Hyakko

A funny manga and an excellent cast, with a director and writer who don't have enough of a track record to be predictable. The comic involves four girls, each amusingly loopy in her own way. Director Fukuda Michio did storyboards for everything from Ayakashi Ayashi to PaniPoni Dash. Writer Tomizawa Yoshihiko created Onmyou Taisenki and did the script for Starship Operators.

Hirano Aya certainly gets my attention, but so do Orikasa Fumiko, Kuwashima Houko, and Neya Michiko (Riza Hawkeye in FMA). These people could create great characters together. And this show marks a kind of return to the limelight for seiyuu Ochiai Yurika, who is most famous so far for ToHeart2, a heartbreaking personal blog updated several times a day, and an enormous number of posts about her on 2channel.