This Sunday, a friend and I finally redeemed our Klook passes for a Valentine’s Day visit to Toei Movie Studios; a theme park in Western Kyoto. Now, when you think of theme park, it is hard not to imagine rides, funnel cake, and the stench of vomit coming from trash cans. But Toei Kyoto Studios Park is more akin to Hollywood Studios at Disney rather than a vibrant amusement park. Toei is one of Japan’s largest multi-media productions corporations. They’re responsible for a large chunk of Japanese anime and manga adaptations, including One Piece and the Pretty Cure franchise. We hopped off the train at Enmachi Station (only after I collected another stamp) and took the bus further into a more rural district of Kyoto. The exterior of the park looked more like a facility, which was fitting considering many Toei films and TV shows were recorded on the various sound sets inside.
With our entry ticket redemption, we got an extra ticket to visit the re-opening of the facility next month. Turns out, Toei Movie Park is going to be completely refitted into a historically accurate town reminiscent of Edo-period Kyoto for its 50th anniversary known as Usumaza Kyoto Village. Phase One opens next month, which will kick off a series of renovations continuing through 2028. For now, we gallivanted through this ninja-themed movie set complete with actors dressed like geisha, historical set pieces featured in popular Super Sentai episodes, and a very strange American Ninja Warrior competition room that you need to sign a waiver for.
The park is split into three sections: the interior you enter through called the ‘Padios’ that offer indoor entertainment — mostly for kids. Each floor offered entertainment from different eras of various Toei franchises. My favorite parts of the Padios were the Super Sentai history exhibit and the 20-minute Ninja experience ‘Crash! Ninja Show The Highway of the Ninja.’ Super Sentai is the origin for the Power Rangers franchise, which takes direct inspiration from Japanese superhero media and culture. The history exhibit offers a walk down memory lane with life sized figures of all the red rangers and main villains from every Sentai series thus far. It felt extremely fitting considering the series is coming to a temporary end in its 51-year run this year with the conclusion of its 49th season: No.1 Sentai Gozyuger.
Seeing all the suits throughout history was pretty cool! My only knowledge of Sentai is from Power Rangers, but even I enjoyed all the frighteningly lifelike figures and posters on the walls. After the exhibit, we decided to stick around for the final ninja show of the evening, which was a 20-minute performance a la Cirque de Soile complete with full-Japanese dialogue, stunt performers, and a storyline about stealing back a scroll from a super mega bad guy ninja. My favorite stunt was when this guy when up on a tall platform and tried to shoot our protagonist with a bow and arrow, only to fumble the bow and fall straight in front of me onto a crash pad a few feet below. Amazing stuff! The actor that played the bad guy was so silly and did crowd work where he asked a woman if he was scary and — when she agreed — said ‘Not too scary, I hope!’
Outside is where the real fun began. Toei have filmed many Sentai series episodes on this historical Japanese movie set. You can even rent various kimonos, wigs, and props from the rental shop in order to walk around and take pictures in them. It got to a point where some people were dressed so realistically, I was convinced this couple were both actors until the guy whipped out a phone to take pictures of his female companion! The film set viewing area apparently had ninja actors running around during certain times of the day, but I didn’t see any. The only ninja actor I saw was a guy using a fake piece of wallpaper in order to ‘hide’ behind a stone wall. KiIds kept running up to him and stabbing him with fake swords, but he stayed committed to the bit for about twenty minutes. Outside of the attraction area, they had a bunch of Neon Genesis Evangelion themed character stands, as well as the infamous photo op that is by far the biggest attraction in this entire park: the ‘sunken Eva’ — a giant Eva statue from the anime partially submerged in ‘blood.’
Toei Kyoto Studios Movie Park was a really fun time! There wasn’t much to see this time around, and you can tell the place is very much in the final stages of construction, which makes me all the more excited to go back in March. The photo ops and interactive portions were great to see, but I feel like there’s untapped potential here. The lack of One Piece stuff (another extremely famous Toei property) was staggering. It would have made the park really appealing to fans of the show. I also wish there were more ninja stunt actors other than that one guy but I have no doubt this will occur when Usumaza Kyoto Village makes its grand debut.
If you want to learn more about Temple University Japan and study abroad in Kyoto, check out the Temple Study Abroad website! Here on our Global Storytellers blog, you can also read more stories from students abroad across the globe just like me!
