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Ghibli's When Marnie Was There Film Casts Yo Oizumi, Ken Yasuda, Takuma Otoo, More
posted on by Lynzee Loveridge
"TEAM NACS" the Hokkaido-based acting group of Hiroyuki Morisaki, Yō Ōizumi, Ken Yasuda, Takuma Otoo, and Shigeyuki Totsugi, is joining the cast of Studio Ghibli's When Marnie Was There anime film. Morisaki will voice an art teacher, Oizumi will voice Dr. Yamashita, Yasuda will voice Toichi, Otoo will voice the neighborhood association officer, and Totsugi will voice a gentleman.
The voice actors have previously appeared as background characters in other Studio Ghibli films, including Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle.
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.
Other cast members include actress Nanako Matsushima as Yoriko, the foster mother of one of the main leads, Anna, 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).
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. The official Twitter account for Studio Ghibli's international arm is posting 12 visuals from the anime, starting with these six:
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Source: Eiga.com
