With the world’s first Studio Ghibli theme park set to open in Aichi prefecture next year, fans of the animation studio are hungry for more details on everything it has to offer. The park comprises five sections: the Large Warehouse, Hill of Youth and Dondoko Forest are set to open in autumn 2022 while the Valley of Witches and Mononoke Village will be completed in 2023.
So far, the big news has been the announcement of a real-life Howl’s Moving Castle, to be featured in the Valley of Witches area. However, new drawings of a Totoro playroom have recently been released.
From the concept drawings of the new space, it looks like the playroom will feature a giant Catbus you can climb aboard, like the one in the Ghibli Museum. The Totoro playroom will be part of Ghibli’s Large Warehouse area, which is also where you’ll find a 6-metre airship installed in the ceiling, just like the one featured in the film ‘Laputa: Castle in the Sky’.
Aside from the Totoro playroom, it seems the Valley of Witches area will also have replicas of Kiki’s childhood home and her new house in Koriko, both from ‘Kiki’s Delivery Service’.
There was a time when the whimsical park dedicated to Hayao Miyazaki’s animation studio seemed too good to be true, but as more info on the mammoth project is revealed, the long-awaited Ghibli Park is starting to look like it’s just within reach.
Can't wait for the Ghibli Park to open next year? In the meantime, check out the Ghibli Expo at the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art starting mid-July.
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