Anime / Robotech

For when you want to remember love, that old lullaby and the fact that Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross existed at all.

Robotech is a cult Mecha anime series about three wars fought on Earth with alien technology, against alien enemies, over control of a powerful energy source. Initially a major success, its relatively adult story content is credited with introducing Western audiences to the sophisticated dramatic potential that Japanese animation had to offer, or even possible for animation itself. This, in turn, fueled interest in anime that was oriented towards the original Japanese productions unedited by American producers.

This is ironic, because Robotech is a Frankenslation of three different anime series, edited together by Carl Macek of Harmony Gold. Macek had wanted to bring the Japanese anime Super Dimension Fortress Macross to western television, but was unable to since it did not possess the sixty-five episodes needed for a syndication deal^note It was supposed to have 48, but this was slashed to 36 due to production costs. Macek's solution was to tie Macross to two other unrelated series with similar elements and art styles, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA, and to turn the whole thing into a multi-generational saga, using Macross's Protoculture—now retrofitted to be the fuel source behind the various technology used by the different races—as the uniting factor between each series. In addition, Harmony Gold found out that the model company Revell had already bought the rights to several Macross models (as well as Super Dimension Century Orguss and ironically, Fang of the Sun Dougram), releasing them under the name "Robotech", as well as a comic book made by DC Comics with an original setting. As an agreement to keep brand synergy, the name was kept. The DC comic, which at the time only had two issues, and its continuity, was dropped.

The series was therefore divided into three sagas or arc, each portraying a generation of characters. They are:

• "The Macross Saga" (36 episode arc adapted from Macross), the story of pilot Rick Hunter and the crew of the SDF-1 battle fortress. Of the three adaptations, this one has the most in common with the original anime. Names were changed. The biggest changes were mostly made to help fit all three series together. The relationship between the Zentraedi and the Robotech Masters, for example. It mostly comes in the form of backstory dialogue, though a few episodes late in the series have Southern Cross footage of the Masters spliced into them.
• "The Robotech Masters" (a 24 episode arc [the first episode being an American-made clip show] adapted from Southern Cross) had arguably the greatest number of changes, starting with moving the setting from the faraway planet Glorie down to Earth, and ending with, well, the ending, which became a Bittersweet Ending because of the following arc. The Robotech Masters features Dana Sterling, the (first) daughter of Max and Miriya Sterling from Macross. Having been left on Earth in the care of General Rolf Emerson, she has joined the Army of the Southern Cross, and unlike her high-flying parents, pounds the ground in a Veritech Hovertank. Naturally, she ends up on the front lines when the Robotech Masters, the men behind the Zentraedi, invade the earth searching for the Protoculture Matrix hidden in the wreckage of the SDF-1 Macross.
• "The New Generation" (a 25 episode arc adapted from Mospeada), concerns the Invid, enemies of the Masters and the Zentraedi, who conquer the Earth after it is accidentally seeded with the Invid Flower of Life, the source of Protoculture, following the conclusion of the war against the Robotech Masters. Earth forces that left the planet between the first and second generations return to save their homeworld, including Scott Bernard, who finds himself the only survivor of the first counter-invasion. Scott gathers a Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits on his way across the Scavenger World the Earth has degenerated into in order to reach the Invid home hive of Reflex Point.

In addition to redubbed anime, several comics, novelizations, original tie-in novels and games have attempted to relate the story, with varying levels of success, within and between the Robotech "generations". One of the most ambitious was Robotech II: The Sentinels, which chronicled the story of the Macross heroes as they go into space towards the Robotech Masters' homeworld to stop any further wars. Naturally, they miss them, only to find the planet besieged by the second faction of the Invid, and meet a collection of alien races fighting to free themselves from Invid domination. Although the animated series fell apart after a few episodes were created, the story continued in comic, novel, and tabletop RPG form, each offering similar variant takes on the story.

Another stillborn project was Robotech: The Movie (a.k.a. Robotech: The Untold Story), which spliced footage from the show with scenes from the anime Megazone 23 in order to create a story set between the "Macross" and "Robotech Masters" sagas. Unlike The Sentinels, this project was completed, but its tepid reception during test airings (resulting from audiences believing that the film was appropriate for kids) caused Harmony Gold to shelf it. It has never had a wide release inside the states, though it was released in Latin America. The fact that the rights that Harmony Gold/Cannon Pictures had for Megazone 23 expired is another reason that the feature will never see the light of day. A heavily edited version is included as a bonus feature on various Robotech DVDs.

One of the stranger aspects of all of this was how Harmony Gold could obtain the US trademark for Macross just by defending the rights to Robotech. Japan and the US did not have reciprocity for copyrights at the time and Bandai/Big West (the owners of Macross) had sublicensed the international distribution rights to Tatsunoko Production, who licensed all aspects of Macross except the Japanese model kits to Harmony Gold. Bandai also licensed several mecha designs to FASA for use in BattleTech,^note According to Sarna.net, a website dedicated to the lore of the BattleTech Expanded Universe, FASA might not have had a rightful license in the first place - the importer who cut the deal, 20th Century Imports, had deliberately misrepresented their own associations with Bandai, and allegedly had no legal claim to said rights themselves, and they were incorporated and used in the miniatures game. FASA had sued Playmates Toys over alleged copyright infringement for a design in their Exo Squad/Robotech crossover line that resembled a "Mad Cat". Harmony Gold countersued FASA for the longstanding use of Macross IP in BattleTech, citing their license from Tatsunoko. The suit was settled out of court, and the settlement was sealed so the settlement terms are not known. However, the suit forced FASA to voluntarily remove the offending designs out of fear of renewed legal hassles.^note More details are available on the BattleTech page. Big West subsequently successfully sued Tatsunoko (but only in Japan), as their license to Macross was originally only to cover the original animation content of Macross, and not any derivative content based thereon.

The end result of the convoluted legal snarl:

• Harmony Gold can continue to release the original Robotech stories, and can also release the original Macross in the US, but cannot create derivative works based on it for film or TV. However, they can still create merchandise featuring the characters, including books, games and comics.
• However, they can create derivative content based on Mospeada and Southern Cross, which are both wholly owned by Tatsunoko in the first place. Consequently Harmony Gold's more recent sequels, most notably the original feature-length film Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles, are all set in or after the part of the Robotech timeline drawn from Mospeada. References to the characters or events from the Macross or Masters seasons are subtle at best.
• In addition, they effectively have veto rights for the imports and English translation of Macross merchandise and series that are not covered by the original license. Consequently, all Macross productions with the exception of the original series, Macross Plus and Macross II: Lovers Again ^note the latter two were "snuck in" by LA Hero under Harmony Gold's radar at a time when their TV production and licensing divisions were badly savaged by a "headhunting" raid by Haim Saban. By the time HG could have contested it, it was too late. are blocked from being sold or translated in North America (as Big West and Studio Nue do not want to pay them). Under Harmony Gold's unchallenged interpretation, Shoji Kawamori cannot make or distribute his own drawings and designs within North America. This has not made them popular.
• In 2017, the terms of said legal proceedings were partially unsealed as part of a legal case between Tatsunoko Production and Harmony Gold. Harmony Gold was not found in breach of the terms of their original contract, but the court ruled that they have to relinquish all rights (other than the Robotech name) by March 14, 2021, as per the licensing agreement. This also affected a follow-up case, where Harmony Gold were finally taken to court over the terms of the original FASA settlement (the lawsuit was settled in 2018). But in 2019, it was announced that Tatsunoko renewed Harmony Gold's license for an undisclosed period of time, allowing them to make and license Robotech content "well into the future".
• In 2021, Harmony Gold and Big West announced an agreement that permitted worldwide distribution of most of the Macross films and TV sequels, confirmed that Big West would not oppose the Japanese release of the anticipated live-action Robotech film, and recognized Harmony Gold's exclusive license with Tatsunoko for the Macross characters and mecha used in Robotech throughout the world excluding Japan. Henceforth, Harmony Gold and Big West would cooperate on distribution of Macross and Robotech projects.

A Robotech edition of the Mospeada OVA Robotech: Love Live Alive was released in 2013 as a sequel, of sorts, to The Shadow Chronicles.

A couple of licensed Video Games were also created around the Turn of the Millennium: Robotech: Battlecry (based on Macross) and Robotech: Invasion (based on Mospeada).

Aside from the DC comics, there have been a number of other comic adaptations as well, from Antarctic Press, Eternity Comics (later Academy Comics), and others. Titan Comics launched a new run in 2017, which swiftly went into a new direction on its own. The 2017 series ended in 2019 after the Intra-Franchise Crossover Event Horizon set up a Retool into the Robotech Remix series, featuring multiple characters from various parts of the original timeline interacting in the new Titan continuity after a Soft Reboot. Remix entered a hiatus after 4 issues; the fifth issue is still being solicited for release by Titan, but one of the artists confirmed on Twitter in 2021 that he had not been asked to finish work for that issue yet.

