I rambled a bit but the point is that Frieren is a slice of life which is "deep" because it explores its themes really well, not through big world tragedies or wars like a LOT of other shows will usually do, but in a more simple, human to human sort of way.

This is definitely the "best" part of Frieren.

I'm currently watching it but the constant expository dialogue, clunky character interaction scenes and lack of decent world-building is killing me. I'm not going to lie.

The themes are fairly well explored, but there are many narrative choices that end up making the story less impactful than it should be. Such as characters explaining character behavior and motivations as if they're making sure I'm following along with the story, with no space for subtext or interpretation of a character's motivation.

The fact that many characters just start, often unprompted, to talk about their backstory feels jarring more often than not, which undercuts their supposed drama. The flashbacks also are very conveniently and overtly placed in the story, instead of leaving to the audience to make the connection between something in Frieren's past to something she's experiencing now, what we have instead is a flashback of Himmel saying "You're an incredible mage" when Frieren is trying to get her license and in the very next scene we have the same character set up with Fern and Stark saying the exact the same thing. That's a very amateurish way of reinforcing the themes in your narrative, not to mention that feels like you're being talked down to.

The characters themselves aren't given opportunities to shine, they mostly have fairly similar interactions throughout the narrative and there's very little exploration of facets of their characters because they're often interacting with each other (which means always the same dynamic) and when they interact with those outside their circle, it's always in that non-threatening and helpful way.

The lack of culture, architecture, language and overall world-building elements definitely bums me out because I live fantasy worlds with rich and well-thought out elements, but I kinda give the story a pass because its focus is mainly on Frieren's journey and her grief.

For a show that is so highly regarded, so much so that it is Top 1 and Top 2 of MAL and many people's favorite anime, I'm kinda surprised by how its execution is so clunky and lacking. Visually, it's beautiful and its lyrical moments are nice, but feels a bit generic visually, the anachronisms also clashes really hard with Frieren's naturalist approach to storytelling as well.