Eureka Seven AO was never going to be as good as its progenitor, Eureka Seven. Very little since has been as unyieldingly brilliant as that 2005 masterpiece and few could hope to match its expansive, multifarious characters and story. That AO makes a good stab is, paradoxically, to be commended as well as lamented.

The story of Ao, a pariah on his own home island, joining up with a clandestine organisation to pilot a giant robot and battle similarly sized enemies is not new. The details of course are different and the background of political turmoil between Okinawa and Japan rumbles on while trapar - the nebulous green energy which allowed E7's robots to surf - is now mined as an energy source. For anyone with any familiarity with the original series then it's all a bit discombobulating; is this a prequel, sequel or alternate universe? Is it just another telling of the same story like the tonally wonky Pocket Full of Rainbows movie was?

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It's a heretical sentiment to anyone, British or no, who grew up with Dredd as a comic book icon. Comparing Psycho-Pass' protagonist - a timid girl fresh out of the academy - to a Dirty Harry homage that was progressively retrofitted with philosophies from Thatcher's Britian, Fascism and the Cold War seems tortured at best.

But a dystopian future society under an absolute authoritarian rule, enforced by an organisation with little to no oversight and the ability, nay the responsibility, to mete out lethal justice to those deemed to deviate from the norm? The minutiae may be different but the broad strokes bear a striking similarity. More than that though, many of Dredd's stories over his 35 year tenure have been a pastiche or a response to real life situations and concerns. Likewise, Psycho-Pass is a response to the police force within Japan.

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