This show is also where a lot of now-popular anime voice actors got their starts, including Wendee Lee, Richard Epcar, Tony Oliver, Barbara Goodson, and Cam Clarke.

The film rights were originally purchased by Warner Bros., but now Sony Pictures have acquired the rights and plan to move forward with a Robotech franchise, and have announced that the first film will be directed by Andy Muschietti.

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This show provides examples of:

• 65-Episode Cartoon: At 85 episodes (36 from Macross, 23 from Southern Cross, 25 from Mospeada, plus an extra clip episode cobbled together to help bridge the narrative gap between the first two sagas) Robotech well exceeds this trope. (Otherwise, it would have stopped five episodes into The New Generation!) But of course the reason Robotech exists in the format that it does is because the producers had this trope in mind.
• Abuse Mistake: Poor Rand. he stumbles upon the naked Ariel who is a blank slate, and turns around instantly, apologizes, and asks her to put clothes on (except Ariel is still learning what language is and dimly parrots what Rand says. Let alone what clothes and motor functions are). Rook comes in, and becomes enraged, thinking Rand had tried to rape her. It dawns on Rook things might not be as she thinks when Ariel just repeats her questions back to her, but doesn't give Rand any sort of apology. Both logically (but wrongly) conclude she must be suffering from emotional trauma.
• Accidental Pervert: Rand has this happen to him at least twice (landing on top of Anne after an explosion, and walking in the newborn but physically adult Ariel). He doesn't help his case that one time he really was peeping on Rook and the others.
• The Ace: Max Sterling in the Macross phase — a subversion in that he is a secondary character yet indisputably the best pilot, and a nice guy to boot whom everyone likes. Roy Fokker, Rick Hunter, Dana Sterling, and Scott Bernard all qualify to a lesser extent as the main characters.
• Action Girl: Quite a few. Miriya Parina-Sterling (Macross Saga) and her daughter Dana Sterling (Masters Saga), also Marie Crystal and Nova Satori (also from Masters Saga) and finally Rook Bartley (New Generation) and Dana's sister Maia Sterling (Shadow Chronicles) all qualify.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • Jack Mckinney's novelization include extra material such as a prologue featuring an attack on a Robotech Master outpost by the Invid, and explaining that the Super Dimension Fortress derives its name from the fact that originally, time inside moved at 1/24th the speed of time outside. It also gives Veritech fighters an Unusual User Interface of a psionic pickup in the helmet, requiring Battloid mode to be partially commanded by thought.
  • The novels mention that the Regess explicitly used DNA from a random dead human of the failed Mars Division's assault on Reflex Point as a template to create Ariel. Indirectly saying that Marlene's DNA was used! This actually does a lot to explain why Scott ends up being as protective of her as it is, at first seeing Ariel Scott is silently shocked at seeing a woman with the face of the dead love of his life. The last novel in the McKinney continuity, The End Of The Circle, doubles down on this: while a dying Ariel is traveling through a Negative Space Wedgie, she sees not only her own life, but the life of Marlene Rush, flash before her eyes. By the time they arrive into the Genius Loci that the Regess became after the end of New Generation, she's undergone a Split-Personality Merge into someone who decides that "Marlene" is a more fitting name for herself.)
• Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole: Several exist as a result of adapting the source material into a single continuity. This generally comes up only in the later two parts of the show. The Macross section is a faithful adaptation, right up until the very end; it's only when they tried bolting things onto Macross that problems began to pile up. The novelizations tried to answer these, with varying degrees of success. Examples:
  • The first and most obvious one being the "mystery of the invisible SDF-2". The reason? In the Masters section there's 3 mounds which in Robotech are supposed to represent the ruins of the SDF-1 and Khyron's ship that crashed into it, inside which is found the Flower of Life which is supposed to be the source of Protoculture. Basically they had to make up the SDF-2 to account for the third mound, and had it that Lisa Hayes was to be its commander. No such ship appears in the original Macross (yet. An SDF-2 (the Megaroad) would come up later), so we don't see it in the Macross Saga footage.
  • Why does Dana Sterling have green hair as a baby but is a blonde by the time she grows up (dye job? recessive gene from her dad's side of the family? Or because she was originally two different characters?)
  • Why cities such as New York City (complete with famous Real Life theatre) exist in The New Generation series when the Earth got nuked by the Zentraedi and they barely managed to rebuild before being invaded again by both the Masters and then the Invid? (Maybe because there were no Zentraedi, or Masters, in Mospeada). This is explained in Expanded Universe as the villains tended to target populations not cities, and they were abandoned fairly early on. The Novelization also explicitly states that rebuilding New York was a priority during reconstruction.
• Adaptational Villainy: Invids in Robotech has a minor difference from their counterpart in Genesis Climber MOSPEADA. While the Invids in Robotech were said to have enslaved humans on Earth as slave labor, at least by narration and Sentinel series' showing their conquest over Sentinel worlds, Mospeada version seems to left the humans on Earth to their own actions so long as HBT fuel usage are regulated and armed resistance is not present along with their status as Invading Refugees—in the sense of vagrants in Mospeada rather than vengeance-fueled conquest as in Robotech—seeking a new homeworld after the destruction of their original home.
• Advertising-Only Continuity:
  • The commercials for the Matchbox toyline gave Breetai and the Robotech Masters some cheesy dialogue that was not in the show. There was also no effort to make the voice sound like Breetai. Additionally, the commercials have an I Am Not Shazam moment with their cheesy made up catchphrase: "Robotech...to the rescue!", ignoring the fact that Robotechnology is used by both sides of the conflict.
  Breetai: "I'll get you yet, Rick Hunter!" (for the ad with the Rick, Roy, and Lisa action figures.)^note In the show, Rick Hunter and his buddies weren't known by name to Breetai until they were allies.
  Robotech Masters: "The Bioroids have just begun to fight." (for the ad with Dana, the hovertank, and Bioroid figures)
  • The commercial also makes it appear that Roy Fokker is Rick's sidekick.
  Narrator: "Rick Hunter's racing to the scene. Roy is by his side. First they save friend Lisa, then send the aliens home for a ride!"
• After the End: Earth is devastated no fewer than three times in the series. The last of the novels grimly notes the Earth's population has been greatly reduced, leading to less scrambling for resources...
• The Ageless:
  • The Zentraedi apparently have biological immortality due to Protoculture-based genetic engineering, despite having a life expectancy lower than humans due to being a Proud Warrior Race with a Martyrdom Culture.
  • Subverted with the Robotech Elders who are said to be the original inhabitant of the planet Tirol as they looked ancient.
• Aliens Never Invented the Wheel: In a manner of speaking, according to the Expanded Universe. In spite of being incredibly gifted masters of bioengineering, and relying on mechas that aren't so much constructed on an assembly line as created whole cloth, your rank and file Invid doesn't understand how something as mechanically simple as a bicycle works. This is why a powered down Veritech will be a meaningless hunk of metal even if a shock trooper is staring right in front of it. The Regis and human-type Invid are not fooled by such ploys, it's not known if this applies to the Regent's Invid as well, but given their use of the Inorganics, it's unlikely.
• Aliens Speaking English:
  • Justified with the Zentraedi, at they explicitly learn English.
  • Also justified with the Invid. We pick up the heroes during the Third Robotech War well after the Invid have occupied earth and have had time to learn the language of their new labor force.
  • However, unlike the other two, the civilian population of the Robotech Masters' city ships have no real justification for this.
• All Bikers are Hells Angels: The Red Snakes follow this motif.
• All for Nothing: Ariel has this opinion on everything the Invid have endured and ended up as horrible as their persecutors, "We've traveled far, but we've learned nothing Sera, nothing."
• All Just a Dream: A nightmare by Rick Hunter in the original series spans the whole episode where he is hospitalized, focusing on if he should continue to love Minmei. Rand and Ariel also have one in New Generation.
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song: In France the opening theme composed by Ulpio Minucci was replaced with a song by Bernard Minet.
• Amazonian Beauty: Bela and Gnea, members of a Proud Warrior Race from a Lady Land planet, as seen in The Sentinels.
• A Million Is a Statistic: Subverted with the RDF officer who fires the Fantastic Nukes at Reflex Point. He makes clear he's not happy about it, even if it means nuking their own soldiers (and has apparently given up on the Shadow Fighters being able to assassinate the Regess even if they were fighting inside the Hive itself by that point). He's also less terrified and more in awe when he's vaporized along with most of his fleet when the Regess leaves Earth.
• Amnesiacs are Innocent: Marlene-Ariel is definitely this, of course it's also from the fact she doesn't have a past to remember.
• Ancient Astronauts: Wildstorm's version of Minmei's big film, Little White Dragon, made it explicit that the giants were actual Zentraedi stranded on Earth. The posters claim it was 'based on a true story' — and the stinger has Dolza telling Breetai about a lost recon vessel that sent a distress signal from Earth about a thousand years ago...
• And I Must Scream: Dr. Lazlo Zand ends up turned into a giant Invid Flower of Life when trying to use Dana to become a protoculture god.
• Always Chaotic Evil: This is the Regess' opinion on humans as a whole. Saying it's as natural to them as breathing, human history is a catalog of man's inhumanity to man.
• Always Close: The 15th Squadron make it off the Robotech Master's flag ship soon before it blows, and just before Emerson orders a withdraw of the entire fleet. Meaning if they'd escaped any later they'd have been stranded in deep space.
• And the Adventure Continues: The last shot of the series is Scott leaving Earth with his Vertech Alpha and Beta Fighter, off on a quest to try and find Admiral Rick Hunter and the SDF-3, Lancer saying his friends will be waiting for him when he comes home, Lancer sings one final song that is not sang anywhere else in the series. Scott promises to return to Ariel/Marlene, throws away Marelene's message pendant into space, leaving the past behind him. The narrator saying that Scott flies into the unknown, and to his destiny... And the 'next episode' is a preview for the first episode. The novels give a conclusion.
• Anguished Declaration of Love:
  • Lisa gives one to Rick right before Khyron's attack on the SDF-1 at the end of the first series.
  • Ariel/Marlene also gives one to Scott in the final episode after Scott is shot down and barely survives his battle with the Invid Prince Corg. But Scott is too fixated on getting back into the battle. Rand later calls him out on this.
• Animal Stampede: The Robotech Rebels find themselves facing one when an Earthquake triggers the Genesis Pits begins to collapse.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Lisa gives one to Rick right before Khyron's attack on the SDF-1 at the end of the first series.
