I love both but you have to understand that the two is completely different, kino's strength of tackling a topic in the form of a country and a short story is also its weakness, freiren on the other hand have a goal thats takes a long time to accomplish and doing character development along the way, kino's hardly any of this especially kino herself.
Basically, freiren have a main quest and doing some side quest along the way which is the preferred and popular way of story telling while kino is just a bunch of side quest that sometimes have a extended/continuation story and interaction with the other main character, world building and dialogue alone wont make a story popular.
I've given their difference and similarities a bit more thought after reading your response.
I think what Kino lack is a sense of community, not more so the plot structure being less impact full. From what I remember from freiren it's mostly episodic in terms of what the cast goes through, with every so often there being over arching repurcussions to their main goal, but mostly just the cast vibing with one another going through different situations together. It's animated contemporary of delicious in dungeon, more so than the fantasy setting and major plot goals, is more interesting for the interpersonal relationships the cast have with one another. The whole sense of community they have is something Kino's journey lacks, where the non-plussed and often neutral protagonist we have is meant to be for the viewer to experience the narrative, but the lack of community she has with anyone (apart from her bike and other travelers occasionally) really limits how invested a reader/viewer becomes with the story as a whole. Compared to freiren, her entire character is equally as neutral and non-plussed, but that she has and had people who she has history with makes her interactions among the cast feel much nicer and dramatic to read.
I guess that's where freiren ends up reading or viewing better than Kino, you become more invested in her and her journey as a character because you see those who care about where she ends up and what she ends up doing.
Ime, I find it funny and weird that for both of them I enjoy the parts I dislike the most from either. Fights in freiren (while smartly written and interesting) are not what I care to read about in that series, whereas fights in Kino are the only few times the story feels like it has actual stakes and ends up revealing something interesting about the protagonist and those who know her.
Tldr: Kino doesn't have people, freiren has people, and people can sometimes be cool when you get to know them