So this became a thing recently:

https://articles.starcitygames.com/news/possible-new-magic-set-name-uncovered/



Soooooo......wanna talk about it?

On the one hand, this kind of diluting of the Magic brand as a fantasy product was one of the big problems I had with the Walking Dead cards. On the other hand, I love Kamigawa, and if they actually pull this off it could be the coolest thing ever.

What I do not see is concept art for modded out Kitsune samurai fighting tech-deck toting Nezumi ninjas. This would make or break the experience for me.

Welp I'm torn. On the one hand I am glad Kamigawa did evolve and MTG is embracing more sci-finess, but the Japanese setting being the sci-fi one... well, at least it's not just samurai and ninjas. Or maybe it is for the ultimate yikes.

Ghost in the kami: the Gatewatch Johansson

It's got me feeling ambivalent.
I really can't say I'm a fan of the concept of a cyberpunk kamigawa being tried simply because I feel the advancement would NOT feel natural from where we are. Cast into the future?

Lot fewer issues there.
Mirrodin already popped the magepunk bubble by going WAY scifi, so the idea of a cyberpunk setting is not at all a problem for me. I feel like it's actually a good direction to expand into if they refuse to consolidate the brand identity. If you aren't going to stand out by being unique, be diverse with what you do.

I'm not sure "cyberpunk" actually means "cyberpunk" (the real hard sci-fi version) in this case, but nothing in those pieces of concept art looks particularly cyberpunk to me. But if it is what the survey made it out to be (and I remember taking that survey, or some version of it) and they really go "futuristic sci-fi Kamigawa with computers and high tech implants", then, provided they really ARE planning this, I honestly and sincerely want Magic to die and WotC to shut down before any of this sees the light of day.

Even if it's just some pseudo-cyberpunk nonsense without the real core of cyberpunk, I think it'd be one of the most idiotic things they've ever done. Magic is on its way to not being Magic anymore at all, and this would be the final destination. I don't know if I could ever bring myself to care about a single thing they do if they knowingly and intentionally ruined Kamigawa in that way. Why the hell would you use an established plane for crap like this anyway? If "just make it cyberpunk" is their excuse to not have to deal with traditional Japanese culture in their game anymore, I never want to read or hear anything about "diversity", "respect" or "cultural sensitivity" from anyone in that company anymore. Not that I want that as it is, but the hypocrisy would reach a new high.

Edit: Also, if anything, this would have to be in the far future because we bloody well know present-day Kamigawa is nothing like this.

That title needs to be rendered as "Neon Dynasty Kamigawa".

You have one job, WotC. One frakking job.

I'd also say the trailer has to be able to be set to "Cruel Angel's Thesis" but that song goes with just about everything so that shouldn't be hard to do by chance.

(Actually they have a lot more on that and so many ways in which they could botch it yet ways in which it could excel, but the name is a biggie)

No better to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ2C6G1 ... l=SysLocal

Doesn't seem any more cyberpunk than certain areas of ravnica were, which this will probably feel like in some ways simply because ravnica was such a huge sucess, kamigawa wasnt, people want to go back to kamigawa but how do we make it more palettable, etc etc.

Also "cyberpunk" has lost most of its meaning probably a decade ago. And now with q very popular game coming out, we are going to see everything cyberpunked

I often been more wrong than right about not going to like a set until I've seen it so I'll wait and see how this turns out. Honesty ideas can either good or bad all depends on execution so while cyber punk Kamigawa isn't quiet what messes gonna wait and see how it turns out.

As for how it meshes, the "cyberpunk" doesn't mean the whole plane is that now. Japan in real life can go from massive tech city to wilderness and such so I could see the "cyberpunk" stuff being found in new cities that have built up while the rest of the plane has stayed more traditional.

Also, as Maro has said many times, Magic had always been a sci-fi story in a fantasy setting. I mean, one of our recurring villains is, for all intents and purposes, a cyborg. Esper worked, so this can work too.

True, but Maro also said has been moving away from sci-fi and Phyrexia is now a bit more magical. Personally I love science fantasy, its just that Kamigawa being the example feels iffy.

Okay, weighing in more meaningfully now.

I largely agree more than Aaarrrgh than with Pavor: I'm open to the idea of Magic doing a cyberpunk setting, especially since "Cyberpunk with magical elements" is a pretty well-established subgenre/aesthetic. Shadowrun first came out in 1989. I may be personally biased because the next manuscript I'm working on refining (into a trilogy) would fit that kind of vibe, where there are robots and mechanical implants, but also witches and demons, and things that blur the line by being magitech like handing "uploading" a person by using advanced scientific machinery to produce a phylactery for the soul. So for me to say that the basic idea of the blend is something that wouldn't work would be beyond hypocritical.

