Biography|Hikaru Kondo — The Ropeway That Carried the First Machi Asobi

The first Machi Asobi did not stay on the river.

It borrowed Bizan, the 280-metre hill that sits over Tokushima Station, and the ropeway that has climbed it since 1 December 1957.

Vol. 1, 10 to 12 October 2009, ran with the city's autumn festival on the summit.

Organizers later said more than 8,000 people rode the cars that weekend to hear voice actors narrate the city from the cabin speakers.

The lower station sits at Awa Odori Kaikan. The upper station opens onto Bizan Park and a pagoda plaza that later volumes used as a small outdoor stage.

Kondo's brief for the event was to make entertainment walkable. The ropeway turned the mountain into one more street on that walk.

This is a different frame from the river stage two memories over: same weekend, different altitude, different machine.

The line is a public transit ride, not a private studio.

A visitor can buy a ticket any ordinary day and stand in the same cabin path the first festival used.

Later editions kept the mountain on the map even when the host committee changed and Studio Mouse took over planning after vol. 21.

The 2009 numbers are small beside later crowds. They are the numbers that proved a prefectural capital would let an animation company borrow its hill.

Photo: 663highland, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons