http://www.timeout.com/newyork/movies/when-marnie-was-there-director-hiromasa-yonebayashi-on-the-end-of-studio-ghibli "In America, it isn’t very often that we get to see animated films that are about regular people. Dramatic expression is certainly one of animation’s strengths, but I believe hand-drawn animation is particularly effective with films like Marnie that appeal to the senses. Whereas the entire screen is in motion in a live-action film, with hand-drawn animation we get to choose what we want to bring across to the viewer. We can effectively show wind blowing during a moving scene and such. Because it’s drawn, we can draw things to be more beautiful than if they were filmed in live-action. For the scenes in which Anna and Marnie are together, I asked to have the backgrounds drawn even more beautifully. What was the hardest detail in this film to get right? I chose water as one of the elements to express certain things, but it was tough. How to draw it and then film it varied a lot depending on whether it’s a long shot or close-up, or depending on the camera angle, so it took a lot of time to get right, which was one of the reasons why we were behind schedule. But after Miyazaki saw the film, he told me, “I liked how the water felt like it was really there,” so I was happy about that."