Looking back and looking ahead. (Also, merchandise on Etsy!)

Firstly, thank you.

I never say this sort of thing enough. And most of you are strangers–some of you have sent me very kind e-mails (and every single one has been deeply appreciated), some of you have gone on to become social media buddies, online friends, and even close offline friends–but it’s so heartening to see how a shared childhood/young-adult memory from 15-20 years ago has inspired and encouraged people’s imaginations, and I’m really honored and grateful that your comments and energy and support have continued to feed this website along.

This, on the other hand, is something I say repeatedly, and I do mean it–this website is a culmination of the efforts of a lot of friendly, nostalgic fans (as well as former Hanna-Barbera employees!). It isn’t just me–it never has been and it never will be. You guys send in the awesomeness (whether that’s actual info/media/merchandise/etc., or even cheerful reminiscing), or post it here and there online, and it all finds it way here. (Eventually, anyway.)

Why am I waxing nostalgic like this?

This is why.

Site visitors: country breakdown

(click to enlarge.)

This is the breakdown of visitors to Always The Quest over the last three years, when I installed Google Analytics. I just viewed it in full for the first time tonight.

Over 70,000 visits.
Over 150 countries and territories. There are PoDW fans on every continent!
And this is in just the last 3 years. (This site has been online since the summer of 1996–almost 17 years! I was 15 then, and I’m 31 now. Holy moly.)

(The color is the relative number of visitors from each country. The US was the source of over 40,000 of those visitors, hence how dark the shading is. BUT STILL!)

These days the site averages 40-50 visits a day. Not bad, considering the obscurity of the material. Definitely lower than its peak average of 100+ a day, during my undergrad days. I’m not desperate for thousands of views, but I would like to improve the searchability of the site. Nearly 40,000 of the visits were via searches. There were only a handful of searches that didn’t relate to the show, but I still see where I can improve from skimming people’s search terms. (Among the more interesting: “action poses” and “poop deck.” Ha! Also, there were 4 searches for “pirates of dark water tickling.” I don’t think I want to know what that’s about…)

ANYWAY.

This is still pretty tremendous. At least, it is to me. Though our community isn’t nearly as cohesive as those that have more content to talk about, I’m so glad it’s still around. And I’m especially excited to see where it goes next.

Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart.

* * * * *

Holy fitting segues, Batman. 😉

Next up: I would love to make some big changes to the site this year. (Possibly by gutting it and then rebuilding it piece by piece. Tempting…) And this is where you all come in.

I want to give you a heads-up about this: would you be willing to take a survey for me? About the site, what you value and don’t value, what you’d like to see that isn’t here and what you’d like to have removed or modified/updated, that sort of thing. I still need to put it together. But this site is for you all–it’s a repository of info, but it can be so much more than that.

For example, people (not me, but others) have described this site’s function/purpose in a number of different ways:
– source of plentiful info
– campaigning to finish the show
– community for the fans
– a shrine/time capsule
– digging up the behind-the-scenes view of the show

And more. And some of these were actually quite a surprise to me. What do you all think? I don’t want to put stuff up that many of you really don’t care about.

Do start thinking about it. 🙂

* * * * *

And, last but not least!

Etsy seller DanielleMeetsWorld is selling two handmade PoDW wallets. They’re upcycled, using pages from PoDW comic #4, “Break-Up” (episode #3, yes, but comic #4, as episode #1 was spread out over 2 comics), and intentionally DIY. Even better: part of the price goes to benefit worthy charities. One, two.

If you’re interested in your own copy of the comics (or even the action figures), they are always, always available on eBay. 🙂

And that’s all for now! As always, thank you for reading, and for showing your support just through your visit. Much love to you all!

Quarterly update: international openings and character commentary

Hey, everyone, long time no see… 🙂 This is still not a website update (sorry…)–I’ve been keeping a little too busy as of late, like to the point that I don’t even turn my home computer on more than a couple of times a week these days. I’m very eager for things to settle down soon.

But I did want to post some fun finds from around the web…

Firstly, a series of international PoDW openings on YouTube: Las Piratas de las Aguas Negras (Spanish), the Swedish intro, A Sötét Víz Kalózai (Hungarian), and ~???????? ???????? (Japanese–this hilarious pop song intro by Hironobu Kageyama that will now be stuck in my head for the rest of the day. By the way, check out the “international” tagged posts to get more info on the Japanese version of the show).

