ANY acts differently between strict and non-strict[1]:

> The behavior of ANY is slightly different in a STRICT table versus an ordinary non-strict table. In a STRICT table, a column of type ANY always preserves the data exactly as it is received. For an ordinary non-strict table, a column of type ANY will attempt to convert strings that look like numbers into a numeric value, and if successful will store the numeric value rather than the original string.

So it has some utility in a strict table that you can't get otherwise.

[1] https://www.sqlite.org/stricttables.html#the_any_datatype