A Studio Ghibli Theme Park Is CONFIRMED for 2020

This article originally appeared on The Creators Project

Studio Ghibli's beloved animated epics like Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, and Academy Award-winning Spirited Away, will be immortalized as a theme park within the Aichi Prefecture's lush EXPO Park.

Fans of legendary filmmakers Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata have flocked to the Studio Ghibli Museum in Tokyo since 2001 to get the most immersive possible experience of their films. As RocketNews24 reports, that could change as early as 2020, the projected completion date Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki and Aichi prefectural governor Hideaki Oomura announced yesterday in a press conference yesterday. Suzuki is often the face of major Ghibli news, as he confirmed Miyazaki's return to feature filmmaking earlier this year with the upcoming Goro the Caterpillar, also due in 2020.

Aichi Prefecture EXPO Park's 200 hectare swath of land already attracts Ghibli devotees with a scale replica of Mei and Satsuki Kusakabe's home from My Neigbor Totoro. Soon the park will eclipse Japan's other rural Ghibli themed attraction, The Yufuin Floral Village's replica of the bakery from Kiki's Delivery Service .

Plans for a Ghibli theme park seem to foil Miyazaki's technology-free nature park for kids, which The Atlantic dubbed the "anti-Disneyland," due in 2018, although according to Anime News Network, the park will take great pains not to disturb Aichi EXPO Park's existing plant and animal life. We've reached out to Studio Ghibli for a comment, but have not yet received a response.

In 2015, illustrator TAKUMI created a concept for a Studio Ghibliland modeled on the Tokyo DisneySea theme park. Images throughout this post are sourced from his imagination, not from actual plans, which have yet to be announced in detail.

The Studio Ghibli Theme Park is due to be completed in 2020, as is Hayao Miyazaki's next feature film, Goro the Caterpillar.