Barefoot shoes without raised toes - what am I missing?

Hi, I am looking into getting my first minimalist/barefoot shoes and there is something that doesn't quite make sense to me. It feels intuitive to me that the toes should be flush with the rest of the foot (just like the ankle in a zero-drop thing) because that's how my foot is. Doing some research on this, I found that the raised toes in running shoes are meant to provide extra assistance rocking the body forward, which goes against the thesis of barefoot shoes. Then why do almost all shoes I checked also have the toes above the ground (this should be easy for anyone to see - any product picture of them online shoes the toes raised with shadow underneath compared with the rest of the sole)? Please help me solve this mystery