Kamigawa was first introduced in 2004-2005's Kamigawa block, back when we had one big block per year with three sets usually taking place on a new plane (actually, Kamigawa was only the second of such plane-hopping blocks, after Mirrodin.) But while Mirrodin's story the prior year had followed the stories of Odyssey and Onslaught blocks somewhat directly (the plot set in motion by Karn trying to do the right thing but accidentally making things worse, even on the very plane he created,) Kamigawa was actually a distant prequel, giving us the background on Toshiro Umezawa, a wandering ronin who would be the ancestor of Tetsuo Umezawa, an as I understand it previously un-fleshed-out figure from the original Legends set way, way back in the early days (like, before I even started playing as a little kid - I was two sets late!)
Kamigawa was presented as a fantastical world based on Japanese folklore. The primary conflict was between the world of mortals and that of the Kami, the spirits who inhabited every aspect of the world (inspired by Shinto beliefs in Japan.) Beyond that, the setting had Samurai and Ninjas, and its demons were all "Oni," which in Japanese culture are a kind of ogre-like demon. Thus, I believe that all Oni in Kamigawa block were actually Ogre Demon Spirits, as most extra-supernatural creatures were considered kami (dragons, for instance, existed in a legendary cycle as dragon spirits.) Among the humanoid races, we had goblins reimagined as kappas (which aren't quite the same) as well as rat folk known as Nezumi, four-armed snake-folk called orochi, fox-folk known as kitsune, and "moonfolk," who look rather human-like but have long, rabbit-like ears (based on the Japanese notion that the craters of the moon resemble a rabbit, rather than the western "man in the moon.")
The aesthetics of the original block do get pretty surreal with the kami, but for the most part, it looks like a classic fantasy-version of Japan, more or less what you'd expect.
The new set, Kamigawa Neon Dynasty, which comes out in early 2022, is going to be a huge departure. Catching up with the modern day, which is seven or eight thousand years later, Kamigawa has undergone a profound transformation, and now exists as more of a cyberpunk setting.
I don't think we've actually seen any plane at point in history this distant from one another. I believe the "standard calendar" used for most of MTG lore is Argivian Reckoning, which I think places Urza's birth as "year zero," which puts the original block over three thousand years before that. I suppose the existence of Yawgmoth's legendary card from Modern Horizons (which depicts him prior to his discovery of Phyrexia, and thus makes him look like just a normal human, albeit a super, super evil one) means that we've got at least one card that comes from about two thousand years before the Kamigawa story (and one could argue that the various depictions of Nicol Bolas or other Elder Dragon Legends, or the Ur-Dragon, could come from even earlier).
The point is, things have really changed on Kamigawa. MTG has always had a bit of a science-fantasy element to it - the Phyrexians are kind of a robot apocalypse mixed with body horror, and the Thran, it's implied, had a rather futuristic society before their fall.
But going full-on cyberpunk is an interesting move. I'll be curious to see how much they lean into the sci-fi elements - naturally, one of the major concepts of cyberpunk is the existence of a virtual "cyber world" apart from the physical one, though I think that element of the genre has evolved as we've seen the actual development of the internet as a dominant cultural force. (The "cyberspace" imagined in early cyberpunk stories seems more like an MMO than the way people actually seriously handle internet commerce and espionage.)
What strikes me, though, is how cyberpunk tends to take place in urban settings. What we've seen of the new Kamigawa set - which is actually only two pieces of art, one depicting a new planeswalker who is some kind of cyborg ninja, and another just depicting a city with what appears to be magical trees growing out of it (could it be a basic forest?) - seems to imply an urban focus for the set.
Cyberpunk works well as a genre connection to a Japanese-inspired plane. Japan has produced some seminal works within the genre, such as Akira and Ghost in the Shell, and the genre grew out of an era of growing Japanese wealth and influence, particularly thanks the production of electronics. But even if we've seen sci-fi elements in Magic before, this is a pretty explicit leap out of conventions.
What's interesting to me is that the next set, Streets of New Capenna, seems likely to do similar things, both genre-blending and, again, finding an urban setting.
Again, we've seen very little of New Capenna, but the general vibe has been that it'll be a gritty urban city (New Capenna is likely just a city on its as-yet-unnamed plane, similar to how Strixhaven is just a school on the plane of Arcavios.) We know that the city was built by angels, but is now dominated by demons and gangs. And these gangs have the look and feel of 1920s and 1930s gangsters, the classic era of that other very urban and even less fantasy-adjacent genre.
Apart from its three-color gang theme, I don't know that we have a ton of details about New Capenna, but there are strong hints that Davriel Cane, the newish planeswalker character introduced in the novel Children of the Nameless, who has gotten a couple of cards depicting him and his magic, is probably from there. Davriel has the right look - his slicked-back hair, a pencil mustache, and his "robes" look more like a tailored suit. (One of his demonic servants, Miss Highwater, also seems to be wearing a woman's business suit). Davriel's previous life as an "accountant" might mean that he used to work for one of these gangs. I think it's highly likely that he'll be one of the planeswalker characters we see in New Capenna, and possibly the protagonist of its story.
Anyway, while Ravnica is the ultimate city in MTG, we have gotten a couple of urban-based sets and blocks before. Kaladesh is a whole plane, but most of the action in that block takes place in the metropolis of Ghirapur. Likewise, we had the plane of Mercadia back in the Mercadian Masques set, where almost everything that happened took place in that city (which if I recall correctly was founded by Thran escaping their destruction on Dominaria?)
Coming back to MTG many years later, I've found that the elimination of "blocks" can make each set a bit of a dizzying introduction of brand-new mechanics, so I think it's interesting when they find ways to create some kind of thematic throughline. Naturally, we've got two back-to-back Innistrad sets coming next, so it might not actually be too hard to have some mechanical continuity there, and next fall will see two Dominaria-based sets, though I believe the first will be set in the current point in the timeline whereas the other will be a distant prequel (or rather a different perspective on the story told in Antiquities). (Oh man, could we get a freaking black-bordered Urza planeswalker card depicting him right after his spark ignites?)
Anyway, I'm pretty excited for basically every one of the next six Magic sets.
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