Also, this great comment, from Tumblr user nijireiki

Man, I really wanna do a rewrite comic of Pirates of Dark Water.

Like, CLEARLY there were some executive meetings to make Ioz nicer, curse less, and stop referencing whorehouses; to make Niddler less of a racial critique and more of a buffoonish stereotype; to make Ren paler, less “femme,” and more competent as a leader (rather than a naïve lighthouse boy who assembles a relatively equal TEAM); and to make Tula sweeter, more helpless/less competent, less creepy (ecomancers have… side effects that come with their skillset), less revolutionary, more “femme”/scantily clad, paler, and all-around healer/mystic/team girl. (AND to make the bad guys less threatening, though, interestingly for a ’90s cartoon, death— even onscreen death— was not phased out of the show entirely.)

I think it would just be awesome to restore some of that stuff, you know? A lot of worldbuilding clearly went into Dark Water, and it’s a damn shame the show never finished and so few people know about it. :/

You know, I did wonder about whether all ecomancers’ legs sprout (or transform into) roots and branches, the way Teron’s did. He didn’t have the incandescent lightning effect that Tula did, so my assumption was that it’s a little different for everyone–kind of an organic manifestation that depends on the person.

But anyway, that bit aside, the rest of the commentary is spot-on: the characters did change rather dramatically throughout the series. I’d even argue that the three main chunks of the series (released in 1991, 1992, and 1993, respectively) show noticeable differences: episodes 1-5 are the most solid and balanced representations, episodes 6-13 are definitely more watered-down and geared towards kids, and episodes 14-21 trend towards the darker and/or more grown-up side with some of their themes and action sequences.

Though, then again, a woman with a 17-year-long obsession over a man (and then that man’s son) who died a horrible death by melting into a pool of Dark Water was in that middle block of episodes, as was a wizard being killed by his own ghastly creations after using his magic to kill many people in order to steal their gold (but yet again, that episode also has the monumentally awful and OBVIOUSLY watered-down line, “You fight like your captain, Swar–not very well!”)…but that whole block of episodes did focus more heavily on moral themes, and you can derive very clear ones from each episode.

But then in those last 8 episodes, Ioz’s temper towards Tula waxed and waned (raging at her one minute, then grudgingly acknowledging that she was capable and worthy of respect, and asking Ren not to tell Tula that he had admitted he was “a greedy fool”), Tula became a bit more badass again (though still watered-down by her obvious interest in Ren and her jealousy over him expressing interest in other women–but tempered by the fact that she really stole the show when she fake-betrayed her friends in order to protect them from the Delpha Warriors and to try to secure the Eighth Treasure of Rule), and Ren made some tough moral decisions (not leaving Bloth to die when he could have, learning greatly from his own experience of being transformed into a dagron) and grew a lot in the process. (Note that I’m not saying a word about Niddler, because I’m really irritated that he was such a great and multi-dimensional character in episodes 1-5–embittered and damaged by his service to Bloth, but a loyal and true friend with deep convictions and moral fiber–and then was relegated to the irritating, selfish, childish comic relief after that.)

Also, it’s interesting, but I guess not that surprising, that pretty much the entirety of the character development happened with the protagonists. It was still a show from the era of wanting to proper delineate good and evil, so the bad guys were simply that. They had backstories and motivations and personalities that were uniquely theirs (especially in episodes 1-5–Mantus’s cool “Of course, sir. When you let the enemy think he’s in charge, it’s easy.” line still is pretty freaking cool), but at the end of the day, they were The Bad Guys. Period.

Okay, enough of that for now. It’s nice to reflect on the show in terms of the era in which it was conceived, and in terms of more “grown-up” sensibilities (I’m now older than Ioz! haha). And it’s great to have conversations with people who continue to rediscover and reflect on the show in their own ways. I do appreciate how enthusiastic you all are–the e-mails and comments have been wonderful and I’ve seriously enjoyed the discussions we’ve had over the years. Thank you for your lasting support over all this time. 🙂 Hopefully I’ll actually update the site one of these days (weeks? months? years? sigh), clean it up, and integrate the bulk of the info from the blog, and make it up to you!

