Studio Ghibli theme park’s new dessert is a drinkable version of Hayao Miyazaki’s pilot daydream

This Hideout is both a dessert we’d like to drink and a place we’d like to be.

Ghibli Park doesn’t have the roller coasters, parades, stage performances, or fireworks shows typically associated with amusement parks. Instead, the Studio Ghibli theme park in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture is all about artistic atmosphere, and that philosophy extends to its dining options. For example, inside Ghibli Park’s Rotunda Kazegaoka restaurant, you can enjoy a meal or snack while admiring a full-scale recreation of the Savoia S-21 “flying boat” seaplane flown by protagonist Porco in Ghibli’s Porco Rosso anime film.

In keeping with Porco Rosso’s Italian coast setting, the restaurant’s menu options include hearty pasta plates.

With summer here, though, the cafe wanted to serve up something cooling and refreshing, while still keeping with the Porco Rosso theme. The result is an absolutely beautiful dessert drink that draws inspiration from the Ghibli anime’s depictions of the azure Adriatic Sea and the skies above it.

Called the Hideout Soda, the 850-yen (US$5.25) drink references the portion of the anime in which Porco is lying low to avoid capture by his foes. “Soda” here isn’t being used to mean cola, but instead a citrus/apple cider of the sort best known in Japan under the Ramune brand, and which customarily has a sky blue color and is strongly associated with summer fun. Floating in the soda sea are bits of pineapple and what appears to be a candy/gelatin plane, and instead of sea grasses you have sprigs of dill, which should make for a uniquely complex flavor profile. Finally, up above is a cloud layer of fluffy cotton-candy like confectionary.

The scene of a seaplane tranquilly floating in the water brings to mind a quote from an interview with Ghibli co-founder and Porco Rosso director Hayao Miyazaki. Speaking shortly after Porco Rosso’s 1993 Japanese release (and later reprinted in now-defunct American anime magazine Animerica), Miyazaki was asked if, given his well-known love of flying machines, he himself had ever wanted to become a pilot. In his customarily complex way, Miyazaki said that while it might be nice, the time commitment necessary to become a pilot would pull him away from things he had a stronger desire to do, such as create films. Somewhat wistfully, he also lamented that the understandable realities of real-life aviation mean that pilots can’t simply take off and land wherever they want to, saying “I’d like to have a seaplane, but there wouldn’t be any point without a beautiful body of water to maneuver on and a place to hide out in.”

With Miyazaki’s video-documented fondness for Japan’s blue sodas, it seems like he’d enjoy Ghibli Park’s new drink, which was added to the Rotunda Kazegaoka menu this month and will be available for a limited time.

By the way, though it’s technically part of Ghibli Park, Rotunda Kazegaoka is outside the admission gates and is open to anyone, regardless of whether or not they’ve purchased a ticket. Of course, considering that the theater inside Ghibli Park is the only place in the world to see Studio Ghibli’s new short anime, a ticket would still be pretty nice to have.

Related: Ghibli Park official website
Source: Ghibli Park, Twitter/@ghibliparkjp
Top image: Studio Ghibli
Insert images: Ghibli Park
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