• Anyone Can Die: The Macross series had a surprisingly high body count among its main cast, which shocked western audiences during its heyday. The first among them was Roy Fokker, who was followed by Ben Dixon only two episodes later. Countless billions were also killed when the Zentraedi bombard Earth's surface, annihilating over 2/3 of its populace. Several scenes are shown of people on the ground as they get vaporized, including a soldier asking a young girl how old she is. After she replies "two", he grabs her as they both vanish into white. And, in the final episode, Admiral Gloval and the entire bridge crew of the SDF-1 (minus Lisa, who'd been shoved into the bridge's lone escape pod) die when Khyron and Azonia steer their damaged ship directly into the bridge.
• Apocalypse How: Each series ends with one of these. Original Series faces a Class 1, Southern Cross' war is a Class 0, and the Invid Invasion is another Class 1.
• Applied Phlebotinum: Robotechnology and Protoculture in particular.
• The Artifact: Just why is the ship called the "Super Dimension Fortress" anyways? The Expanded Universe explains that is because space and time are ever so slightly wonky inside it.
• An Arm and a Leg: The Invid Scout that becomes Corg has a leg blown off during the battle right after Marlene meets with the rebels, but since it's just the mecha that's damaged, it's easily replaced, using one of its claws for balance.
• Arc Number: The number "3" — beyond the many triple-changing mecha and the Love Triangles, the Robotech Masters reorganized their society around triads of clones, after the triple petals of the Invid Flower of Life. (Not to mention the three original source series.)
• Artistic License – Geography: The Robotech rebels travel from South America to Kansas (where Reflex Point is). But they make a stop by Manhattan once they make it to North America (which would be way out of their way). Notably, this isn't even a Dub-Induced Plot Hole but carried over from the Japanese version.
• Artistic License – Paleontology: Invoked by the Invid and lampshaded by Rand, as he thinks how the creatures in the Genesis Pit all come from different eras in Earth's history millions of years apart and how impossible it all is. Rand knows it's all artificial, but these creatures are all very much living things and compares it to a 'living museum.'
• Ascended Extra: Several unnamed, minor, or background characters not only receive names but also extended character development. Especially in the novels and comics.
  • The nameless Chief Engineer of the Macross with the weird eyes who appeared twice became Dr. Emil Lang, Earth's Chief "Robotechnician" since being Touched by Vorlons during the initial exploration of the SDF-1.
  • Dr. Lazlo Zand is introduced in the novels as a character but is based on a one-time appearing character who had eyes similar to Lang's. The eyes are just an artistic quirk of Haruhiko Mikimoto although Robotech decided to create an in-story reason for them. This nameless character was present during a conference scene and had only two lines. (The Southern Cross novelizations invented a subplot from whole cloth where he tried to exploit Dana Sterling's heritage to achieve Protoculture godhood. He also played a significant role in the Titan Comics adaptation of the Macross Saga.)
  • Gunther Reinhardt was the lavender haired commander of the returning expedition. He is seen again in Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles.
  • Polly in the original anime was an unnamed random stray animal that Dana ran across for one scene. The expanded universe expanded on him a lot. First, Polly is short for 'pollinator', and what does he pollinate? The Invid Flowers of Life. His species can apparently appear light years from where they started to find the Flower of Life. Second is that he's actually an on-again off-again pet of Dana's, that has come and gone through her life; she's only barely surprised when he seems to appear for no reason while she's trapped in a Pocket Dimension. In the novelization, when Polly appears in the Protoculture chamber of the Robotech Master's flag ship... they realize how screwed they are on the spot, since Protoculture once its entered the flowering stage is useless as a power source.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence:
  • New Generation: The Regess and the Invid leaving Earth as a gigantic phoenix. The Jack McKinney novelizations consistently portrayed this as the end goal of everything that happens in the series, particularly the many plot holes and contrivances explained as the "Shapings" of Protoculture itself.)
  • Dr. Lazlo Zand in the novels tried to pull this by playing Mad Scientist on Dana Sterling, Polly thankfully shows up to muck things up, and he ends up a giant flower of life instead.
• As You Know:
  • The Invid Regis is the victim of this trope, narrating the processes that the Invid would be used to by now. A blantant example occurs in Metamorphosis where the Regis explains the process of transforming into new forms, to a group of Invid that had certainly gone through the process at least a few times. One is even remarked to have 'served in exemplary capacity' and evolved into the new Heavy Shock Trooper... from a regular Shock Trooper, meaning the pilot had already experienced transformation once.
• A-Team Firing:
  • At least in The New Generation, where Scott's Team seems completely incapable of landing a rifle hit on the giant crab mechs the Invid like to terrorize the world in.
  • Also on the part of the Robotech rebels and the Invid patrols... except when they're actually aiming for that little lens that gives you a clean shot to the cockpit of the shock trooper (then they only miss when Played for Drama).
• The Atoner: Zor is hinted to have been motivated, at least in part, in wanting to make up for having manipulated the Regis.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: This is Supreme Commander Leonard's entire mentality, never mind that a direct assault against the Robotech Masters almost NEVER works. And poor General Emerson for being the man who's expected to make these full frontal assaults not become total disasters.
• Attack Its Weakpoint:
  • In the first Robotech war, Miriya tells Max where to shot the Zentradi battle pods to disable them without killing the pilots. Of course you have to be BEHIND the battle pod to do this, and it's a small target.
  • The rank and file Invid mecha and the ironically named Bioroid Invid Fighter, both suffer a similar design flaw: the lens that lets the pilot see out of the mecha. This gives you a clean shot to the pilot inside.
• Deconstructed with the Robotech Master's flagship, the heroes find a weakness, and A New Hope style manage to bring down the alien ship... but when the heroes try the trick again, they find out the Robotech Master have correct this flaw.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever:
  • The Zentraedi are roughly the same size as the mecha piloted by the humans.
• Attempted Rape: In "The Movie": Becky is assaulted by an unscrupolous dance director, but her boyfriend Mark, who was spying on her fearing she'd be attacked by Andrews' goons and didn't trust the director, sees what's happening and barges in wearing Powered Armour. Luckily for the director (who looks like he soiled himself), Mark shows extreme self control and limits himself to a threat and taking Becky away.
• Ax-Crazy : Once to sate his bloodlust, the Invid Regent orders two of his attendants to shoots their third companion... they know better than to disobey. The Regent momentarily considers ordering them to shoot each other, or "better yet" themselves, but has a moment of Pragmatic Villainy in thinking how training their replacements would be too time consuming.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work. When Scott and crew face off against a band of thugs, before the battle can begin, the Invid show up, and decide to blow up the thugs' heavily armed bikes first because they're closer before turning their attention to the Robotech Rebels. The thugs run for their lives.
• Barely-Changed Dub Name: In the English translation, Lin Minmei's name was changed to "Lynn Minmay", which was a Stage Name originally.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space:
  • Rick Hunter, while stranded with Minmei during The Long Wait, used an unpressurized flight suit and scarf to try holding his breath for a quick space walk to retrieve a fish that was floating past to replenish their diminishing food supply. Additionally, the tuna didn't suffer from any freezer burn.
  • Breetai in the Macross Saga survives being blown out of his ship by clinging onto assorted spiked protrusions and climbing over the hull until he finds a door leading back in, despite lacking any sort of protection. That said, the Zentraedi were engineered to be workers on hostile environments, so a certain level of protection against the vacuum is warranted. Also, Breetai was extraordinarily powerful even by Zentraedi standards.
• The Battlestar: The SDF-1.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • Rick Hunter spends much of the Macross Saga so obsessed with Minmei that he forgets his initial Character Development during the initial Reconstruction Blues era episodes, and he is so blinded by this obsession that more often than not he can't see that his boss, Lisa Hayes, has become increasingly infatuated with him during their adventures together. Towards the end of the Macross Saga episodes Rick finally does get to be with Minmei, only to find that he can't relate to her anymore, as she really can't understand what he's been through and how his experiences have changed him, and it finally occurs to him that he should be with Lisa.
  • Minmei herself experiences this - she wanted to be a pop star more than anything, only to find it lonely at the top.
  • The Zentraedi also experience this after hearing and experiencing human culture and decide to defect from their masters to the human race. Two years later many of them have grown unsatisfied living among humans, trying to work normal jobs, unable to function properly without regular combat to keep them focused and motivated, leading to acts of violence and defection. Khyron and his team eventually pick up on this unhappy "warrior without a war" mindset and use it to their advantage.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: A number of the series couples have this or start out as this, the most prominent example being Rick Hunter and Lisa Hayes (the Macross Saga), but also shown in Marie Crystal and Sean Phillips (The Masters) and finally Rand and Rook (The New Generation).
• Berserk Button: When Louis finds out his sharp shooter program he was told would be used for 'training' has been installed on their hover tanks, he briefly loses his marbles and wants to melt down their mecha, but he's not quite able to go through with it, so Dana decides to do so instead, but Zor Prime gets in her way. Having fought for the other side he's fully aware the clones they're killing are people, but he also knows they're at war and need ever advantage they can get.
• BFG: The Veritech's cannons, the SDF-1's reflex cannon, and the Grand Cannon.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Dr. Lazlo Zand, a novel character inspired by a background character seen in the original cartoon. He fancies himself as The Chessmaster, having enslaved the mind of the mentally broken senator from the first Robotech War, purposely submitted himself to the mutation that occurred by accident to Dr. Lang... and he might have arranged the murder of every human-Zentradi hybrid except Dana Sterling, and uses her as a medium to try and become a protoculture god...but Dana's pet pollinator Polly however mucks up the procedure, and he's reduced to the biggest Invid Flower of Life to ever exist. He dismisses the Robotech Masters for going after a 'a mere protoculture matrix' when Dana was the 'real prize', and he ends even MORE screwed up and ruined than them.
