Searching for a source

So I found this lovely picture in a gallery that made it to FP yesterday - https://imgur.com/gallery/0Z6aXM1

I was immediately enamored with the scene. The greenery, the pops of color, the composition, the Ghibli-ness of it made me nostalgic for a place that I had never been. But, where had this scene come from?

So I asked! I had one person reply with Porco Rosso, but they later deleted their comment. I've seen Porco Rosso before and I don't recall the cafe looking like this, but I went and checked out stills from the Ghibli site.

Did you know that Ghibli uploaded high-res stills from their productions to their site? I had forgotten, but I figured if this image was Ghibli then it'd be there.

For those interested, the site is here: https://www.ghibli.jp/info/013409/

Not at all the same cafe from Porco Rosso, but I did take a beat to admire the hotel garden image they had uploaded.

I searched through all 400 images on the site and no dice, so from here my search continued.

I decided to do the ol reliable reverse google search on the image. Except, this time, it was not at all reliable. It was recommending a few scenes from Kiki's Delivery Service instead, but it wasn't the same.

I can kinda understand why googs thought this might be a similar image - dark doorway, greenery, windows, even the angle for the composition is similar.

Tried directly asking googs to search for the image instead of using lens to try and identify parts of the image, and I had no results??

I was finally so confused and lost that I went to my friends for help. One person suggested that it may be a Ghibli short, so the image wasn't posted on the Ghibli site with the movie images. Another friend tried to look at the photo title in the image source code, but I guess imgur strips/removes that information.

Then I reached out on a large fandom discord server on an art channel that gets used frequently.

Here's where it got wild.

I found the image while on my phone last night. I didn't think to check the details when I got to my computer today. If I had, I would've gotten an answer pretty quickly. I probably wouldn't have missed the following:

The messed up chair legs and table legs...the chair that has a back that blends in to the building behind it...

The figure in the doorway doesn't have a bottom half, they just get replaced with a funky looking chair.

Also that lantern? Weird place for a lantern, and it doesn't match the other lantern in the scene.

And what's up with these window shutters? And what's that thing in the middle hanging from the top of the window?

Thankfully, the keen eyes of the other artists on this discord server picked up on the weird details immediately. This was either a fan-made image, or more than likely, an AI generated image.

Will I ever find the person who generated this image? Probably not. If anyone knows then please share! But I think I can live with myself if it remains a mystery.

Thank you all for coming on this journey with me. Remember to count fingers on hands, count legs on chairs, and tip your servers.

Edit: the original gallery has been located!! https://imgur.com/gallery/fKpSS5x