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So what's up with Frieren: Beyond Journey's End? It's the number one show on MAL with an average rating of 9.24 after almost a million reviews. However, it doesn't really fall into traditional categories of top anime. For example, the rest of the top 10 is:
While some of the list is made up of actually good shows, a lot of it is the final season/bonus content for a popular anime. Basically the only people who watch this stuff have already seen everything in the show up to this point, so they are rather predisposed to like the ultimate content. Longer anime (like FMA:B and HxH) also have some of this effect because if you watched (e.g.) 150 episodes of something you'd better like it (not to say that they're bad anime, just that this helps push them into the top 10). But Frieren is the first season of a new show and only has 24 episodes so it doesn't really fall into this category.
It's also not exactly a groundbreaking anime. It's heavily trope-y and mostly uninterested in examining the assumptions of its world, except of course for the ramifications of having effectively-immortal beings. This latter aspect is explored in depth (especially through Frieren's interpersonal relationships) and this is done reasonably well. Narratively, the show is incomplete, and doesn't even end on a particularly dramatic note (with the last 8 episodes or so spent on a mostly-self-contained subplot). None of the ongoing hooks were resolved at the end of the season. The art/music/VA are neither exceptionally good nor bad. Overall, I would say it's a fine anime. I talked with someone else I know IRL who likes anime, and he agreed that it's good, but not greatest of all time.
So why is it rated so highly? Perhaps it's the second season, but (as discussed above) in that case the second season should be rated higher than the first, but it currently sits at 8.84. Maybe because it's widely available on streaming platforms? Paging @Lewyn @vorpa-glavo who have recommended this in the past.
The rest of them definitely lean adventure-action-fantasy, which is what Frieren is. All of them are Westernized which is important I think. So Westernized in fact that they straight up take place in fantasy Europe most of the time and not fantasy Japan. For example I am pretty sure the bottom 51% of anime contain many scenes at a Japanese secondary school and maybe 1 or 2 of the ones on that list feature that, so you can see how it skews based off of this.
Except Gintama (which takes place in alternate-universe Japan where fashion did not advance past 1850).
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