Abandoned theme park is Westworld IRL and it's just as disturbing
If you spent a good part of the last months of 2016 diving into the twisted plot of HBO's sci-fi epic Westworld, these wild yet disturbing photographs will take you right back.
But instead of being from the creepy theme park featured in the hit show, the photos show a place that exists in the real world. The location is an old, abandoned theme park just a few hours north of Tokyo, Japan, which has been captured by photographer Lee Chapman.
It opened in the 1970s in modest fashion under the name Kinugawa Family Ranch, but grew to rebrand itself as "Western Village" (remind you of anything?).
When it opened, visitors could do lasso lessons, horseback rides and a pond open for fishing. In the years following, it grew to feature Disney world-style shows where shooters knocked apples off guest's heads, according to Tokyo-based writer and ruin photographer Michael John Grist, who wrote about the park in his blog.
Now, lifeless shells of plastic figures with robotic insides remain in their original positions, either standing behind the saloon bar surrounded by half-empty bottles of liquor or sitting behind the counter in the bank.
The park is a terrifying mirror of the Westworld theme park in its early years. In the HBO show, the park's creators, Ford and Arnold, developed early model androids -- known as hosts -- that had basic robotic functions. As the park developed, so did the technological advancements of the robots.
Sadly, the Wild West theme park in Tokyo was forced to close down in 2006. Now it makes "an odd, wholly unexpected sight in a relatively sparsely populated area a few hours north of Tokyo", as Chapman put it.
Its current state looks like what would happen in Westworld if the Programming Division decided to completely abandon the "hosts" in the park to their destiny. Maybe you won't find Dolores or the Man in Black in there, but it'll definitely strike a chord in your android heart.
