There’s nothing like catching up with a cartoon series that you watched as a kid. There’s always that question of whether or not that childhood series is legitimately any good after all these years.
The Pirates of Dark Water definitely has its moments where I’m very surprised at how well it holds up. Then there are plenty of moments where the series becomes generic and dull.
For those of you who don’t know the story, Pirates of Dark Water follows prince Ren as he tries to seek out the 13 Treasures of Rule. These treasures will save the planet from being devoured by dark water. Along the way Ren has to defeat Lord Bloth who wants to use the 13 Treasures of Rule to control the dark water and take over the planet.
Looking back upon it now, the series has this sort of Pirates of the Caribbean flare while remaining a little more magical.
The first disc is where the best episodes can be found. The animation is extremely high quality for an early 1990’s TV show. In this collection disc 2 seems like it was encoded incorrectly. There are a lot of jagged edges around characters and their environment. The episodes on disc 3 and disc 4 appear to be much lower budget than the ones on the first disc. They lose that energy that was a part of the first disc. While disc 3 and disc 4 don’t have the digital compression issue that disc 2 has, discs 3 and 4 seem like they were transferred from a VHS tape.
Sadly the 13 Treasures of Rule are never completely found. The series just ends with a random episodic story and that’s it.
As the complete series DVD collection I would have hoped for some sort of behind the scenes featurette, but there aren’t any to be had.
The Pirates of Dark Water really has some great material that I would love to become a movie. Since the first disc has the best episodes and the rest of the episodes kind of fall flat, I’d recommend to rent or buy the title used if you can.
