“Even more so than usual, a lot of care has gone into the building interiors,” reports Kaori, who found the green hues of Anna’s room and the plush furnishings of Marnie’s to be particularly memorable, as was the film’s lavish ballroom scene.

Visually, the film is unmistakably a Ghibli production in its character designs and overall animation quality. “On top of that, there’s something undeniably mysterious about Marie…which makes Anna want to know more about her, and leads her to start unraveling the truth,” she told us after taking in the film for herself. “Marnie is Anna’s first friend, so she’s very attached to her,” Kaori explains. That wasn’t the opinion our movie reporter, Kaori, came away with after watching the film, though. With the film’s spotlight placed squarely on the feelings two young girls have for each other, some may be tempted to label When Marnie Was There as belonging to the yuri subgenre of anime, which focuses on romantic love between women. Why is it that Marnie seems to disappear at times, or become suddenly frightened at others? As Anna spends more time with Marnie, though, she becomes increasingly conscious of something unusual about her friend. In a nearby marsh stands a manor house, where one day Anna meets and befriends a blond-haired girl named Marnie, voiced by fellow anime newcomer Kasumi Arimura.įor Anna, who has largely closed off her heart to others, making a genuine friend is a profound experience, and the focus of the film is the deepening interpersonal relationship between the two girls. Twelve-year-old Anna, voiced by actress Sara Takatsuki in her first anime role, has always had a frail constitution, and as the movie opens is spending the summer convalescing at a seaside village on the Hokkaido coast. Even protagonist Anna’s name is the same, although the anime gives her the Japanese version of the name written in kanji characters. The Ghibli film changes the setting from England’s Norfolk to Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido, but retains the basic premise of Robinson’s 1967 original. “Marnie of Memories”) in Japanese, the film is an adaptation of the children’s novel by British author and illustrator Joan G. Still, we weren’t about to pass up the premiere of a new Ghibli movie, so we grabbed a ticket and went to see Marnie for ourselves. In the course of its history, the famed anime production house has often taken two years between releases, but the recent debut of When Marnie Was There marked the third Ghibli theatrical premiere in the last 12 months.Īt the same time, studio co-founder and acclaimed director Hayao Miyazaki’s retirement from anime films also has plenty of long-time fans on edge. In one way of looking at things, it’s a great time to be a fan of Studio Ghibli.

When marnie was there studio ghibli