Le tourbillon noir

I forgot all about this show untilll I saw it on Boomerang. Then I remembered the greatness. THe show was about this guy named Ren, and his two friends who are trying to find 6 treasures that will let them stop these evil stop called darkwater (kinda like intellegent oil). It had morals, and all that. Shame it was never resolved. A revival would be awesome... But if you want to see an ending, track down one of the copies of POD the video game, for either SNES, or Sega Genesis. I would say the Genesis one is better.

This show was such a good fantasy action/adventure with great effort put into both its animation and its world-building and had an all-star cast as well.

But I guess that was what ended up prematurely ending our adventure with prince Ren and his loyal crew of misfits in the search of the thirteen treasures of Rule and the fight against the villainous pirate Bloth and the overall baddie of dark water. Only twenty-one episodes were aired, and what we got was excellent but now unfinished.

The Pirates of Dark Water remains one of the saddest cancellations of a TV-show, because every minute of the show was dedicated to building this imaginative world with its own creatures, clothing, language, culture and we could've got so much more of that and fulfill the quest.

"The Pirates of Dark Water" has to be one of the most overlooked animated shows ever. It is so much fun, unique and very original. Sadly, the show got axed before the story had resolved fully, so it was a real shame that something so good ended feeling incomplete. That said, I liked the idea of the plot, and the episode ideas revolving around it. Dark water threatening to take over the world, and a hero seeking to retrieve the magical items used to prevent it, that is quite an intriguing concept. The music is wonderful and the episodes are full of adventure, humour and even swashbuckling. The scripts were surprisingly mature and has some good morals. The animation is amazingly detailed, very vibrant in colour and detailed in character features and backgrounds. And the characters are great, Ren is a very likable hero very like Luke SkyWalker, and Bloth is a great adversary, quite a complex character if you really think about it. And Tula is beautiful. These characters were brought to life by a terrific voice cast, especially Brock Peters as Bloth who shows a good deal of menace, but also from Jodi Benson, George Newbern, Frank Welker, Hector Elizondo, Jim Cummings and Tim Curry. In conclusion, this is a truly great show, that I feel was unfairly treated. It is better than a vast majority of the animated shows airing now. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Just to clarify a few things...What became "The Pirates of Dark Water" originally aired as the mini-series "Dark Water". It lasted one week and ran in the after-school slot on Fox starting on a Monday and finishing on the following Friday. This was during what I like to call "the golden era" of Fox. (The Simpsons, In Living Color, etc.) Anyway, here on IMDb it credits Roddy McDowall as the voice of Niddler for all 21 episodes of the series. This isn't correct. He was actually the voice of Niddler for the original mini-series and NOT for the ensuing series. His voice, in my opinion, was way cooler than that contributed by Frank Welker. (Sorry Frank) Welker's whinier version of the Niddler voice was dubbed onto the five original episodes when it was released for Saturday morning television. A lot of people didn't come to know the series until its Saturday morning incarnation and, therefore, never had the pleasure of hearing McDowall's Niddler. I remember being extremely disappointed watching the series and hearing a different, less cultivated voice. It really changed the character completely. Unfortunately, none of the uploads that I've encountered on the internet are of the original mini-series. Also, as of January 2009, it seems that the great fan site piratesofdarkwater.net is now regrettably defunct.

This was a wonderfully imaginative cartoon. The camaraderie between the three main characters was reminiscent of Luke, Han and Leia in Star Wars. Bloth was a great villain, part Captain Hook, part Jabba the Hutt.