>>50024074
WBaWC is a topical game, just that its message is intemporal. The animal realm and its more futuristic, advanced architecture ruled by survival of the fittest is a general statement on how conflict & competition breeds advancements at the cost of inequalities.
It's only that a project driven by a single game for almost 30 years shifts & evolves. It's pretty interesting to get a glimpse of an "author" evolving, from media driven, to caught up by societal norms, with an evergrowing knowledge of his own culture and means to use them as vessels for stories. It is sometimes done with the subtlety of a brick, but I think it can be interesting to think about.
Given the trajectory of otaku media & mainstream media, I feel like ZUN leaving it to anyone else without clear instructions is a monkey's paw in the making. Remakes, asspulls to revisit fan favorites like multiverses, reshaping the cast to cater to ronery otakus (leave that to artists), and that's just scratching the surface.