The problem was introduced by the patch for MDEV-7661,
which (in addition to the fix itself) included an attempt to make
CONVERT/CAST work in the same way with fields
(i.e. return NULL in strict mode if a non-convertable character found).
It appeared to be a bad idea and some users were affected by this
behavior change. Changing CONVERT/CAST not depend on sql_mode
(restoring pre-10.1.4 behavior).