It works in a good mix of episode story, back-story for the characters, and arc (shorty's evolution) -- enough to keep it interesting and the characters 3 dimensional.
Dialogue features some great puns ("a lady knows that when you attack a man's hair-line, that's hitting below the belt"), and the english voice acting is on a par with, if not superior to the japanese version of 'Bleach' -- which has a tendency to over-emote a lot.
My main criticism is that whereas the male characters have a wide range of types, all the female characters are drawn from the same template, at least facially. If the artists paid more attention to women, they might spend less time writing manga.