• Big Brother Instinct: Roy Fokker serves as a surrogate big brother for Rick Hunter in The Macross Saga while Scott Bernard serves as a big brother to Rand in New Generation. Both also serve as Big Brother Mentor to the younger heroes.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Many notable occurrences happen, such as when Rick rescues Minmei and Lisa (multiple times actually), or when the SDF/Zentraedi barely defeat Dolza's armada.
  • Lancer, instead of waiting for his friends to finally catch up, rides in with his cyclone, blasting a shock trooper from behind, and gives his cyclone to Scott and tells him to hurry back with the Alpha. Sadly, Lancer wasn't wearing his gear at the time, so he's reduced to playing hide and seek until Scott can get back with the Alpha, where Scott returns the favor with a Big Damn Heroes moment of his own.
• The Big Guy: Breetai for the Zentraedi, Ben Dixon for The Macross Saga, Sgt. Angelo Dante for the Southern Cross/the Masters, and Lunk for the New Generation
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In the scene where Max and Miriya are dueling in an epic 2-player video game contest, there is a shot that pans across the rest of the arcade to show all the spectators who have gathered around to watch them play. For some reason, there is a large, bearded, middle-aged muscle man standing in the middle of the arcade, with no shirt on, flexing his arms in a typical macho show-off pose. Who he is and what he's doing there is a complete mystery.
• Big, Thin, Short Trio: Bron, Konda, and Rico, respectively.
• Big "WHAT?!": Corg's reaction when the Regess tells him that Sera (his sister) just saved the life of a Robotech Rebel.
• Birthday Episode: "Birthday Blues"
• Bittersweet Ending: Several examples from each series.
  • In The Macross Saga, while Earth was still recovering, both the SDF-1 and the SDF-2 get destroyed in Khyron's suicide attack (which he turned into one after getting too severely damaged to escape into space), and most of the main bridge crew aside from Lisa get killed.
  • Then in the Robotech Masters, Zor Prime attempted to destroy the Protoculture factory in the SDF-1, but accidentally released the spores instead, which then causes the Invid to invade Earth. Since Earth's defenses were already really exhausted from all the fighting with the Robotech Masters, they weren't able to put up much a fight against the Invid.
  • Then in the New Generation, while the humans are able to persuade the Invid Regis to leave Earth relatively intact (and she even destroys the neutron bombs the Expeditionary Fleet launched in a Scorched Earth attempt), Scott decides to leave Ariel alone while he tries to find Admiral Hunter (although Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles shows that they still end up together after all).
• Blank Slate: Ariel is this when the Robotech Rebels find her, she was just born in an adult body.
• Blatant Lies:
  • Rand tells Rook that he fought off three Invid patrols by himself... It was Scott who saved him from three invid shock troopers!
  • The leader of the gang that kidnaps Lunk's friend says he can hear Lunk's knees knocking, and heavily implies Lunk is a deserter. When the Invid show up and blow up their bikes, the punks run for their lives and cower inside their shack. One of the goons makes the mistake of telling his boss that it's the gang leader's knees that are knocking. The gang leader's response? Punching him in the head and telling him his knees are knocking because he's mad.
  • A dub induced one on the narration's part. The narrator says Ariel's cocoon is placed 'carefully' onto the ghost town of a recent Invid victory... instead she's dropped down from her container in the air and balance around a couple of times before stopping. And THEN we see the SAME invid searching the ghost town for Ariel when the Rebels happen upon her first. It is then said 'Their mission completed the Invid return to Reflex Point'...and they keep flying in the same direction they were going before.
  • Rand giggles to himself 'that sound like they're in trouble!' and 'maybe I can see what the trouble is' and 'that's what I get for trying to be helpful!' when he's trying to peak on the ladies while they're bathing.
  • The narrator says Anne's birthday becomes a nightmare when Corg and his troops attack... but actually it's the most one-sided victory the heroes have in the entire series when they set up an ambush for the villains turning the Invid's ability to detect protoculture activity against them.
• Blithe Spirit: Dana. Minmei to some extent as well.
• Blooper: In one battle, Scott's voice actor is used with Lancer's Ace Custom.
• Boldly Coming:
  • The novelizations make it clear that the original Zor literally seduced the secrets of the Flower of Life from the Invid Regis - even though discovering the intricacies of a humanoid form was a large part of the process for her.
  • Sean deconstructs this trope as he decides to hit on a triad of Tirolians, and at first they think he's a dysfunctional clone, but it doesn't take very long at all for the jig to be up and for them to call security!
• Bookworm: Rook describes her little sister Lilly as having been this in their early days.
• Bowdlerise: While the show managed this less than other series, it still crept in. After saving Rand from drowning, Scott says Rand will be alright and he'd just passed out... while Lunk is hurriedly trying to get the water out of Rand's lungs. Slightly handwaved since it was Anne asking and Scott was being nice.
• Bread and Circuses: A subtle example: Zor later explains that it's the Muses like Musica and their music that keeps the civilian population on board the City Ships docile and/or stable.
• Break His Heart to Save Him: Lancer does this twice with the same woman. First by jumping out of the train they're on at the last second because he doesn't want her caught in the crossfire of his war with the Invid. Second time by convincing her to stay with her wealthy husband who in spite of being an jerk does truly love her and can provide for her the life Lancer can't give her.
• Bridge Bunnies: The originals — Kim, Sammie, and Vanessa. The trope name originated as an In-Series Nickname for them in the McKinney novelizations. (Claudia swiftly taught those who would escalate to nicknames like "Gloval's Harem" to keep the jokes to themselves.)
• The Brigadier: Emerson from Southern Cross.
• Broad Strokes: The Titan Comics run, which takes the characters and events of the series and uses them as a framework to tell a mostly original version of the story.
• Broken Pedestal: Rand invokes this with Colonel Wolfe after learning Wolfe is a traitor.
• Brown Note: Music itself is this for the average Zentradi, though more accurately, HUMAN culture as a whole. Also, they're completely divided by gender, so seeing a man and a woman touching lips causes them to break out into a cold sweat in disgust, while seeing a human infant for the first time nearly drives them insane. Khyron later shows that even still militant Zentradi can build up an immunity to this, even kissing Azonia just to show that tactic isn't going to work anymore.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Part of the reason it takes so long for Rick and Lisa to hook up is that Lisa can't seem to articulate her feelings properly.
• The Captain: Gloval.
• Captain Crash: Rick gets his Veritech trashed a lot. This is lampshaded in the episode Phantasm, in which Rick dreams he crashed while trying to fly a bike.
• Cassandra Truth: The old soldiers in the episode Ghost Town rightfully guess that Marlene is an Invid for the obvious reason of Lance mentioning her hearing the Invid's signals of a nearby base, but Lancer brushes it off as her just having above average hearing.
• Celebrity Is Overrated: Minmei starts to feel this way after the Earth's been destroyed, mostly because of how hard life is for everyone, and also because she never gets to spend any time with Rick.
• Character Development: The second to last shot of Anne elbowing a guy who tries to put the move on her, showing she's given up her boy-crazy fantasies.
• Chekhov's Gunwoman: Lynn Minmei, both in the series and in the movie.
• Chinese Girl: Again, Lynn Minmei.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Khyron is literally referred to as "The Backstabber."
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Lynn Jason shows up in the early episodes as as a member of Mingmei's family... but vanishes after the first few episodes.
• Citadel City:
  • The SDF-1 becomes one after the space fold to Pluto, with a city being rebuilt within it.
  • The five Robotech Masters' city ships are these (as their name would suggest). This makes the situation for them worse when their flagship is destroyed and the population needs to relocate to another ship when their resources are already being stretched.
• The City vs. the Country: In New Generation, Rook is the City Mouse, and Rand is the Country Mouse. Rand describes civilization as 'crime, traffic jams, and garbage that's never picked up.' Of course he's mostly being snarky about it. Rook retorts at least they don't have blood-sucking leeches falling out of the trees.
• Climax Boss:
  • In the End of the Circle novel, Max Sternling fights against a mecha he nicknames 'the Black Knight' from its grim appearance. This mecha was created by the Regess when she becomes the god of her own pocket universe and described as containing traits of all the series' iconic mecha. The thing disguises itself as Dana's pet Polly first, then captures Dana ... and then forces her to (secretly) pilot the damn thing herself. Meaning if Max had actually finished the battle, he'd have killed his own child. Thankfully his friends realize what's going on.
  • The New Generation episode "The Big Apple" is this for the narrative. Previously named characters all come back from previous episodes, we get another music sequence with Yellow Dancer, and an epic black vs white all out mecha battle... That perfectly contrasts the far more gray and grim real climax of the series a few episodes later.
• Clip Show: Shortly after the SDF-1 returns to earth after the initial trip back from Pluto, Admiral Gloval gives a rehash of the events thus far. Considering all that happened, it was rather needed. The episodes between sagas also were mostly clip shows to help try mesh the snags between shows.
• Combat Pragmatist: In the final episode, this is how Scott managed to kill Corg, fighting as a pragmatic soldier rather than a glorious warrior.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: The Zentradi don't even have a concept of civilians among their own kind, and are a pure military machine in term of society. Rick describes their culture as no better than robots. Seeing a man and woman touch sends them into crippling bouts of nausea. On the otherhand, their creators, the Tirolians, do have a culture and society...but it's become disturbingly regulated and sterile under the Robotech Masters, and what little artistic expression remains is used as bread and circus to keep the civilians population docile and controllable. In their own way this makes them more frightful then the Zentradi.
• Cycle of Revenge: In the final episode Invid Regess finally realizes "hatred can only breed more hatred" and whoever wins, humans or Invid, they'll just be the new Robotech Masters.
• Les Collaborateurs: Some of the REF soldiers encounter these guys working with the Invid in the "Invasion" mini-series since they didn't harm them and they resent the REF withdrawing from the Earth after being defeated by Invid forces. They have a point actually.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Played with, only Rook's Cyclone and Alpha are both painted red. Lance has a custom cyclone design, but trades flying the blue beta and alpha fighters with Scott. While Rand's alpha is a generic Red Shirt green colored veritech and wears the standard issue cyclone armor like Scott.
• Combining Mecha: In Invid Invasion, the Alpha and Beta Veritechs are able to combine. An abnormally realistic example of the type, as the combined mecha has no particular powers that the individual units did not (and in fact, combining blocks some of the Beta's weapon systems, such as the arm-mounted particle beam cannons, since the Beta can't transform into battloid mode while linked).

