The characters more or less carried the show for me. What I especially liked were the strong focus on the young women's lives such as their love life and family bonds. The show has individual episode(s) that go very deep into their past and conflict and tries to connect that to the main storyline. This is a nice touch as to the usual action-capture the bad guys police anime and shows the human side of the characters
However some characters like Nami don't have a big influence in the show and could have been removed and nothing would change. Characters like Kiddy (my fav) could have been promoted to main character. The voice acting were very strong in the original. I found out Kiddy is voiced by none other than Bulma's VA, a veteran in the industry. Hence no surprise there.
The soundtrack for the series were actually very appropriate for the genre. The (first) ending song "Silently" was sang by Karen Mok. I had to look this up because I didn't think her name would come up in a Japanese anime. The lyrics had very strong ties to the main show and gives a melancholy feeling.The little tune that shows the preview of the next episode was also a reoccuring song that gives a longing and yearning feeling (the OST is called "The Perplexity"). I guess that's why both are placed towards the end as that is what the director wanted to communicate to us.
The art was I believe hand-drawn which I can always appreciate. Most of the show is filmed in the dark as that is often where battles take place. Finally if you have trouble understanding the show, someone wrote great summaries on the wikipedia page for each episode. I had to go read it myself because the storytelling for the main plot wasn't very clear. The final episode also was a bit ambiguous, but I have been told that the manga wasn't finished when the final episode aired.
