Japan’s much-celebrated animation company, Studio Ghibli Inc., announced in 2017 that it would be opening a theme park in 2022. The 200-ha site of the 2005 World Expo, now Expo Memorial Park, in Nagakute, Aichi Prefecture, is being transformed into “Ghibli Park,” an immersive world based on the hit films of the studio, according to TDRExplorer and The Mainichi.
The park is not scheduled to open until November of this year, but the park’s elevator observation tower was unveiled on March 23, giving guests a view of the whole park. According to The Mainichi, the elevator invokes images of the worlds seen in beloved Ghibli movies.
image courtesy of (Mainichi/Shiho Sakai)
The elevator tower is about 28-m tall, is a renovated version of an existing tower, and functions as a clock tower and observation tower in Youth Hill. According to TRDExplorer, the elevator tower’s steampunk design is based on the late 19th-century fantasy scientific world of “Castle in the Sky” and “Howl’s Moving Castle.” The tower is now accessible to the public free of charge.
The remaining decoration of the elevator tower will be completed before the park opens later this year.
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