• Command Roster:
  • The Captain: Henry J. Gloval
  • Number Two: Lisa Hayes and Claudia Grant.
  • Bridge Bunnies: Kim Young, Sammy Porter, and Vanessa Leeds
  • The Pilots: Mainly, Roy Fokker, Rick Hunter, Ben Dixon and Max Sterling
  • The Idol: Lynn Minmei
• Compilation Movie: Robotech has two compilation movies associated with it.
  • It first got this treatment as Codename: Robotech, although it was essentially an extended version of the Clip Show episode "Gloval's Report", charting the story of all the Macross Saga episodes up to that point. It was originally intended as a feature-length pilot to preview the series for US TV, though in the UK it was released on home video and was actually the only way to see Robotech in the country until the Sci-Fi Channel showed the entire series in 1993.
  • Over twenty years later, Harmony Gold edited the Genesis Climber MOSPEADA concert video/Clip Show OAV Love Live Alive into a compilation movie retelling the New Generation story.
• Continuity Snarl:
  • When Rand almost drowns, Scott dives in after him with Lunk. In a later episode, Scott has to be taught by Rand how to swim when they visit the beach since Scott's spent most of his life away from Earth. This has to do with Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole where the writers mistakenly assume Mospeada's counterpart's initial surprise towards sea as his inability to swim.
  • Scott says "we don't know what they look like but we know they bleed" at one point during the anime after shooting up an Invid Scout and green blood leaking out from it. While in the novelization, Scott was on board the SDF-3 where they would have at one point seen the flesh and blood invid.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: Played straight during the battle of Earth. The Zentraedi Main Fleet consisting of over 4,800,000 ships vs Earth and Breetai's Zentraedi fleet, which only numbered about a million (assuming the entire Imperial Fleet defected with them). Guess which side wins... There are several justifications for this, though. First, the Zentraedi never figured anyone would be stupid enough to attack an armada of five million ships. Second, at the same time the attack was going on, Minmei's song was being broadcast to the entire Zentraedi fleet. The Zentraedi, having no culture of their own, are transfixed... well, most of them. Third, one of the ships on Earth's side is the SDF-1, which was Zor's personal ship and is notably stronger/different than most other ships of its type to protect both Zor and the Protoculture Matrix on board (and that the Zentraedi want to capture relatively intact precisely for this reason). Fourth, the attack came right after the Grand Cannon (the largest and mightiest Reflex cannon ever built) took out around one million of the Zentraedi fleet, distracting many warships in the process (as the Zentraedi didn't want to risk it fired again). Fifth and final, Zentraedi defectors helped plan the attack, which involved using the highly regimented society of the Zentraedi against them. Once the leaders were taken out, the enemy was flung into disarray. Still, they were long/impossible odds...
• Cool Bike: The Cyclone motocycle/Powered Armor.
• Cool Spaceship: SDF-1.
• Covers Always Lie: The Parkfield Playtime release of Codename: Robotech in the UK. As well as the terrible day-glo cover art which doesn't match the original art style at all and is obviously meant to scream "we are marketing this for kids", but the character on the front doesn't even appear in the feature (outside of the title sequence, briefly): it's the adult Dana Sterling from The Masters segment,^note a.k.a. Jeanne Franciax from Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross when the feature covers The Macross Saga only and doesn't even get to the point where baby Dana is born! Mercilessly parodied in this online review.
• Crazy Enough to Work: Rick devises a plan to help win against the fight against Dolza's armada. They utilize psychological warfare by having Minmei sing during the battle, and broadcasting it throughout all of the Zentraedi ships to shock them long enough so the humans and their Zentraedi allies could wipe them out.
• Darkest Hour: The end of "Dana in Wonderland", for the 15th Squadron at least. They are separated from their hover tanks, Zor appears to have been cleansed of the personality he developed as part of the 15th Squadron, all except the named members of the squad are dead, and they're now prisoners of the Robotech Masters and at their mercy.
• Darker and Edgier: Compared to contemporary sanitized anime adaptations like Voltron, the relatively unvarnished depiction of war and its bloody consequences in this series was a real shock in the 1980s.
  • Compared to the original series, as well: the Macross Saga famously was, in general, a direct translation of key events in Macross and not much editing-out of violence; come the finale, however, it gets much more bleak, as Captain Global/Gloval and the Bridge Bunnies, who SURVIVED the destruction of the Macross in the Japanese version, are outright killed in the Robotech version.
• More Deadly Than the Male: The idea between the all-female Quadrano Battalion of the Zentraedi is, in the words of their creator Azonia, that "There is nothing more fearsome than an angry female". Given their combat record, she's apparently right.
• Deadly Euphemism:
  • Subverted, Corg says the rebels are not to be "neutralized" they are to be "destroyed!"
  • The Tirolians on the other hand prefer saying "their body must be replaced" with individualistic or worked to exhaustion clones in the episode 'Dana In Wonderland.'
• Death by Adaptation: Captain Gloval, Claudia, Kim, Sammy and Vanessa all perish when the SDF-1 goes down, whereas their counterparts from the source material made it out alive. Fortunately, Lisa was able to avert this: Captain Gloval managed to shove her into an escape pod at the last minute, leaving her as the Sole Survivor among the bridge crew.
• Death Seeker: Zor Prime
• Decoy Protagonist: Back when the series originally aired on television, Roy received so much focus that viewers believed he was the main character, instead of Rick. Which made his eventual death shocking for them.
• Demoted to Satellite Love Interest: Invoked in the McKinney Robotech Expanded Universe. Miriya was the greatest Zentraedi female ace, and when she got her High-Heel–Face Turn and married Max Sterling, for the rest of the original series, she was his counterpart and got equal screentime with him. Then during the Malcontent Uprisings, the brass made the official decision to turn her into a propaganda piece; "homemaker, mother, former freedom fighter." Miriya abided by it, but still played an important role in the finale (and returned to badass status during the Sentinels series).
• Desk Jockey: Henry Gloval becomes this after being promoted to Admiral. It still does not keep him from going down in combat.
• Diabolus ex Machina: Louie happens upon the central computer to the Robotech Masters' flag ship, with suspiciously no guards around, and decides to simply shoot it... but eyes open in the computer, and tentacles lash out on the spot and paralyze him, leaving him to be caught. Called the "Living Protoculture," this is the first and last time it appears or is mentioned.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Rick Hunter for thinking he could manage a date with both Minmei and Lisa in "Private Time" (after initially making a date with Lisa only to have Minmei guilt trip him into coming to see her first). At least he's smart enough not to be surprised when it blows up in his face.
  • Sean Philips for thinking it was a good idea to keep Marie Crystal waiting for him in "Love Song". It didn't work out so well for either of them.
• Dirty Coward: Lunk considers himself this, when he turned and floored it to save himself from the Invid while his injured friend was calling out to Lunk over the radio to save him.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Macross Saga has numerous allusions to WWII, including:
  • The Zentraedi's warrior culture is extremely similar to the militaristic culture of WWII Japan.
  • When the war begins, their first strike is a carrier-launched surprise-attack on a coastal military base.
  • The wedding of Max and Miriya evokes the spur of the moment weddings that often occurred before American soldiers shipped out for duty.
  • Near the end of the war, the Zentraedi use carpet-bombing to raze the entire Earth's surface, Curtis Lemay style.
  • After the Zentraedi have largely lost the war, their culture starts incorporating elements of their former enemy's culture, mirroring the post-war Americanization of Japan.
  • The novelizations add additional backstory, including one of the factions in the Global Civil War (the arrival of the SDF-1 prompted it's ending) being called the Neesians, short for North-East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (one of the official names of the group of nations effectively ruled by Japan before and during WWII).
  • Lampshaded in the Wildstorm comic books where the Who's Who issue explicitly refers to Dr. Emil Lang as the Werhner Von Braun of Robotechnology. It is worth noting that the Robotech Universe chooses to remain vague on the nature of the many factions in the Global Civil War, although the Neasians have been described as Fascist. History leaves us in no doubt as to Von Braun's origins. But Lang, although he happens to also be of German origin, isn't implied to be from any unsavory faction.
  • Anatole Leonard's attempts to get rid of the officers who oppose him by assigning them to dangerous outposts and missions is compared to Roman emperors pulling similar tricks to get rid of their political rivals.
  • When Marie Crystal runs out on Sean Philips in Love Song after being led to believe he's been unfaithful to her, her high heels come off her feet, evoking Cinderella losing the glass slipper.
  • Scott Bernard and his quest to free Earth from the Invid is said to have been based on the Holy Crusades.
• Doomed City: Toronto gets leveled when the SDF-1's barrier overloads.
• Downer Ending: Depends on which books, and which ending. The novelization of the Invid Invasion, for example, ends more or less on an upbeat note, with a hint of more adventures to come as Scott Bernard heads back into space to find some missing personnel and clean up the loose ends.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Marlene-Ariel silently sheds tears as she witnesses her first Robotech battle after Scott joins the fray to protect her... Anne thinks she's afraid of the Invid. It's far more likely she's feeling the individual Invids' death cries through the Hive Mind.
