World Wars made interesting

Italy, once home of the strongest empire in the world, has changed. This is the story of Italy, now a cowardly pasta-loving fool, and his friends (other personified countries of the world) as they live through strange moments in world history. --ANN

Hetalia Axis Powers is one of the series premiering this anime season. The series itself started as a webcomic and had a steady following with scanlations floating around the Internets. MAD vids of the characters dancing to various anime openings found their way into youtube. I would summarize the series as the crazy antics of anthropomorphic personifications of countries/nations involved in both World Wars. Sadly, I can only name a handful of characters mainly Japan, Italy, Germany, UK, US, and France. The others I can pick out by their "lovely item" (e.g. Spain and his tomato).