Further, I remember in the 90's and early 2000s really enjoying the fact that Magic did blur the line between what counted as Fantasy and what counted as Scifi. Sure, Alpha and Legends and even (to me) attention-grabbers like Fallen Empires, Ice Age, and Homelands did pure periodesque Fantasy, but a lot of the really unique stuff, like Antiquities and just about everything Urza, Rath, and Phyrexia didn't. It was Magic's relationship with Artifacts and Technology that really set it apart from other Fantasy of its day. We've got killer cyborgs*, nanomachines**, space stations***, Mechas, mobile robotic cities with doom cannons****, questions about whether an artificial being can have an authentic existence*****, and that's just in Magic's heyday, before we really left Dominaria. Hell, the entire thing about the Thran is that they were an advanced technological society that didn't understand magic as magic. Old MtG reveled in Clarke's Law and the Inverse and loved pulling them on the characters sometimes and the fans at others.

Frankly, the idea of integrating impossible tech with functional magic is something that's been largely missing as we've been going plane-hopping to the Hammer Horror Studio Backlot or Epcot Greek Myth World or the Holodeck rendition of Prince of Egypt, or Zendikar and Ravnica intolerably many times. Even the groups that do it, like the Izzet and the Skaberen, they're presented as mad and weird and one-off and mostly just slapping gears and Jacob's Ladders on things because it looks cool. I actually think that Kaladesh was one of the planes we've visited since Time Spiral that was most true to the spirit of what made M:tG great... it was just marred by an intolerable plot.

So, in that sense, I'm kind of open to seeing a cyberpunk (and I hope truly cyberpunk, with full tech as well as the inevitable true magic) plane. And in a sense it does kind of make sense to do it with Kamigawa. I think most people would prefer a new plane if it's going to be so different, but out of anywhere recurring? Because of how ingrained a Chinese/Japanese influence is on the modern Cyberpunk genre (perhaps because loads of genre cornerstones are Japanese media and many Cyberpunk stories predicted China to replace the west as the preeminent world power), if you're going to pick one plane we've been to before and say "here, this is Cyberpunk now", Kamigawa is the one you pick.

And I'll say, while I'm not absolutely thrilled, I am... open to it. I want to see how the Kami interact with a world that's changed. I want to see some indulgence in things we didn't get to see last time, like modern(ish) Yokai and Japanese Urban Legends, which often take place in the kind of big city environs that Kamigawa 1 didn't present. We got plenty of classical Shinto, and it was amazing, but we didn't see Nurikabe, or Kuchisake-onna or Hachishakusama that have a home environment that's either more urban than old Kamigawa was, more modern, or both. (Aside: I REALLY want to see a Nurikabe with the typeline "Spirit Wall"). But I don't think anyone wants to see a modern Kamigawa or even a Showa or Meiji Kamigawa And I think we could get some wild and crazy stuff, like maybe using the shattered yet still eternally living shards of Lord Konda as the core of a supercomputer. That would tie back to dangling threads of old kamigawa and give them a new spin. It would be very cyberpunk, taking this old dead villain (not exactly dead in Konda's case) but having them live on as the ghost in the machine, granted no real physical body but an astounding intellect and presence. And it would be a neat spin to revisit Kamigawa with, bringing back Konda in a form that's consistent with the one we left him in.

I think we could do it. I think Magic has the technology if it has the guts to have something that's got the Cyberpunk flair, the Kamigawa feel, and that shows us something new and different that's still part of magic. Hell, just typing this out I thought of a design, have a card named "Kotoribako" that's an oppressive stax artifact and looks like this grisly mechanical puzzle box with lighted seams, oozing blood over the glimmering steel surface. Something like that would, like Kamigawa 1, take a Japanese story that not many westerners are familiar with, represent it in mechanics and flavor, and interpret it in a somewhat new and unique way that would belong to M:tG as well.

That said, there is one thing Pavor said that I absolutely want to reiterate, with which I 100% agree.



Many years ago, speaking to the difficulties of returning to Kamigawa, Mark Rosewater made the statement that "People love beef teriyaki". Pointing out that, while Beef Teriyaki is considered quintessentially Japanese, it really is a fusion cuisine, and a fairly modern invention at that. But, all the same, if you visit a Japanese restaurant, you expect to find it (Aside: He's wrong. If you go to a moderately authentic Japanese restaurant, not Benihana, you may well not find Beef Teriyaki... but I'm sure there's some other dish on the menu of any of my favorite places to eat pre-Covid that could still make the point, except possibly the conveyor sushi place...). The takeaway was, basically, that one of Kamigawa's faults was that it didn't do enough of what people expected. There should have been more ninjas, more anime tropes, and so on. This same sentiment, I feel, would go on to inform a lot of worldbuilding that we here in the NGA F&S area have found... lackluster, or at least been divided on. Things like Theros, and especially Theros having Krakens in particular bowing to pop culture memes centered around Clash of the Titans. All the precise 1:1 references in Theros and Eldraine to the earthly stories the cards were based on -- things that have typically been very hit or miss, because they risk being too on the nose

