I�ve seen one episode of Great Detectives Poirot and Marple, and, as you might expect, it doesn�t quite hold up for someone who�s read the books.
To start it off, Great Detectives Poirot and Marple, a.k.a. Agatha Christie no Meitantei Poirot to Marple is an anime TV series based loosely on Agatha Christie�s mystery novels, and it features Poirot and Miss Marple solving crimes with the help of young Maybelle West, daughter of Raymond West, the novelist (probably the same Raymond West who is Miss Marple�s nephew).
The show starts off with a theme song, which is (to my mind, at least) regrettably typical. It�s in Japanese and English, and sounds sort of pop-y. Normally I wouldn�t mind, but in this case, it seems inappropriate.
During the intro, you see Miss Marple and M. Poirot for the first time. Miss Marple looks as close to the way I�ve always imagined her as you could reasonable expect an anime character to look. She looks like a kindly, harmless old lady. Hercule Poirot, on the other hand, looks too young to my mind, and his mustache is not striking enough. But both of these are just me.
As for the personalities of the characters, Miss Marple hasn�t shown up yet, but Poirot seems more or less himself � intelligent, nice, a bit of a neat freak with a sense of justice. But he hasn�t said anything in French yet! Not even called Captain Hastings �mon ami�.
All the problems I�ve mentioned so far are trivial, and should only matter to someone who is very much into the books, like me. The real problem lies in the format of the show, and how the people who make the show use that format. One episode (25 minutes, including credits and a preview) does not seem to be enough to contain all of the twists and turns of a typical Agatha Christie novel. And yet, perhaps it should be, or at least enough to have one major twist. The Lupin III series did it � why can�t this one? Without the twists and turns, this series fails to have the feel of a real Agatha Christie novel, and is only marginally interesting.
For myself, I do not intend to watch more episodes of this series. I would strongly recommend reading Agatha Christie novels over watching this, especially Partners in Crime, And Then There Were None, and Curtain (but please read another Poirot book before you read Curtain).