Japan Is Developing An Anime Amusement Park In Osaka

If fans had the opportunity to live out their anime fantasies, it is safe to bet most would jump [...]

If fans had the opportunity to live out their anime fantasies, it is safe to bet most would jump at the chance. After all, who wouldn't want to ride on Nimbus with Goku or play an actual game of Dual Monsters with Yugi? Japan has tried to bring some of these bigger series to life at Universal Studios, but it seems Osaka has bigger theme park plans in mind.

After all, it looks like the city is developing a Cool Japan attraction park of its own.

According to new reports, Osaka is planning to open a theme park that will showcase popular anime and manga series year round. The area, which is being called 'Cool Japan Park Osaka' tentatively, will derive its name from the country's 'Cool Japan' program. A short summary of the park's development plan, and a handful of parties will oversee its creation. Yoshimoto Kogyo, Zaiban Television Hōsōkyoku, and 13 other firms will collaborate to bring the anime-centric park to life (via ANN).

According to current reports, the amusement park will house three theaters will various specializations. They will open by February 2019 with the largest of three housing nearly 1,200 seats. The theaters will host various 4-D movies. The park's planners hope attractions like this will help bring in over 50,000 tourists a year. Osaka's mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura went so far as to say he hopes Cool Japan Park Osaka will become one of the "best" in the country.

If you are not familiar with the Cool Japan initiative in Japan, here's a little breakdown of the project. The initiative was made to fund tourism campaigns which bring Japan's modern pop culture to the forefront. Anime, manga, and video games have been used to promote Japanese tourism events, and the Japanese Finance Ministry has portioned a large budget for the project. In the 2017 fiscal year, more than $400 million USD was siphoned away for Cool Japan, and this new park hopes to to make the country's beloved anime series even more accessible to domestics whether they're domestic or foreign.

To date, Cool Japan has helped bring anime amusement park attractions to Universal Studios Japan. Popular series like Dragon Ball have been highlighted with 4-D films in the past, and franchises such as Sailor Moon and Conan the Detective were added to the project's line-up recently.

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