While I ignored PBC by accident, Eureka 7 AO was shunned at Ani-nouto explicitly, after I decided that the original was too gritty. Still, Vuc and CKS seem to like it enough to give it "show of season" (over Jinrui et al). In this context, Reckoner's piece for The Behind may be interesting, although he comes from a position of someone poisoned by the original.

Indeed a sequel should reward the audience’s fidelity by not being too repetitive. Eureka 7 AO does not want to make the mistake of just rehashing the original soullessly. I also understand a sequel should expand upon the world of the original as it would make everything more interesting. However, the problem here is that the creators took these two concepts to the opposite extreme by making this show much too different. It just underscores the general issue here that Eureka 7 AO does not fulfill the obligations of a sequel. It does not stay true to the original, it does not retroactively deepen the meaning of its predecessor thematically or on a characterization level, and it definitely does not follow through on what we have come to expect from the Eureka universe.

UPDATE: Chris told me by e-mail that he puts Jinrui on top of the season now, bumping E7AO down. Still, it is quite good by itself.

I've certainly been completely happy with AO without knowing all that much about the original show (and not having really seen it). Indeed, judging from Reckoner's piece I may have been better off that way. There are some references back to E7, but both vague general knowledge of E7 and the twitter/blog-sphere chatter gave me enough background to appreciate them.

Sounds like something we discussed before.