MithraPride

Watch enough anime and you start spotting things. K-ON! seems to have a few series with similar art styles and Toaru has tons! To list what I'm aware of:

K-ON! 2 series, 39 episodes and an incoming movie - If you don't like it there's something wrong with you
Sora no Woto (So.Ra.No.Wo.To) - About a happy-go-lucky band of young female soldiers, slow to start but has a nice ending. K-ON! in the military according to Asphe
Fractale - Interesting anime with some funny moments that I can't really describe as seems like the story is slowly being told. (There does seem to be elements of the Toaru art-style as well)

Toaru majutsu no Index (A certain magical Index) - Funny and action packed, don't really need to describe this one
Toaru kageru no Railgun (A certain scientific Railgun) - Spinoff of the above.
Toradora - Funny school anime with a bit of romance and drama thrown in.
Working! - Very funny anime about a group of employees (with odd personality traits) at a restaurant and their lives.
Ookami-san to shichinin no nakama-tachi (Ookami-san and her seven compansions) - Funny anime about Ryouko Ookami and the "organisation" she works for at school and the jobs they take on. They actually referenced characters from Railgun and Toradora in one episode
The world god only knows - Very funny anime about an avid gamer of mostly date sims who unwittingly signs a contract with a demon to "romance" certain girls, also the music is excellent.
Yumekui Merry - Interesting anime about dream-demons, funny too

Occult Academy - Funny and with a good bit of action about, you guessed it, the occult (zombies, weird monster things, aliens, etc.) with a great ending.
Level E - Very funny, mainly about an alien prince and the mischief he gets up to on Earth, which draws in many other characters for their own mini-stories.

There's a lot of different anime with similar art styles which you can relate back to anime studios or comic artists.
Looking at it from another perspective you can recognize the studio an anime comes from, and even guess the estimate age of an anime from very distinct features.

Sometimes you can also recognize the comic artists themselves had a big part in the making of the anime, like the series from Rumiko Takahashi.
(Ranma ½, Inu Yasha, Maison Ikoku)
Or Yuu Watase (Fuushigi Yuugi, Ayashi no Ceres)

And sometimes the director like Mamoru Oshii, I dare you to name one film of his from the early 90's and up without:

(Yes, even in the very first Ghost in the Shell movie there is a scene where you see this animal, can you guess which scene?)

And everyone can guess which anime comes from Gonzo by looking at the terrible CGI.

Been so long since I've seen the original GitS movie I can't remember a dog in it but I'd hazard a guess at one of the earlier scenes

at Gonzo's terrible CG, they're a pretty big company and think they have/had a good reputation. They've done some classics like Gatekeepers, Vandread, Full Metal Panic and Kiddy Grade :3 I remember FFU's CG, was pretty good for the time but everyone seemed to hate that show but me, my only gripe was that it didn't have an ending

Sugami wrote:Been so long since I've seen the original GitS movie I can't remember a dog in it but I'd hazard a guess at one of the earlier scenes

It's actually more near the middle of the movie.
I'm a huge GitS fan myself, and aside from that I've seen quite a few Oshii movies so yea those details tend to stick.

at Gonzo's terrible CG, they're a pretty big company and think they have/had a good reputation. They've done some classics like Gatekeepers, Vandread, Full Metal Panic and Kiddy Grade :3 I remember FFU's CG, was pretty good for the time but everyone seemed to hate that show but me, my only gripe was that it didn't have an ending

The thing with Gonzo, they aren't as big and shiny as you think they are.
Sure they have a few better known titles but if you look at them closely you'll see they go cheap on everything, scenes are recycled up to a point where you're looking at the same last 10 minutes of an episode at least 12 times in a 13 episode series.
FFU is one huuuuuuuuuge example of that, so is Gate keepers by the way.
Aside from that the majority of the Gonzo anime have very shallow storylines, there are a few exceptions here and there but it's just a few out of many.

When it comes to anime quality overall, sorry, Gonzo ends up pretty low on that scale.

And no, FFU was just... bad, and that's as nice as I can get about that series.

I enjoyed FFU It was kinda strange and quirky and a little OTT so it kinda suited a Final Fantasy title in that aspect, and it had chocobos

I never got to see all of Gate Keepers Gai~to oo~pu~n! They stopped selling it before I got all of the DVDs Reused sequences are pretty common place in action anime though, Gundam SEED did it plenty every time a Gundam flew out onto the battle field or whatever but it was one of the best received Gundam series to date. At least it's not DBZ, Naruto or Bleach