The person who was caught is the artist of the manga adaptation and not the writer of the original light novel.

(Also both the ln-writer and the manga-artist are female.)

On MAL and temporarily, yes. From memory, I can think of two anime that were temporarily ahead of FMA:B.

Kaguya-sama’s third season was ahead of FMA:B when it was airing in 2022. It now sits on 12th with a score of 9.02.

Pingu in the City was memed to #1 shortly before its first episode aired in 2017. It now chills in the mid-tier with a score of 6.52 on 6596th.

However, I think Kaguya was only barely ahead of FMA:B at its peak. Meanwhile Frieren is at 9.18 currently while FMA:B in 2nd place is on 9.09. That is a full 0.09 lead, which is over 10% of the way from FMA:B to a theoretical clean 10.0.
Another way to put the lead into context is by doing the next 0.09 step down from FMA:B, which lands us cleanly at 9.00. An anime with a score of 9.00 would be at 13th, between Kaguya-sama 3 (9.02) and Fruits Basket: The Final (8.98).

Edit: With the final episode done, it’s now sitting at 9.34. I will assume it’s gonna drop a bit again over time, this is still an absolutely insane score. 27% of the way between FMAB and perfect 10.0. Going from 9.34 is now a 0.25 step down to FMAB, the next 0.25 step would be down to 8.84, which would be a tie with Kimi no Na wa at 28th.

I can only repeat again how mindblowing this is. The difference between Frieren and FMAB is the same as the one between FMAB and Kimi no Na wa. And that is ignoring how much harder every 0.01 gets the closer you get to 10.0.

It definitely lives and dies by the execution. I can definitely see a universe in which the adaptation is just as great if not better than the source material, but also a universe in which it’ll be hard to watch.

I read the manga on a whim when I saw the cover-art and fell in love with it. I got my fingers crossed that whatever studio is doing this can nail it.

The manga itself does a great job of extracting humor out of the juxtaposition between zombie/horror tropes (but with cute cats) and the survivors who are all cat-fanatics, but while they love cats, they also have to avoid cats (and sometimes even have to inconvenience the cats). It sounds stupid, but with the manga playing it very straight, it turned into one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. It might not be for everyone though. I also need to shoutout the artwork in the manga, the cats are drawn really nicely and contrast well with the gritty, apocalyptic world drawn around them.

Overtake and MFGhost are both good if you are into racing.

Funny you say this. I’ve only kept up with Overtake but I liked everything except the actual races. Lucky for me it seems to be a character drama centered around racing as opposed to a racing anime with some drama. Especially episode 4 really won me over and from what I remember nobody did any kind of racing in that episode.

Same. This episode probably saved the anime for me. I wasn’t super feeling it after the first three episodes, but after this episode I’m back to being excited to see where it goes.