Director: Hiromasa Yonebayashi
Country of origin and year of release: Japan, 2014
This likeable, beautifully drawn, highly evocative anime has its roots in the novel of the same name by Joan G. Robinson.
The anime transplants the novel from rural Norfolk in the UK to the Kushiro wetlands in Hokkaido, Japan. Anna, a deeply unhappy girl living with foster parents, moves to stay with relatives of her foster carers in Kushiro following an asthma attack. It having been decided that the sea air will be good for her health and that a new setting might be helpful more generally for her, given her unhappiness and inability to interact socially with her peers.
In Kushiro, Anna meets a mysterious blonde girl, Marnie, and they have a series of adventures together which provide Anna with a degree of friendship she doesn't seem to have had previously, given her previous social anxieties and the fact that she is struggling to make friends with the local children in her new home.
It quickly becomes apparent that Marnie is perhaps not who she seems to be though, leading to a series of revelations about her own unhappy childhood as well as her links to Anna.
Childhood trauma and more general unhappiness, in the wrong hands, could make for a very heavy handed tale but its thanks to the original source material and the deft hands of the Studio Ghibli team that this doesn't happen. Similarly, we can tell that Anna is struggling mentally as well as socially but this is conveyed subtly and realistically. The eventual healing of Anna, and her understanding of what has happened and why, is sad but well drawn, and it's told in a way that is sophisticated and deeply affecting.
When Marnie Was There is a very likeable anime, with a very powerful message that has been told with a great deal of love and care.
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