When defining this genre, I had said the stories take place during the golden age of piracy. But this show takes place on a distant fantasy planet. I had also said the protagonists would be pirates. But this is your standard 90s kids show with “good guys” as the protagonists. Sure, they call themselves “pirates” but they also spend every episode trying to help people. Despite that, this show really feels like it belongs in the Dark Fantasy Pirate genre. And no one cares about my arbitrary definitions anyway.

This show takes place on a fantasy planet that is being taken over by a sentient oil spill (basically). This “dark water” attacks anyone who gets close, and it’s growing larger and larger. The main character (who learns he’s a prince) is trying to collect “The 13 Treasures of Ruul” to destroy the Dark Water. In the first 6 episodes, he collects one treasure per episode. Then the writers must’ve realized “oh shit, we’re ending the series too quickly” and he never finds another treasure after that. Every episode ends up being a random adventure to help some people he just met. Still, the character designs are awesome and there are a bunch of fantasy monsters they have to fight off. It’s actually a pretty fun show.

The show lasted 21 episodes before being cancelled. You can watch the entire series on Tubi. Here’s the intro to the show, which shows all the characters and explains the plot if you’ve never seen it. There was also a SNES game and Genesis/MegaDrive game which were totally unrelated to each other (one is a beat 'em up, the other is a platformer).

Maybe it’s the nostalgia talking, but I always enjoyed this show. I don’t think it was ever very popular though so I don’t know how well-known it is. But I’m trying to list every Dark Fantasy Pirate work I know for this community and I think this one fits.