"When Marnie was There" is gay. 'Nuff said

Whilst this may explain the story's ending, The sapphic undertones of the Studio Ghibli adaption are undeniable; hence my creation of this blog. I'm out and hungry for blood. Not really but still.Why studio Ghibli is sadistic and evil(before my fellow studio ghibli lovers come for me, that is a joke.)Okay, basically, from this point onwards I'm just gonna rant, freeform style, so if you're looking for a sophisticated report, you're better off looking elsewhere.Say what you like about the film. Think what you like about the film. But before we discover that Marnie is actually Anna's grandma, then I highly doubt ( unless you are incredibly in-denial ) that there will have been no point in this film that you were like, "wait.. this is gay". Firstly, just look at Anna.There are more pictures available on google which give a better, more definitive example of Anna's character design, so go and take a look if you think I have just singled out certain scenes that help my argument. But there is literally only one scene I can name where she dresses "feminine" and that's in traditional dress because she has to wear it for the Tanabata festival.Now, I am by no means saying that any girl who has short hair and dresses boyish unless she HAS to dress feminine is queer. But, it certainly adds to the "are you SURE she's not gay?" argument I'm making here - I mean, just look up masc fashion and see how many of the women that come up are lesbian or bisexual. I'd also just like to mention, Anna's "misunderstood", self-hating traits (which I go further into detail on later) resignate very deeply with people who have felt guilty about their sexuality. Many people with internalised homophobia  suffer from these issues like Anna, and I think that, regardless of how you see the relationship between Anna and Marnie, the possibility than Anna herself could be a sapphic character is quite likely. Something that supports this is that there is no mention of any male love-interest with Anna. (However, this argument could be outweighed with the fact that there is no explicit mention of Anna being canonically interested in any females either.)Secondly, ANNAS FORMERLY UNEXPLAINED admiration for Marnie.Anna literally sees Marnie once, in the window of her old mansion, and sketches her. We can take away from the film that Anna is socially awkward, depressed, doesn't make friends easily and doesn't really care to try it. And people try, like with her uncle and auntie, and the girl at the Tanabata festival, they try to be her friend, but she's not bothered. Infact, she was remarkably mean to the girl at the Tanabata festival, telling her to "leave [her] alone, you fat pig". Yeah, pretty harsh.I could go on and on about the depiction of depression and low self-esteem in this movie because having watched it SINCE being a blissfully ignorant 8 year-old and going through quite a bit of shit until I reached my personal breaking point, I felt pretty seen in this movie - it shows a raw, real example of how people can be trying to give you all this support but you push them away because you feel you don't deserve it, and are angry at the way things are. A lot of the time, people kind of "romanticise" depression and mental illness, like the (in my opinion) surface-skimming " 13 reasons why " and of course, the dark era that was 2020 TikTok. And it pisses people off to not be understood. The one thing humans want more than anything in this world is to be appreciated by one another, and that applies to everyone. And people often are so condescending to those with depression, and so ignorant. Of course circumstances are so much better now, but this film was made in 2014 - not exactly prime time for representation those struggling with mental illnesses. Yet I felt that When Marnie was there showed how feeling depressed - again, before any one gets offended I speak from personal experience too - can make you feel so exhausted that you become less "pitiable" and more dislikable, cold, rude. In short, bringing the phrase "hurt people hurt" to life. Let me know if any of you would be interested in a deep dive on this topic seperate from this, as I am getting side-tracked!                                                                                                                                                                                                This all goes to say that, despite the unlikeliness of Anna being interested in befriending anyone, and there being no mention of any current nor previous love interests (before anyone goes, well yeah, they're 12 - you clearly have never been a 12 year old girl at a sleepover, playing kiss marry kill. People only seem to say stuff like this when it comes to queer people; "you can't know that you're ____ yet, you're a kid" .. yet videos of toddlers giving other toddlers flowers is seen as adorable and perfectly sensible. A classic example of double standards.), Anna is so inexplicably infatuated with Marnie that she sketches her. There has to be some level of emotion compelling her to do that, and what stronger emotion could that be than the classic first love? THIRDLY, Anna's reactions and body language around Marnie The picture below depicts Anna and Marnie on a boat ride together. You can literally SEE her blushing. The picture above is from a scene whereby Marnie walks past Anna, before offering her hand to help her out of the boat.In general during this film, Anna's behaviour around Marnie is very similar to how one would act around their first crush, having no experience with such feelings before. Some may write this down to classic awkwardness, seeing as Anna also hasn't had much experience socially whatsoever, but I would argue that Anna is much more calm and unbothered around everyone else, and only around Marnie is she ever shy or flustered.Some scenes that stuck out to me, even as an 8 year old who hadn't been bothered to look that deeply into anything at the time, were: the boat scene, pictured above - where Marnie looks flustered and intimidated by Marnie, in the same way that one would when a crush walks by them. Bewildered, enraptured. Attracted.Another