Honestly, it wouldn't have been an awful anime standing on it's own. But you had to attach it to Eureka 7, to which I have so many fond memories and emotions attached!
My first complaint with this anime is.. The waste of time. The key points of this episode could have been done in 12 episodes. There were no real filler episodes either!
Why 12? Well, at least half the content was just boring: Go here, kill these guys. Minor character development. Nothing really happens.
My next complaint is.. the characters. The super powers, they didn't make sense in this universe. To some extent, Naru fit in great. However, Truth was just the personification of every awful villain of any anime. Even when you get his full story. He just sort of.. is horrible.
The other thing about the characters.. Is the lack of development. Even on the main characters. We saw more development from Moon Doggy in E7 than we did from Ao in the entire series.
Third complaint.
The story doesn't make sense. I hate time travel. Hate it! With a passion, and this took confusing time travel and made it more confusing. They never answer a few questions which arise like "Were the scubs actually time traveling, or were they going to another universe in which an earlier time period of earth was occuring?" We don't have the insightful mind of a character like Dr. Bear to elaborate to the viewers what the staff knows.
To that end on the story. It kind of ruins the original series. I don't think I've been this dismayed at a series end since Mass Effect 3.
While creating a clone of the original is fruitless endeavor, making the sequel more similar than distant to the original story should have taken a precedent. When it didn't apparently. There were so many avenues to be followed upon with the original anime but instead they offer this short series which honestly should have been way shorter.
What I really missed were those scenes where you felt in touch with the character. I remember literally crying during Anemone's lamenting, and the tears of joy that followed when Eureka and Renton helped her see past the life she was locked in to.
Granted the end of Eureka 7 PoP was a little bit trippy for me, it was still amazing compared to what we got from Astral Ocean.
Goddamn how Bones has fallen.