Yeah, I know what you mean- I had one person tell me that they didn't understand why I liked it so much because it's just a silly cartoon. -_-

I agree that it's the characters that make the series so incredible. Characterization is the most important thing to me in ANY medium, actually. You have to make me care about at least one of your characters. If you don't, it doesn't matter how good your world building is or how pretty your prose is- I'll be going, "why am I here? why should I even give a fuck? they can all go die in a fire and it wouldn't matter." And Hikago has FANTASTIC characters, both as they're introduced and as they grow. :)