YMMV / When Marnie Was There

• Abandon Shipping: Anna and Marnie big time. Their relationship is the emotional driving force of the movie: Anna and Marnie go on an Old-Fashioned Rowboat Date, dance with each other under the moonlight and openly declare their feelings for each other. Leading to some shipping them rather early on. However, the reveal that Marnie is actually the ghost of Anna's grandmother unsurprisingly killed off most interest in the ship, while any fan works that do still pair them up ignore the reveal entirely.
• Adaptation Displacement: The film is based on a children's novel, one that was actually out of print before this movie was released. And even then, it took a very long time to be reprinted.
• Broken Base: While many people find the idea of Marnie being the ghost of Anna's grandmother, trying to reach out to her granddaughter after her own death heartwarming and touching, many others felt cheated by the romantic imagery used in the promotional material and the carefully crafted Pseudo-Romantic Friendship between the two girls before The Reveal.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Anna is frequently noted to act oddly for a child or focus on strange things. The book starts with her acting incredibly detached from other people, enjoying spending time alone, limiting interactions with her adopted parents, and sending postcards to her adoptive mother that are only a few sentences long. She views the world as being a circle with people on the "inside" and on the "outside", believing herself to be on the outside and separate from everyone else. At one point, she goes into a fury over an insult which everyone, even the narrator, considers to be silly. She also doesn't seem to have many friends, but the people she does meet and bond with (Marnie and, later, the girl that moves into her house) she's able to form very close ties to. Some of her behavior can be attributed to her fearing that her foster mother is only keeping her for the money, but her reaction to that still comes across as unusual for an upset child.
• Fanon: While it is never brought up in the film proper, many fans consider Anna to be a lesbian, due to the immense amount of subtext between her and Marnie.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Many Marnie/Anna fics tend to ignore, if not retcon the reveal that Marnie is Anna's grandmother.
• Incest Yay Shipping: Despite the reveal that Marnie is Anna's grandmother, some fans are stubborn enough that they continue to ship them regardless, though most fans who still ship them instead pretend the familial connection doesn't exist.
• It Was His Sled: Due to a lot of people expecting romance between girls, the fact that Marnie is Anna's grandmother spread quickly and led to the above-mentioned Broken Base.
• Les Yay: There's a copious amount of this between Anna and Marnie, as they go on an Old-Fashioned Rowboat Date, frequently profess their love for each other, and dance under the moonlight in one scene. Anna also acts like a jealous lover at a party after Marnie starts hanging out with another man. While the film didn't intend their relationship to be viewed as romantic, It's little wonder that fans quickly began to interpret them as a lesbian couple...until The Reveal that Marnie is Anna's dead grandmother caused many to drop that interpretation.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: You'll be forgiven if you thought Kiyomasa and Setsu were a gay couple, given how mannish the latter looks.

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