It starts out kind of weirdly paced - I gather that they were trying to speed past the stuff that was covered in the first anime - but gets VERY AWESOME after that.

Yeah, Gracia and Mrs. Bradley both seem to basically have the good-wife-and-mother characterization, which, while I could wish they had a little more personality, and some indication of having any interests of their own, I am okay with given the sheer amount of awesome distributed over the other female characters! (Actually I don't know if Mrs. Bradley even exists in the old series. Um.)