Video clip of the Dishonor cut scene!

Hey, everyone! I’m excited to offer you something the web has never seen before (as far as I know). 🙂

So I mentioned that I left my English-language Dark Water DVD rips at home. However, I discovered the Japanese Dark Water DVD rip on my hard drive! Which happens to include that one very insightful cut scene from episode 2!

The original file and one with English subtitles are now available for download (and the English subtitled one is on YouTube). They’re Quicktime .mov files.

The subtitles are actually the original English dialogue, as opposed to translations of the Japanese. (Why translate a translation, right?) It’s probably useful to know, though, that while the Japanese dialogue is a solid translation of the English, there are differences. I will edit this with a faithful translation of the Japanese, once I clarify some points. The translation follows after the jump.

(In hindsight, perhaps I should have made a standalone subtitle text file. If you’d really like one, to subtitle this file in other languages, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.)

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Japanese PoDW review

The first of the two PoDW VHS Yahoo! Japan auctions I won arrived last week (wooo!), so when I was at my parents’ house this weekend, I hooked up our VCR and checked it out. (I love how this was express-mailed and arrived in a matter of days, but the box of stuff that I shipped when I was visiting Japan in mid-March hasn’t arrived yet.) I’m mailing back and forth with the seller of the five individual episode videos, but he’s not being too flexible with my sorry-I-don’t-live-in-Japan-so-please-have-pity-on-me plea, in terms of shipping and payment; I’m concerned I may just have to give those up. Oh, well–at least I have this!

The video I received was the one I thought was “The Saga Begins” (the 90-minute edited movie version of episodes 1-5), when in fact it was the full-length Dark Water miniseries dubbed in Japanese. Sweet! It’s on a VHS, and in fair quality, but I will totally have it converted to DVD to rip clips from it. If people are interested in creating fansubs, I can help with the translations, though I’ve never done video editing myself before.

(And I will be converting my VHS copies of the English Dark Water miniseries to DVD, too. I think there’s a healthy amount of interest in what the show originally was over here. I only just realized that our local Indian grocery offers that service!)

It was surreal–it’s been quite a while since I last watched the episodes, so while I knew what would happen, I was focusing on listening for the dialogue, and it was almost like new all over again. It was a lot of fun!

Click the link below to read the full review (yes, I took notes, shut up–all about minor changes and Japanese cultural/linguistic notes).

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Some more Japanese info

(Thank goodness WordPress saves drafts–my browser crashed when I was writing this this weekend.)

Here’s something else: the actual Japanese title isn’t merely Dark Water, but “Michi no Umi he Dark Water,” or “To the undiscovered/mysterious sea: Dark Water”. Neat, eh? It had a limited airing, on NHK-BS2 on satellite TV. I don’t think they aired all 21 episodes, based on the air dates I found, but I don’t know that for sure.

And it had unique opening and closing theme music, sung by Hironobu Kageyama, who might or might not have been Ren’s voice actor (there’s also a guy named Takeshi Kusao cited as voicing Ren).
– The opening theme is “Aisubeki no Senshitachi”, or Beloved Soldiers.
– The closing theme is “Senshitachi no Kyuusoku”, or Soldiers’ Rest.
They’re just as cheesy and generic as they seem from the titles–I found clips of both songs (scroll down to the beige box with two sets of links; in the second list, 5 is the opening theme and 6 is the closing–each will spawn a pop-up window). For those who can read Japanese, here are the lyrics for the opening and closing. Set your browser’s character encoding to Shift-JIS for these.) Look for them if you ever go to a karaoke parlor in Japan–you just might find them!

That’s all for now, but that’s plenty!

Japanese merchandise

I just hit the freaking JACKPOT. An e-mail from a fan about Japanese releases of the show made me realize, “wait, if I can speak, understand, and type in Japanese, why not do a Google.jp search for Japanese info on the show?”

There isn’t a lot out there, but I’ve found Yahoo! auctions for videos, and totally original images of the Japanese video art, within my first 10 minutes of looking.

I think I may try to beg and bribe my friends still in Japan to bid on these for me, since shipping and bidding and everything are probably domestic only.

