So, this episode of this strange anime series is based on Agatha Christie’s short story The Adventure of the Cheap Flat. I’m a sucker for mysteries where the set-up is something incredibly innocuous, but it leads to something absolutely massive; in this one, the hook is that a couple finds an apartment in a ritzy part of town for an incredibly low rent. Yeah, that’s kind of it. But it’s just weird enough to whet Poirot’s interest and so we get a story rightfully called an adventure. This one integrates Mabel West, the series’ protagonist, into the story kind of artfully in that she, having come to London to be Poirot’s assistant, is the one who stumbles across the cheap flat. We also get an age on Mabel, if you’ve been wondering; she’s sixteen. No metadata has yet been uncovered on Oliver the Duck. This episode also brings in Inspector Sharpe from Scotland Yard and . . . wait, was that his name in the original stories? I feel like it was something else. What could it have – Inspector Japp, that’s it. Japp. Oh. Oh, yes, I see. Well, fair enough. This one was better than the pilot in the way it integrated Mabel and it’s also just a better story. 3 stars.
tl;dr – second episode of this odd anime series has a better story than the pilot and integrates main character Mabel into the story better as well. 3 stars.
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