  • Corg is the blue lensed invid who attacks the rebels more than once before he's gifted an individual identity and a name. The heroes have no clue it's the same Invid. Lampshaded by Scott in their final duel when he remarks that he has the feeling that they've met before (Corg responds that this will be the last time, he's right, but he's the one that meets his end).
• Dressing as the Enemy:
  • By way of Mugged for Disguise: Max knocking out a Zentraedi to dress up his Veritech while trapped on an alien ship.
  • Inverted. To keep her out of the hands of the dubious Global Military Police, the 15th Squadron has Musica dress up as a Southern Cross trooper when they leave the spaceport.
• Drunk with Power : The Regess waxes poetic about the Invid becoming the power they're destine to be. Turns out she actually means 'Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence' not 'conquer the universe'.
• During the War: Every season references the previous war.
• Dub Name Change (with a little bit of Race Lift thrown in for good measure): A sample:
  • Rick Hunter (Hikaru Ichijyo)
  • Lisa Hayes (Misa Hayase)
  • Claudia Grant (Claudia LaSalle)
  • Dana Sterling (Komillia Jeinus and Jeanne Francaix)
  • Nova Satori (Lana Isavia)
  • Bowie Grant (Bowie Emerson—note that this takes away the blood relation between him and Rolf Emerson and establishes one with Claudia, above.)
  • Scott Bernard (Stick Bernard)
  • Rook Bartley (Houquet et Rose)
  • Marlene/Ariel (Aisha)
  • A partial one: Roy Fokker (Roy Focker). The spelling was changed possibly as a hat-tip to the famed aircraft designer Anthony Fokker, while it's been stated that the pronounciation was altered from the actual "FOKK-er" to "FOE-ker" to avoid parents accidentally hearing obscenities that weren't there.
  • An odd one: Captain Global's last name isn't changed at all, actually; while it's spelled with a B in Romaji, "B" and "V" are indistinguishable in Japanese (there is no proper "v" sound in Japanese), so "Gloval" is an acceptable spelling. Now, as to why they changed him from Bruno (jap.) to Henry (eng.), especially when they make him RUSSIAN in the dub? That's a whole other matter.
  • Another odd one: Minmay's name is changed from Lynn Minmay in Japanese (a glaringly Engrish spelling for a girl who's canonically half-Japanese-half-Chinese) to Lynn Minmei in English... which is actually how her name is properly spelled in Kana. They probably kept "Lynn" instead of changing it to "Rin" as written in Kana like her given name, because Lynn is a well-known name in English already.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?:
  • Many Robotech Fan Haters don't realize that this show is one of the main reasons why there even is an anime industry outside of Japan. Quite a few of them are a bit too young to remember when anime (then called Japanimation) was practically unheard of in the USA. Older anime fans remember that the only reason Robotech was even created was because of the popularity of Star Blazers, which fused together separate different incarnations of the same series, Space Battleship Yamato, made sizable edits for an American audience, and was one of the first English dubbed anime to broach maturer themes with an emphasis on the story being shown in order. Sound familiar? It's only Robotech that's most well known for it in modern anime fandom.
  • As mentioned above and at other places on this and the YMMV page, Harmony Gold in some ways fostered the situation through their actions. An even bigger problem is that Harmony Gold chose not to credit any of the character designers, writers, mecha designers, directors or animators. Some ignorant Robotech fans think that Carl Macek single handedly created Robotech although the things that are praised in it are already present in Macross. They'd also likely get more respect if they'd actually allow for more official Macross series releases. So far, the only Macross series that's had a subbed release under Harmony Gold is the original Macross.
• Dwindling Party: A very downplayed example, over the course of the series, the 15th Squadron is whittled down until only the named members of the team are still alive by the final arc.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: After leaving Scott to die as another sacrifice to the Invid, Colonel Wolfe gets an attack of conscience saves Scott and the others, wiping out a small horde of Invid singlehandedly with one Veritech. He asks his body to be left out in the open like a traitor deserves so the buzzards can peck at his body.
• The Dragon: Breetai, who matches one in size, too!
• Early-Bird Cameo: Before he's evolved into a human type Invid, the Invid who would become Corg is seen going through a series of upgrades in different episodes.
• 11th-Hour Superpower: During the final battle of Reflex Point, Ariel appears, somehow now able to assume an ethereal form. She pleads with both sides to just stop fighting. But neither her fellow Invid (who consider her now too human to be one of them), nor the RDF are really interested in anything less than a battle to the finish.
• Elite Mooks: The Invid shock troopers are this to the Invid scouts, and the Invid enforcers are this to the Invid shock troopers, etc. While the Zentradi suffer from creative stagnation to keep them in line, and the Robotech Masters slowly suffer a resource shortage even as they churn out newer and more deadly Bioroids, the Invid never stop improving on their mecha, which is a lot easier for them since they don't rely on assembly lines to create their mechas but create them whole cloth.
• The End of the World as We Know It: Humanity is always threatened with extermination by the invaders.
• "End of the World" Special: For the Regess, though limited to the scale of her own species. After achieving godhood and creating her own universe, and dueling against the true Haydon... she chooses to return to normal space and simply remake her species back into the peaceful passive creatures they were before Zor arrived, and recreating a sane version of the Regent.
• Enemy Mine: The Zentraedi under Breetai's command team up with humans when Dolza sends the main Zentraedi armada to Earth. Exedore explains that they're doing this because Dolza would also kill off any Zentraedi who've been exposed to human culture. Many of his men were already planning to rebel and join the humans anyway after being exposed to human culture, so Breetai figured it would be best to work together anyway.
• Ensign Newbie, The Squadette: Dana Sterling, a fresh graduate of the Southern Cross' Robotech Academy who swiftly finds herself in command of the 15th Alpha Tactical Armored Corps, including their former commander who had just been busted down to private.
• Epigraph: The novelizations have each chapter lead by an in-universe quote, usually from various historical works that cover the Robotech Wars retrospectively, but also including more informal sources ranging from main characters' memoirs to relevant quips made by anonymous Spear Carrier types. The author(s) behind "Jack McKinney" stated they were directly inspired by Dune.
• "Eureka!" Moment:
  • Rand has one when he realizes how Invid sensors can pick up powered up Robotechnology.
  • Rand has another one in the Genesis Pit, realizing that the underground Lost World is a science lab. Although he mistakenly believes the Invid put Scott, Annie, and himself there on purpose, he does figure out the point of the whole thing — that the Invid are trying to figure out the best bioengineered form to use in order to adapt themselves to their new home world (Earth). Ironically later, it turns out to be humans.
• Everyone Has Standards: The mayor, Pedro, of the unnamed town is none too happy when the locals thugs decide to beat up and kidnap the Robotech rebels on their own, escalating things.
• Eye Beams: Rand is not happy when the Regess puts words in his mouth that he hates Marlene/Ariel for being an Invid and raises his voice at the Regess, who responds by giving him the good old eyes beams to the chest, knocking him down (he's only saved by his battle armor).
• Eye Scream: Invid Mecha end up on the receiving end of this a lot as a laser shot though the eye is enough to kill the pilot, special mention goes to "The Midnight Sun" episode where the Robotech Rebels kill an Invid Shock Trooper by slamming the sharpened end of a log right through it.
• Expanded Universe:
  • The novelization of the series and the comic books, which conflict with each other extensively and the original material somewhat. At their worst the expanded universe materials are ghastly, at their best they can be quite good. This is especially true of the novels. This is why all Expanded Universe material was taken out of the canon by the 2000's.
  • The original Palladium Books RPG serves as its own EU loosely based on the novelizations, but with significant expansion of the interwar period (the setting for the core game), as well as a post-New Generation adventure sourcebook, and several Original Generation mecha (such as the prototype concept mecha in Strike Force).
• Fallen Hero: In the New Generation is revealed that Coronel Jonathan Wolfe, a veteran of both the First Robotech War and the Robotech Expeditionary Force, has become this.
• Falling into the Cockpit: Deconstructed (as with most things in the first episode) with poor Rick Hunter. He's a stunt flyer, not a combat pilot. When his brother Roy shows off the controls to him and is called away, Rick happens to still be in the Veritech when the attack happens. He tries to explain what's going on over the channel to Lisa, but he's burning fuel and is a sitting duck on the ground, so he's browbeaten into taking off. Roy tries to cover for him, but Rick panics in his first dog fight and is shot down, and even after Lisa explains the controls for transforming the Veritech for the very first time on screen, he only succeeds in having a somewhat more controlled crash through multiple buildings. He then spends the next episode floundering around with the alternate forms, as he's never piloted a mecha before and has no idea how the controls work.
• Fictional Document: The Epigraphs in the McKinney novels come from a variety of sources, ranging from academic histories of the Robotech Wars to White-Dwarf Starlet Jan Morris' New Age mystical manifestos. Several of the chapters of the "New Generation" novelizations are told as excerpts from Rand's "Notes on the Run", while Lisa Hayes' book, "Recollections," is used to provide extended epilogues for both the Sentinels books and End Of The Circle.