And…dude. On joysound.com (Joysound is one of the major karaoke machine/music providers there), there seems to be a JAPANESE SONG relating to the show, possibly sung by Ren’s voice actor, titled “Aisubeki Senshitachi” (“Lovable Soldiers”). Oh my god.

That’s about it for now. But that’s plenty! I only wish I’d thought of this while I actually lived there. Japanese VHS format is NTSC (I can’t remember if I tried playing videos from here over there or vice versa, though), so if my friends do consent to bid, win the videos, and ship them to me, hopefully I can view them here. We’ll see!

(By the way, I’m back from Austin and Japan; I’ve replied to all the messages I’ve received and kept an eye on my spam folder, so if you haven’t gotten a reply, please send your message again. Thanks!)

Wow

The premise: a handful of mystical treasures are scattered across a land from their original post, bringing darkness everywhere. A blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy journeys with a girl in touch with nature and her pet bird, and a strong, broadsword-wielding older man, to recover these treasures.

And guess what? I’m not describing PoDW!

There’s this anime I’ve caught on TV a few times–I’d never really paid attention past seeing that the art’s pretty. It’s called Deltra Quest or something along those lines. Instead of Ren’s pouch and the secret niche on the Wraith, there’s a magic belt that the main character wears that the seven scattered jewels are fit into. They’ve found the first two as of today’s episode.

I simultaneously am amused and annoyed by shows that completely rip off the PoDW premise, most likely inadvertently, and then get a lot more attention than PoDW ever did.

Bulgarian info

There is every chance that this could be outdated–I’m finally on the verge* of putting the site online, but all that remains is ironing out the issues with the WordPress template for the index blog, and actually putting up all the content updates. Maria Deninska very kindly sent me an e-mail in November that I’m only now putting up, and in it, she passed on the great news that PoDW is on the air in Bulgaria! (That would explain the large number of hits from Bulgaria that this site has gotten. I was really curious about that.)

PoDW is airing on the national channel, Kanal 1, during the JETIX animation programming block. There’s more info at the Bulgarian-language website for the TV channel. The series is on every Saturday and Sunday at 8:00 AM, Eastern European time. However, I just checked it today and didn’t see the name listed. I’m not at all familiar with Bulgarian, though, so I could be mistaken.

Here’s an article on PoDW written for its 10th anniversary by Nenko Genov, a big fan in Bulgaria who I’m friends with and who’s sent some really good contributions for the site over the years.

* “on the verge” = “another 6 months from now”…sorry it’s taken so long! I’m the webmaster and graphic designer of my prefecture’s JET group, and I’ve had a lot on my plate lately

Old blog archive: 22 June 2004

OMG. FRENCH DARK WATER POSTER. (I love referral hits–saw the poster on a thread of a French messageboard that’d linked to my site, whee!)

http://albator.com.fr/AlWebSite/maquette.php?Id=dessins35.php – scroll down to the bottom.

And another link to check out, when I’m at a computer that I can download files onto, just in case that might be the French theme song: (June 23) This link has the music from the original Dark Water opening! 😀 It’s a French site, so look for “tourbillon noir” instead of “dark water.”

http://musiques.uru.org/t.html

The French title of the show is “Le tourbillon noir”–I took Spanish in high school, but I know enough French to know that “noir” is “black”–I looked up “tourbillon” and it means “vortex” or “whirlpool” or “whirlwind.” Interesting. 😀

I know the Spanish title is “Las Piratas de Aguas Negras,” which is a literal translation: “Pirates of Black Waters.”

I got an e-mail from a guy in Denmark (thanks, Allan!) who let me know that the title there is “Piraterne fra det m�rke hav”–I need to e-mail him back and ask him to break it down word for word.

I’ve also got a Japanese ad with the title on it…the Japanese IME isn’t installed on this machine, so I can’t type the katakana characters, but the ad lists the title as “da-ku uo-ta” (“Dark Water”), which could just be for the miniseries, but I really don’t know.

Eee, this is so cool. 😀 I’ve got to mention something on the main page asking for international info on the show–I idly thought about it before, but I don’t know why I never put more effort into it! Or if anybody who’s seen a non-English version of the show reads this, could you comment with the show’s title and any other info you think might be relevant (if any names of characters or places or things are different, maybe even the voice actors if you know who they are)? Thank you so much!