But, I think, especially returning to Kamigawa so much later (in real time) that the authenticity of the place, long and possibly erroneously cited as a weakness that led to its poor numbers (numbers that likely had a lot to do with it being a parasitic, underpowered block sandwiched between Mirrodin and Ravnica), is what made it so very enduring in the eyes of fans. People held on to Kamigawa. Even though it was pretty well liked overall I don't see a lot of calls for a return to Alara, for instance, and while I would personally love another swing at Ulgrotha I doubt it has quite as many devoted people. It showed westerners something developed, deep, and steeped in a wonderful lore that would be alien to most but engrossing because it still touches on very deep ideas, just as lensed by a culture with which most of the market for Kamigawa wouldn't be intimately familiar. It became a cult classic for a reason. If you revisit, and advance the setting to the point where we are cyberpunk now and KondaOS's secret police clash with motorcycle-riding Shinobi on the mean streets of Neo-Eiganjo, that's fine... as long as there's still that deep backbone of authenticity. As long as it's not all Beef Teriyaki. Sure, people love Beef Teriyaki, but if I go to a Japanese Restaurant I don't expect to see nothing but Beef Teriyaki. Maybe I want the Unagi, the Kakiage don, or the Tonkatsu Ramen. Those need to stay on the menu, or you lose the point of being the Japanese Restaurant.

If it's Cyberpunk, that CAN work.

If it's all Beef Teriyaki, we're gonna have problems.



* Phyrexians.
** Flowstone. Also glistening oil.
*** The Null Moon.
**** The Mana Rig.
***** Karn, to a lesser extent Kerrick.

EBWOP: One thing that gives me hope: With things like the Alt-Art War of the Spark PWs and the Godzilla series, I think Wizards is fairly concerned with the Japanese market and wouldn't want to piss them off.

Nah, that's just appealing to western weaboos.

Honestly it is pretty funny to see self-described lovers of Japanese culture always getting cold feet when it comes to mythology aside from Okami.

I mean, the Orochi story is great. I'm not arguing a point against, I just feel like I should defend it.

I need to send you the two part movie Karas.


For the record, I wouldn't want to see Meiji inspired Kamigawa purely because I've already DESIGNED that blood plane and seeing someone else do it will be as embittering as when Wizards eventually stamps all over the tropes we used for Jakkard.

A further, greater aside: I would collapse a plane to return to freaking ALARA.

Kamigawa seems like a natural choice to me. A lot of people (me included) liked it in concept, but it was badly executed in many ways. Adding magitech separates it enough from the original to make it palatable to those who hated it the first time, while still allowing them to keep enough of the aesthetic to (hopefully) not alienate those who enjoyed it. Of course, they could train spectacularly, but I'm not going to assume that will happen before we have seen anything of it.

I have come to believe Mark Rosewater has misdiagnosed the Kamigawa problem. I do not think the 'authenticity' of the plane is the problem, but how they approached that authenticity. I have also said all the below before multiple times in different places, so apologies if I've already typed this out on this forum before.

I am going to use two examples: Theros and Pokémon.

I think Theros in general is well-liked but is also criticized for being a bit too on-the-nose. it comes off as a pastiche of Greek mythology rather than a Greek mythology-inspired world. But one thing it does is include more obscure references to Greek myth without making the references obscure. For example, Hundred-Handed One refers to the real myth of the Hecatoncheires, but the card does not ask that you know the reference to get the card. You can look at the card and instantly understand that it's a giant with a hundred arms, through the art, name, and mechanics. Blight-Breath Catoblepas does not require you to know the story of the catoblepas and how it had a lethal or fiery breath. The name tells you the flavor (its breath is lethal) and its ability shows it.

Pokémon includes many references to Japanese and other Asian folklore. But it does not require you to know or understand the folklore to understand the game. On its face, you can capture an electric mouse or a venomous bee or a useless fish and you're in the game. For those who know the story, the fact that the carp turns into a dragon is a nice reference. If you know a baku is a tapir that eats dreams, Drowzee is a nice reference, but it's a one-of that you can move past if you don't like or get it.

The two cards I highlight from Kamigawa are Hana Kami and Waxmane Baku. The problem with these cards is not that they reference obscure mythology. A flower spirit is perfectly understandable. The problem is none of the flavor serves the card. Why use the Japanese word for "flower"? Why is it a flower with a face spitting out more flowers? What does any of that have to do with recurring cards? What does the flavor text mean? None of it comes together for a card that makes sense and you just have to accept it. A Kami of Spring Blossoms with the same ability and flavor text that references renewal or something would make the card make sense. What is a garami? What is a zubera? What is a akuba? If you don't know, you can't find out.

Let's say you did know "hana" meant flower. Let's say you did know Japanese mythology. Now explain Waxmane Baku. Knowing a baku is a tapir-like creature that eats dreams tells you literally nothing about that card. Why is it a mass of candles with legs? What does being made of wax have to do with tapping down creatures? Actually knowing Japanese folklore provided no handholds into the card.

I don't think Kamigawa needed beef teriyaki. It needed English descriptions of the dishes.

The weatherlight was basically star trek, complete with the borg but more oil-y and ended with a mech battle.