• Final Battle: Played with in all three Robotech Wars.
  • The final battle with the Zentradi armada is the midpoint of the Macross Saga and, as seen in Robotech: Battlecry doesn't end the conflict with malcontent Zentradi (who manage to ultimately destroy the SDF 1 and 2).
  • The second Robotech War ends with a gigantic 'No Macguffin No Winner'. And both sides with their leaders dead.
  • The third Robotech War had the Regess decide to simply leave Earth, vaporizing the fantastic nukes headed towards Earth and a big chunk of the RDF fleet while she was at it. This renders Scott's awesome fight to the finish with violent Invid Prince Corg meaningless.
• Flawed Prototype:
  • The Invid Fighter is definitely the most deadly of the already pretty formidable Bioroid series...but it was also rushed into production with no chance to field test or work out the kinks, essentially making it a mass produced prototype. As a result, flaws were left in 15th Squadron quickly pick apart and exploit.
  • In the Robotech novels, the dwarf-like (by Zentradi standards) Exedore is explicitly said to be the prototype Zentradi clone. The novels also said after the First Robotech War, he underwent surgery at long last to correct his deformities.
• Foreshadowing:
  • While possessed by the Regess, Anne dreams she married an Invid that looked like her old boyfriend, then realizes that doesn't make sense since he was a jerk. This is actually foreshadowing to the Invid beginning to adopt a human appearance on Earth.
  • Internal foreshadowing for the heroes, when Corg hesitates in vaporizing Marlene, it briefly occurs to Scott how it was like Marlene was "one of them." (In the next episode, Scott asks Lancer if he thinks they're anything strange about Marlene, Lancer answers that "I doubt she's going to murder us all in our sleep.")
• Four-Star Badass: Breetai demonstrates Four Star Badassery when he takes on three VF-1 Valkyrie veritech battloids armed only with a pipe.
• Flaunting Your Fleets: For example, here, starting at 0:24.
• Foil: Musica to Minmei. Where Minmei's music inspired the Zentradi to rethink their culture (or lack there of), Musica and her sisters' music is used to keep the civilian population of the Robotech Masters' city ship docile and controllable.
• Foreshadowing: The Invid's Genesis Pits are mentioned in a previous episode before their appearance.
• Frankenslation: One of the most famous examples. Less glaring in the initial Macross Saga, which handled the story similar to the series it was adapted from with the exceptions of names and changes made to emphasize Robotech specific worldbuilding.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: The Regess rightfully describes her species as "a simple race content with our own existence" before Zor visited their home world Optera. Then after the fumigation of Optera by the Zentradi to ensure the Robotech Masters had a monopoly on Protoculture (created from the Invid's Flower of Life) ... they'd eventually re-conquer all of the Robotech Masters' empire.
• Frothy Mugs of Water: Rico, Bron, Konda, and the "punch" at the SDF-1 landing celebration. Worth noting spiking punch with alcohol isn't exactly unheard of. Other than that, this trope is surprisingly often averted in the series.
• FTL Test Blunder: Captain Gloval orders the SDF-1's untried spacefold system be employed while still in Earth's atmosphere, and deep in her gravity well. The end result is that they manage to transport the entirety of Macross Island, a significant chunk of ocean water, and themselves, into orbit around Pluto, instead of just shy of the Moon, where they were aiming. What's more, the jump caused the spacefold engines to fold themselves out of existence, meaning that the SDF-1 takes two years under conventional power to return to Earth.
• Funny Background Event: When Rick Hunter (for the first time) crashes a Veritech, the painted face on the side of one of the buildings changes expression as it's blundered through.
• Fun with Acronyms: SDF-1 is the short version of Super Dimensional Fortress One.
• Game of Chicken: Rook nominally challenged Snake Eyes, leader of the Red Snakes, to one of these... but what she actually meant is racing their cycles at the same time over a narrow beam 15 stories up. Snake Eyes ultimately chokes and falls off his bike before he even makes it to the beam.
• General Ripper: Supreme Commander Leonard, especially as Flanderized in the Expanded Universe.
• Genius Ditz: Dana.
• Giant Enemy Crab: Invid Mecha-Mooks.
• God Guise: A flashback to Zor's first meeting with the Invid in the McKinney continuity novel The End of the Circle has the Regess assume that Zor is Haydon, the Precursor who brought the Flower of Life to them. Zor, already obsessed with the potential of the flowers, doesn't correct her.
• Green-Skinned Space Babe: Green-haired, at least; one in each series.
• Groin Attack: After falling in love with him, Miriya teaches Max how to cripple a Zentraedi battle pod without killing it: by shooting it in the groin. We always knew that woman was a real ball-buster...
• Half-Human Hybrid: Dana (half-Zentraedi) and Ariel (half-Invid). Possibly Rook (implied in old pre-retcon material to be the daughter of RDF pilot Kyle Bartley and Zentraedi female ace Vala Norri).
• Hand Wave: The human-like appearance of the enemies is explained away via the Million to One Chance that's left, but must be true. This does gradually become less of one as the series goes on, as Max's theory that the Tirolians and humans have a common ancestor becomes the more reasonable when we see how different the rest of the species in the galaxy are and we learn there is a Precursor race in the mix.
• Haunting the Guilty: Shortly after Ben Dixon's death, Rick has visions of Ben in his quarters, telling him not to blame himself for his death, that it was just his time to go.
• Heel–Face Turn: Miriya Parino, Breetai, Exedore, Rico, Bron and Konda
• Heroic BSoD: Several characters go through them at various points throughout the story, such as Rick when Roy Fokker died, Lisa when she finds out Minmei is at Rick's apartment, and Minmei towards the end of the series after she gives up singing.
  • Scott Bernard suffers one when he finds out that a large contingent of reinforcements that arrived earlier were wiped out entirely by the Invid. He gives up hope until he sees Ariel screaming in fear at the Invid, and promptly pulls a Big Damn Heroes moment.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In The End of the Circle novel, Dr. Lang sacrifices his existence as a sapient being to enable the SDF-3 to escape back to the normal universe as the ascended Regess and the true Haydon battle it out.
• He Will Not Cry, so I Cry for Him: Marlene-Ariel silently sheds tears as she witnesses her first Robotech battle after Scott joins the fray to protect her... Anne thinks she's afraid of the Invid. It's far more likely she's feeling the individual Invids' death cries through the Hive Mind and crying for them.
• Hidden Depths:
  • It turns out possible half-zentradi warrior Rook is actually a decent seamstress when she puts together Annie's birthday dress.
  • In the anime, the Regess first comes across as icily analytical paired with a burning need to exterminate any users of Robotechnology her children happen upon... The prologue provided in the novels starts with the line "Somewhere, a queen was weeping."
• Hidden in Plain Sight: When the 15th Squadron get on board the Robotech Masters' flagship, Sean suggests the simple solution of them taking advantage of Tirolians and humans looking almost exactly alike, and just mingle with the ship's civilian population.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: Partially averted in Palladium Books' Robotech Tabletop RPG 'verse. A machine gun has to do 100 HP of damage (in a single burst, which is all but impossible) to a Humongous Mecha before it counts, so people with ordinary weapons can't use this strategy against heavy armor. However, you can use this strategy with land mines vs Humongous Mecha or Humongous Mecha vs naval or space craft.
• Hive Mind: The Invid. The human-form ones can evidently unlink at least partially and don't 'need' it, but the ones with their memory still mostly maintain their presence on it.
• Hive Queen: The Regess of the Invid serves as this for their Hive Mind.
• Honorary Uncle: In the McKinney novelizations, Dana Sterling wistfully remembers how Bron, Rico, and Konda briefly adopted her as their collective niece before they passed away from grief over the death of the Bridge Bunnies.
• Hope Spot: When Musica arrives on Earth, things have settled down a little. The Robotech Masters did just lose their flag ship, and logically would need time to lick their wounds before making their next move, and some viewers might believe that we'll get some stories about Musica experiencing human culture first hand and possibly lead to a more peaceful outcome... things sadly don't work out that way as her cover is blown in the same episode.

