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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.
It uneasily aligns itself with a genre (bittersweet to downright melancholic slice of life; perhaps a more cliché-friendly weeb would want to name-drop mono no aware) that used to be much more abundant in anime and manga, and had its own contingent of devoted fans who consumed everything in the genre and little outside of it. (I would list Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou as the defining example; Ashinano Hitoshi's later Kabu no Isaki; The Sky Crawlers; Haibane Renmei; Mushi-shi; ...) Not only have those fans been hanging around the periphery of anime culture and starved for content (all of the above are pre-2010), but the predisposed demographic itself also went nowhere. The only bone that was thrown to them in recent years is Girls' Last Tour/Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryokou, and that one was condemned to remain more niche because of the artstyle and because of the author being a bit too far in the corner of depressive behaviour patterns where you deflect with inappropriate humour. So it makes sense that this audience came out in force when they finally got a high-production-value work that they can admit to liking in public.
(If you liked Frieren, especially for everything other than the exciting battle scenes, consider every other thing I mentioned above a recommendation.)
(edit: I shouldn't have forgotten Fumetsu no anata e as another bone thrown recently, but that work went downhill too quickly after a strong first few arcs, and also put too many stat points into action battle.)
Would you consider Kino's Journey also in this genre? "Character goes around from place to place encountering the people there and then moves on without much actually happening."
(I would say that Frieren does a much better job at this than both of those anime in terms of tying individual episodes into a larger narrative)
It's adjacent, but much more of it is essentially Le Petit Prince: main character encounters a sequence of individuals or societies who are a caricature of some idea taken to an extreme, and the reader gets a Teachable Moment (mediated through the eyes of the protagonist, who by way of detachment or naivety presents themselves as a neutral observer). Pure travelogue-styled slice of life, including Frieren, is less transparently preachy, as conveying the author's expansive opinions on society is not the intent.
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