a lot when I say I don’t want kids). You are then given two options, which I called “rain” and “meat” (their actual names are reason and instinct, apparently). Hovering over Reason(some blue neurons on the bottom left of the screen) makes a sort of static noise(like rain), and doing the same for Instinct(red mass on the top right of the screen) makes a meaty frame beating like a heart overlay on the screen. These affect Youji's actions and what ending you're going to reach. Obviously I first picked meat, then immediately wondered if that would give me a bad end less than a minute in...(it didn’t, but I decided to follow a guide from then on :p)

The soundtrack was really impressive. Lots of bangers. The feeling of going through Zenya's ending and then being hit with VLG was AWESOME. Gotta download some of the songs one of these days…

The story itself is gory, violent, kinda suffocating...I loved it. The horror isn’t so much in the ritual of an unknowable meat-god as it is in the denial of autonomy, in having your body change into something else out of your control—it’s just like puberty, isn't it. That's a reocurring theme, as well as pregnancy. There's desire that makes people lose their mind and become monsters—and companionship, even warmth, that's shared in this inhumanity. There’s something kinda beautiful about that...or maybe I’m just weird. I had tears in my eyes at a few points...

I'm not sure if I could say that I had fun reading the h-scenes. I find it a bit hard to describe. They were insane, that's for sure. Either way, I kept thinking that someone has to teach Youji about maxi pads...

There are six endings: one for Zenya, one for Makoto, and a whopping four for Tetsuo. Personally I preferred Red Road over the True Ending. It’s rather fatalistic, but I like that. It also has some of the best cgs in the whole game. It feels kind of...religious, which makes sense given the whole context. I especially love that scene when their kid opens his eyes for the first time—it's so haunting.

It's definitely not a VN for everyone, but from the synopsis it seemed like it was right up my alley, and I ended up loving it. Guess I'm going to become a frequent N+C reader from now on...