The films were brilliant but notoriously artsy, expensive, labor-intensive. Miyazaki started Studio Ghibli in 1985, out of desperation, when he and his co-founders, Isao Takahata and Toshio Suzuki, couldn’t find a studio willing to put out their work.
Even Miyazaki’s most fantastical creations - a castle with giant metal chicken legs, a yellow bus with the body of a cat - feel somehow thick and plausible and real. Le Guin, Charles Schulz, Maurice Sendak and composers of the Icelandic sagas. Hayao Miyazaki, the studio’s co-founder, is one of the all-time great imaginary world-builders - right up there with Lewis Carroll, Jim Henson, Ursula K. Ghibli’s animation has always felt destined to be turned into a theme park. I tracked the online rumors, inhaled the concept drawings, scrutinized the maps. Like filmgoers all over the world, I had been fantasizing about a visit to Ghibli Park since the project was announced more than five years ago. Imagine my confusion, then, when I arrived at Ghibli Park, Japan’s long-awaited tribute to the legendary animation of Studio Ghibli. To replace our boring, aimless, frustrating world with a new one made just for us. This is a theme park’s job: to swallow the universe. I have been to Disney World, an alternate reality that basically occupies its own tax zone, with its own Fire Department and its own agriculture - a place where, before you’ve even entered, you see a 100-foot-tall electrical pole along the freeway with Mickey Mouse ears. I have known theme parks with entrance gates like international borders and ticket prices like mortgage payments and parking lots the size of Cleveland. The blunt-force, world-warping, escapist delight.
Īs an American, I know what it feels like to arrive at a theme park. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
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