PRETEAR
Cute little Shojo anime
In order to get people to increase the viewers of anime, which can be an expensive hobby, ADV decided to release a whole selection of what they call animini's, the first episodes of the series, as teasers. Their cute tiny size, and their realtive inexpensiveness make them a good way to find a new anime series.  As part of their first batch they are releasing several first episodes of Shojo series, such as Pretear and Wedding Peach.  Later they are hoping to target boys with a collection of shonen animinis.<br />Pretear is a cute magical girl anime, it plays with a lot of fairy tale characteristics, and if you want a second opinion on it there are plenty of other reviewers of the series in its complete format.<br />Basically the heroine's father remarries to a really wealthy lady with two stuck up daughters(sound familiar?), and she's moved to a new town and school.  Meanwhile a big bad gets loose and wants to destroy all the leafe(kind of like life force) so the knights of leafe(My favorite is Shin ^_^)go in search of the Pretear ie Himeno our heroine. Hijinks ensue.<br />If you're in the mood for a different type of animini there's Noir which is more serious, and Azumanga Daioh which lacks the magic, but is really funny, there's also Kaleido Star which is about a girl who wants to join a circus (also really cute, and with lots of action scenes, action being acrobatic routines). I've only seen reviews for the other four, but Supergals and Di Gi Charat are really upbeat and really colorful, Happy Lesson looks kind of like a mix between Azumanga Daioh and Love Hina, and Princess Nine is about a girl who joins a boys baseball team, it's a lot more complicated, but that's the short version.