Are there any non-clichéd settings?

[Haruka_Yusuke]

Most of anime\manga\movies I read all have settings of either one of these fantasy, cyberpunk, earth or space.It left me wondering if there are any other settings that has hardly been used. So yeah I just wanted to know if there are any others.

[jcmraz]

Not really. Everything has been done. Don't cling to cliches and tropes but don't be afraid of them. For many readers they act as a short-hand. Just try to add something to existing ideas if you can't think of something totally new. Cliches and tropes are tools.

[Haruka_Yusuke]

Yeah that's a good point

[Chroma]

Totally agree with @jcmraz. Cliche has become a bit of a dirty word, when truthfully they're fine to use. There's a reason certain settings are popular, they just work really well. As long as your world is interesting and keeps the reader engaged, then its doing its job just fine!

[Pony_wearing_a_hat]

Yeah, most things have been done, but you can end up with something pretty unique if you combine some elements from different archetypes that don't generally go together.

[Iris-Grimoire]

Nothing new under the sun. When you generalize a setting enough, everything indeed is the same, but it becomes unique by getting specific differences within something familiar. It's fantasy, but everyone's got phones; it's cyberpunk, but everyone is a lizard; it's scifi, but you must do rituals to control starships. Trying to be forcefully unique usually just creates things that are confusing, unappealing, or both.

[HGohwell]

I read all have settings of either one of these fantasy, cyberpunk, earth or space.

I mean, to be fair, you just listen sorta everything. It's like saying "all the fruit I've had before has been fruit and that's cliche". I expected you to be a little narrower on your setting like schools or medieval middle earth fantasy. You've listing huge categories. Also you're not listing settings. Cyberpunk and fantasy are genres.

[skicoak]

The main benefit of "cliched settings" can't be understated...

You DON'T need a massive info dump to set the scene.

[Rhonder]

I think as far as huge umbrella archetypes most settings can fall into one of those listed. But if you're looking to further explore options and try and find some that are somewhat less common I think it would be useful to look deeper into different subcategories of settings. For example, off the top of my head some unique-"ish" fantasy settings that have definitely been done several times but maybe not as much as a generic fantasy setting, would be something like heaven, hell, or perhaps inside a character (either physically- think like stories where characters shrink down and go inside, or maybe spiritually like diving into their psyche).

When looking at "Earth", there are not only thousands of different locales to choose from, but also time periods and added "flavors", such as steam punk or urban fantasy. I feel like big key cities are probably cliched at this point (tokyo is the setting for tens of thousands of japanese media, new york city is a similarly common United States setting, etc) but there are lots of underutilized sorts of settings as well.

& etc. for the other categories.

[domisotto]

Well, there are alien planets and space stations, unless you amalgamate it into space. There is some stuff that takes place in microscopic world or within human body but i guess you can amalgamate it as Earth.

All and all, maybe I am thinking inside the box too much, but I am not seeing an alternative. Some sort of an energy field? Still cosmos, I suppose. Time as a setting? A crystal? Matrix or other simulated/electronic world?

Like, just hint what you are driving at?

[writercynknapp]

Do not think about Edwardian & Victorian summer houses, the London Ton, the costal farms, the light houses, and fishing villages.

Do not think about the metropolis throngs, musical songs, urban lawns.

Do not think about space freight bars, orbital stars, stellar rifts, and guns that go biff.

Do not think of magical schools, celestial daughters, green energy tools.

Do not think of class rooms of the mind, heartbreaks pined, angst defined.

Do not think of myriad planes for Doctors Strange flow astral again.

Do not think of adventures gathered, bards scolded, treasures sorted.

Do not think of dystopia scenes, rarely green, confounding schemes.

Do not think of household and apartment angst, tired pranks, giving without thanks.

Do not think of demi-god rage, a fresh page, confusion made.

Do not think of cherry blossom paths, prose token verse, love word in supply and in dearth.

Write down everything you hear, that you find dear. Keep a note file on hand. Make Plan.

Listen for the whispers at The Muses Door.

[Jen-Jen]

A setting that's never been written about before? Probably not. I'm sure there are plenty of places with just a few, not well known stories written about them before, though. But the real key is matching the setting with a genre, like an entire zombie movie taking place in your living room.

[NickRowler]

It maybe hard to find unused settings but there are definitely less popular ones.

I was thinking recently about the caveman/prehistoric setting and how I find it odd.

[DiegoPalacios]

"The Flintstones were the pioneers of stonepunk, but aside from that it was not very explored"

serious reply: i think it may be because cavemen are strongly associated with primitive grunts and stupidity (despite demythifications, they started building tools after all)

But a combination of stoneage with mythology could be interesting. "how do cavemen handle dragons", "do they develop magic?", how these tribes work?

If anyone is interested on a solid narrative on a primitive setting, i totally recommend "Primal" from the creator of Samurai Jack.

[NickRowler]

Mattel recently released a cavaman themed doll line and I just found it a bit odd. And I guess the Croods 2 is also coming out soon. I think there are some retro games with prehistoric themes but yeah it's not that common.

[domisotto]

I assume that any historic period falls under Earth in the original post

[DukeOfOool]

Like people already pointed out nothing is 100% new, whatever this even means, everything has been done before, all song have been written, all stories have already been told. Now it is up YOU to expand on all that has been done before. You are the lord of your tales, master scribe and acolyte at the same time. A setting is a shorthand for many things, but how do you tell the story? Do you barely show background and give detail or do you create microcosms upon themself? It's up to you to breathe live into the story. To gift the readers with something unexpected. A twist, a turn, an ancient urn, containing scrolls of tales of old.

So to the unused settings, we cannot know of untold tales. YOU have to tell them. Blend and merge all that you love, detail, uniqueness, a law unseen. I cannot give you examples for that would render my rant pointless. It is really up to each creator to do something unseen, yet like I stated it will ALWAYS be somehow inspired by your suroundings, we can only work with what we know...

So it's less about the setting that is 'original', but the execution and amount of work you put into it. And for this you can only turn to other media to gather a vision of what you want, continueing this cicle of retelling all the same yet different tales.

[indagold]

Anime bishie boys of microscopic sea plankton. I bet no one did that yet.

[DukeOfOool]

There is definitely already an anime bishie boy version of plankton, the spongebob character, so sadly, although this was an ingenious idea, your wrong...

This fact opens another can of worms though.

[Haruka_Yusuke]

Do you have a picture? I'd love to see that