The Pirates of Dark Water

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.

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.

I rented this on VHS, then bought the toys, then collected the comics, it was so good. I never knew there was a TV show until after it was gone and unavailable. I'd buy it on DVD in a second.

The concept was fairly unique, dark water taking over the world and the hero going on a quest for magical items to stop its progress. It was like a fantasy take on pirates of the Spanish Main. The ships had really neat concepts, like the hero's ship which could glide for short distances, gigantic waterfalls in the ocean, and some sort of gas gun that worked by stimulating a living creature to produce knockout gas. The main bad guy, Bloth, had a ship which was actually a gargantuan carcass of a long dead sea creature, so it looked cool as well.

It had the same set of characters as a lot of fantasy films, close to Star Wars, but the characters were amazingly three dimensional for a cartoon. Niddler was likable, but you were never sure he would be on your side when the going got rough, and not in a typical cowardly save-his-own-skin type of way, but a maybe-he-really-is-evil type of way.

"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

This show was fantastic!!! I watched when I was five, and it is the best animated show in cartoon history. I think the reason that the cartoon was so good is because it was the first animated series that show a form of plot that continued throughout the episodes. The characters were very well developed and the story line was outstanding, then again, I love almost all fantasy stories. The story was original, and it was sooooo good. Even thought the show was amazing, the series was never finished, there are only 21 episodes in all. Also it is not aired anymore, except on Boomerang and Australian Cartoon Network, so not every one can watch it. I wish the series would be finished, and released on DVD. If you search the web, using Pirates of Dark Water, then many fan bases will pop up, and you can find a link on some of the sites to petition for PoDW's release commercially!!!! Again, this is the best cartoon I have ever seen, and it is the only one that my mom would actually watch with me!