Even if all the other elements of the story remain cliched, a unique main character completely recontextualizes them. Just this single change of protagonist is enough to shake up the entire dynamic of the genre. Seeing a 19th-century engineer wrecking medieval knights with dynamite and electricity is the same kind of fun as seeing an oriental occultist wrecking medieval-Europe-inspired-JRPG with curses, ayakashi, paper talismans, and machiavellian scheming. Take a cliched fantasy setting, add a protagonist that normally belongs in a completely different kind of story, watch how he fucks shit up with his out-of-place skillset, toolset, and above all else, mindset. but a meme, yet that novel and this anime have fundamentally the same premise. Now, there is a meme that Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court” is the first-ever isekai novel. In just one season, we have such isekai protagonists as a professional handyman, a legendary king, or, in the case of this show, an onmyouji from a fantasy version of ancient Japan. The secret ingredient all along was having a protagonist with some actual personality rather than a basement-dwelling incel. Winter 2023 marks the truly historical moment when the anime industry has finally figured out how to make generic isekai that isn’t utter trash. The anime version of “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.”
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