Japan’s NTV television network aired a special 30-second preview of Studio Ghibli‘s When Marnie Was There (Omoide no Marnie) film on Friday. Sara Takatsuki (GTO, Daily Lives of High School Boys, Haganai) and Kasumi Arimura (Amachan, Hagane no Onna, Clover), actresses who star as Anna and Marnie, introduce the clip.

NTV also began airing a full trailer for the film last week. The channel is airing Studio Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, and The Secret World of Arrietty this month as part of its “Natsu wa Ghibli” (Summer Is Ghibli) campaign to celebrate the upcoming film.

The film adapts Joan G. Robinson‘s classic English children’s novel of the same name. 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.

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…

American musical artist Priscilla Ahn is contributing the theme song “Fine on the Outside,” which she wrote when she was in high school. The song is Studio Ghibli’s first theme song performed entirely in English.

The anime film will open in Japan on July 19.

[Via Yaraon!]

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