TL;DR: It certainly does not add something valuable to the E7, actually takes from it. And as a anime, it really not worth your time if you've not decided to consume everything about E7.
Good things about the anime:
-MUSIC
-Animation and art style
Bad things about it:
-Everything else
Is is even sadder because the story could actually be amazing. It had a good premise and the later reveal about what was that world about made it better. It starts of just like the original, we have a growing boy living with an old man. Things get chaotic and the boy finds himself in a journey with people he don't know much about. There are a lot of different details but outline is pretty much this and so far so good. But as you are watching, you realize everything that made the original E7 good is not here anymore. As the story unfolds, you connect the dots with this world and original E7 and you learn about the main character. And, that was it. Without spoilers, this is pretty much what you can expect. The characters are not interesting at all. They are not even getting the one-tenth of the treatment the original E7 characters' have. Occasionally, you get some backstory for some of them but they are not in the least interesting. Ao is an exception because you actually wonder about him and when you think about Renton's development in the original series, you expect so much from AO. I can say he was interesting at first but he has not developed as the story progressed but the last two episodes or something. He had so much potential to make the sequel work but he just played the role of standart mc who makes the story progress.
The music is the best thing about the series and subjectively better than the original. OP's and endings are banger, music in the fight scenes makes you hype up, and the music in the emotional moments even makes you sad, even though you don't care about the characters.
I think the original E7's animations and art was better, but AO was not bad at all. Better looking than the anime of its time but it is disappointing that it is not as good as its predecessor released years ago.
Even though it had the potential to become an amazing sequel, Eureka Seven AO couldn't even become a good anime. Not because it has not blindly followed the principles of its predecessor, but because you can feel it hasn't been made with any love.