scene - and my personal favourite - is where Marnie takes Anna's hands and begins to dance with her. You can see Anna blushing, shy to start dancing - she even gives the classic cheesy line, "oh no, I don't dance" . If that isn't romance, I don't know what is! Anna also gets jealous when she sees Marnie dancing with a boy, and I reckon this is more than just friendly, given the information we have gained so far. We see that Anna has little interest in anybody or anything other than Marnie. She opens up to Marnie about her life as a foster child, how she feels unloved, and they share a sweet moment hugging one another in the woods. Anna has not opened up to anybody before this moment and so I think that it further shows the deep bond they have with one another. Anna also gets fiercely protective over Marnie when she finds out that Marnie's nan brushes her hair very hard, and that the maids lock her in the silo - which leads me onto my next point ..FIFTH POINT - Symbolics; these are honestly weak arguments, but I still thought I'd mention them:One thing I noticed was that during the Silo scene, Marnie refers to Anna as Kazuhiko, whom we later find out to be Marnie's lover. Now, this may be a bit far-fetched - but what if Anna is intentionally meant to seem/be interested in Marnie up until the big reveal, because she is representing Kazuhiko in the storyline? This would make all the little hints at there being something more romantic than platonic make sense, rather than discarding them all because it turned out that Marnie was Anna's grandmother from the past. If she didn't know that they were related, then she had no reason to not be interested in Marnie - representing the relationship between Kazuhiko and Marnie - but of course once she found out that Marnie is her grandmother, the implications of a crush fade and their relationship became platonic, for obvious reasons.Another thing I noticed was the secretive nature of their meet ups together. This definitely could be an allusion to the way that homosexual couples had to act in Marnie's time - I think that with the way studio Ghibli portrayed Anna and Marnie's relationship, The plot twist that Marnie is Anna's nan looks like a huge cop - out, especially as it comes right at the end. If she had not been revealed as such, but instead turned out to be a ghost from olden times who alike Anna had appeared to Marnie to help her to heal and come out of the shell that her depression had placed her in, and the two could have fell in love and it could have been canon - we could have had such a masterpiece of Lesbian cinema, that could have been a sweet story of rebellion against the social standards of the time when Marnie was young and a rebellion against the restrictions Anna had put on her own enjoyment of life - each other bringing one another freedom. How romantic. But no, we ended up with a heteronormative ending. And perhaps the way that Anna and Marnie's relationship is portrayed in the film is purposefully rather queer, as an act of rebellion against the way that stories like this always seem to end without the two being together - one must either die or turn out to be family. Which leads me to my final point/theory.One other thing I noticed was that Anna and Marnie escape together on the boat at the Tanabata festival. I implore you to research the history and tradition of the Tanabata festival - but I shall provide a quick summary, here. The Tanabata festival, a.k.a the Star Festival, is a Japanese festival originating from the Chinese Qixi Festival. It celebrates the meeting of the deities Orihime and Hikoboshi (represented by the stars Vega and Altair). According to a legend, the Milky way seperates these lovers, and they are only able to meet once a year - on the 7th day of the 7th month on the lunisolar calendar. Could Anna and Marnie escaping together be aligned with this on purpose? As everything else around them implies that they weren't meant to be, even the story itself - and yet, they are escaping, to be with one another, on this night; Against all odds.  Since the story is previously set in Norfolk, before the studio ghibli adaption, this choice had to have been made by the studio - as an English girl myself, I know that the Tanabata festival is not a common celebration here in the UK. Could this choice of festival have been made on purpose? Perhaps, the studio ghibli wanted to make this connection - between Marnie and Anna - two characters who could never be together due to the story, due to the time, due to life and death, due to societal restrictions of the time, due to Anna's mental health which very likely could have caused everything to go wrong, due to the way the ending was written, due to the big reveal which honestly seems like a last-minute plot change because GOD FORBID two girls be in love with one another - and two star-crossed lovers. And that's a wrap!If you have read this all the way through, I adore you. I'll be logging on tomorrow to catch up with everybody but, with all due respect, I am exhausted now as I wrote this all in one setting out of fear that it would be deleted if I closed it. Also, something I didn't know is that Hailee.. Hailey.. ahh, I don't know how you spell it Steinfield was the voice actor for Marnie in the English dub; an actress who has been in other Queer-coded media such as Pitch perfect, Portrait of a lady on fire, and Arcane (although I was not a fan of Arcane myself).I normally like to keep the original audio on films or shows that aren't in my native language as I find the emotion in the voice and the lines more authentic, which can sometimes be lost in translation in order to 1. make the sentences understandable and 2. sync the words to the movement of the characters lips . Thank you so much my sweets, Peace and love!! Hope not hate, from Poppy :D <3 xoxoxP.S showed the pictures I'd put on this document from the film to my 11 year old niece, who has never watched a studio Ghibli film in her life, or had anything much to do with anything gay, if just from skimming over these pages she'd think this was about a gay film. She nodded enthusiastically. So, there you have it folks. I am not the only one !!!