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Ghibli's When Marnie Was There Film Footage Previewed in Ad

Japanese home builders Eyeful Home began streaming a commercial in collaboration with Studio Ghibli's upcoming anime film When Marnie Was There (Omoide no Marnie) last week, and offered a preview of the animation. The video features the theme song "Fine on the Outside" by Priscilla Ahn.

The video begins with actress Nao Matsushita walking through the Ghibli Museum before promoting houses with wide open space. (The museum famously does not allow visitors to take photos or videos inside its walls, although official videos have appeared in the past.) She states that Eyeful Home is supporting Studio Ghibli's film.

Studio Ghibli International also posted more screenshots of the main characters. The cast includes:

16-year-old actress Sara Takatsuki (Black President, Otomen, GTO, Daily Lives of High School Boys, Haganai) as Anna.

21-year-old actress Kasumi Arimura (Amachan, Hagane no Onna, Clover, Judge) as Marnie

Nanako Matsushima as Yoriko, the foster mother of one of the main leads

Susumu Terajima as Kiyomasa Ōiwa who takes care of Anna

Toshie Negishi as Kiyomasa's wife Setsu

Kazuko Yoshiyuki as the staff member Baaya at the Marsh House where Anna lives

Hitomi Kuroki as Hisako, the woman who paints a picture of the Marsh House

Other cast members include Ryoko Moriyama as a grieving old woman and "TEAM NACS," the Hokkaido-based acting group of Hiroyuki Morisaki, Yō Ōizumi, Ken Yasuda, Takuma Otoo, and Shigeyuki Totsugi, as an art teacher, Dr. Yamashita, Toichi, the neighborhood association officer, and a gentleman, respectively.

The film adapts 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 studio's international arm also posted the final 6 of 12 images from the film, plus a bonus image:

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

[Via Tsk06]