One could argue though that being conservative (in a literal sense), is the reactionary "punk" to the ideas of modernism and innovation of previous eras. An in

One could argue though that being conservative (in a literal sense), is the reactionary "punk" to the ideas of modernism and innovation of previous eras. An interesting phenemenon is the emergence of the extremely popular game based works across different mediums; LitRPGs for Western Fantasy, Isekai/Narou for Japanese culture, and the "Hunter" manwha for Korea. These works tend to have a infamous reputation for being overly similar to each other, and eschewing much in originality and worldbuilding in favour of pure action and power fantasies. In my discussions with those who consumed it, unique settings, character development, etc were all burdens, and instead by using a easily familiar and simple system of a game-rpg they could instead push to the "meat" of action scenes. The same can be also said about the comparison between the leanness of new "shounen" like Jujutsu Kaisen compared to meandering filler of the Big Three (Naruto, Bleach, One Piece). As someone who grew up with the previous era, that kind of thinking is almost antithetical to the reasons why I was drawn into fiction; The whole point of an RPG was to realise a fantasy world, the mechanics were just abstractions to make up technical limitations. Beyond that in other mediums, the idea was to get even crazier and fleshed out settings, to have more realistic characters, all to build that vision of a fantasy world that yet felt sincere. Pushing boundaries was the name of the game. And so it's that funnily enough, many older works like The Five Star Stories could almost be construed as innovative if you were to compare them to modern works today. This is all just about a specific niche culture, so other cultures may be different. But looking at decline in originals and the rise of remakes and endless sequels paints a similar risk-averse outlook for the wider zeitgeist. Well I guess it's a pendulum of reacting ideas; Modernism is the establishment, so Conservative is the anti-establishment. But the current era itself is already running out of steam, so the pendulum may just turn back.