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Nanako Matsushima Joins Ghibli's When Marnie Was There Cast

Actress Nanako Matsushima (pictured top left in the cast photographs) is joining the cast of Studio Ghibli's When Marnie Was There anime film in her first feature-length voice acting role. Matsushima will voice Yoriko, the foster mother of one of the main leads, Anna. She previously voiced Eliza in the 2009 television anime special of Osamu Tezuka's Jungle Emperor Leo. The film will also star (from left to right in the photos after Matsushima) Susumu Terajima as Kiyomasa Ōiwa who takes care of Anna, Toshie Negishi as Kiyomasa's wife Setsu, Ryoko Moriyama as a grieving old woman, Kazuko Yoshiyuki as the staff member Baaya at the Marsh House where Anna lives, and Hitomi Kuroki as Hisako (the woman who paints a picture of the Marsh House).

16-year-old actress Sara Takatsuki (Black President, Otomen, GTO, Daily Lives of High School Boys, Haganai) and 21-year-old actress Kasumi Arimura (Amachan, Hagane no Onna, Clover, Judge) will star as Anna and Marnie adaptation of Joan G. Robinson's English classic children's novel.

Amazon posted a publisher's description of the original novel:

Anna hasn't a friend in the world - until she meets Marnie among the sand dunes. But Marnie isn't all she seems...An atmospheric ghost story with truths to tell about friendship, families and loneliness. Anna lives with foster parents, a misfit with no friends, always on the outside of things. Then she is sent to Norfolk to stay with old Mr. and Mrs. Pegg, where she runs wild on the sand dunes and around the water. There is a house, the Marsh House, which she feels she recognizes - and she soon meets a strange little girl called Marnie, who becomes Anna's first ever friend. Then one day, Marnie vanishes. A new family, the Lindsays, move into the Marsh House. Having learnt so much from Marnie about friendship, Anna makes firm friends with the Lindsays - and learns some strange truths about Marnie, who was not all she seemed...

In his second film, director Hiromasa Yonebayashi (2010's The Secret World of Arrietty) is shifting the setting from the novel's Great Britain to a Japanese village on the shores of Hokkaido.

American musical artist Priscilla Ahn is contributing "Fine on the Outside," a song she wrote when she was in high school, as the film's theme song. It is Ghibli's first theme song entirely in English.

The film will open in theaters in Japan on July 19.

Souce: Oricon