• Human Aliens:
  • The Tirolians are the only straight example of this in the series, though even they have 'alien colored hair' and paler complexions. Since the Zentradi are an army of clones created by the Tirolians, this resulted in them also resembling humans. The Invid's higher ranks MUTATE themselves into this form, it's not their natural one.
  • This is what enables the Zentradi to infiltrate micronized Zentradi onboard the SDF-1... and begin to realize that maybe humans are onto to something with this 'not at war all the time' stuff.
  • This also lets the 15th Squadron sneak Musica past the GMP.
• Humanity Is Infectious: For all the mecha and weapons Earth has, this trope is at heart the only thing that saves humanity.
• Humans Are Bastards: The Invid Regess is firmy convinced of this. In a variation, she at least partially blames this on the Robotech Masters (she says it was already true before the Masters, but that their shadow made it far worse), and in she gives Mankind the benefit of doubt.
• Humans Are Warriors: And it's not treated as a good war. The Global Civil War would've destroyed human civilization if the SDF-1 hadn't crashed on Earth, and Rand in the final episode points out to Scott, humans had wars before "we'd even heard of the Invid, or the Robotech Master, or the Zentradi, you could've lost Marlene fighting other humans!" Scott can only respond, "So all of this destruction means nothing."
• Humiliation Conga:
  • Lisa Hayes suffers a few of these throughout the series, namely in A Rainy Night where she actually allows Rick Hunter to chew her out in front of her subordinates, gets stood up by him in favor of the bratty pop singer Lynn Minmei in Private Time, then goes off and gets drunk when she overhears Rick with Minmei in Seasons Greetings... basically she spends the bulk of the Reconstruction Blues era episodes suffering because of the Unresolved Sexual Tension between her and Rick.
  • Developing a death wish at the drop of a hat in Bye Bye Mars after stumbling upon a few her of dead boyfriend's belongings and having to be rescued by Rick probably counts too.
• Humongous Mecha: One of the few series to actually justify having them. The Zentraedi are enoromous, and their "mecha" are actually Powered Armor for them, so the humans had to match that.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: We already knew the Robotech Masters were serious business, but when their troop transports begin to vaporize cities, when they're having a power crisis right at the end of the war, it's apparent on some level they were holding back considerably. And they don't seem to care that they vaporize their own conscript ground troops while they're at it. Justified, as by that point in the series they're running out of time.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Colonel Wolfe thinks defeating the Invid is impossible, and plus after the first Robotech War, and the Robotech Expeditionary Force, he's sick of violence and destruction. So instead he keeps one city at peace by offering up RDF soldiers to the Invid a few at a time.
• Individuality Is Illegal: Sort of for the Robotech Masters. There is definitely a pecking order (with the Robotech Elders at the top of the pyramid). But individual clones with independent thoughts are considered mentally ill.
• Idol Singer: Minmei, Bowie, Musica, and Yellow Dancer.
• In Love with Love: A couple of characters had this through The Macross Saga, specifically Rick towards Lynn Minmei, Lisa towards Lynn Kyle. (see Loving a Shadow below)
• Innocent Bystander: The Town next to Point K was very unlikely to be involved with the RDF's fight with the Invid... Sadly the Invid are big fans of Guilt by Association.
• Insufficiently Advanced Aliens: A variant with the Zentraedi, who know how to use their highly advanced technology just fine, but are only barely capable of maintaining it, and can't repair it when it finally gets broken. Nor can they build it from scratch in the first place. Justified In-Universe; the Zentraedi were created as warrior-slaves by another race, the Robotech Masters, and they deliberately kept them ignorant of how to fix and build their gear in order to keep control over them — the Zentraedi have to stay loyal to the Robotech Masters, or have their supply lines cut.
• Intra-Franchise Crossover: The last arc of the 2017 Titan Comics series, "Event Horizon", has the Invid Regess send her troops through dimensional portals to harvest Protoculture from various "Protoverses" representing various periods in history and alternate versions of the franchise — including The Sentinels, Robotech: The Movie, The Shadow Chronicles, and even the aborted Robotech 3000 series. Only the Macross Saga heroes and a Masters-era Dana Sterling from an alternate future can stop the Invid.
• Irony: Scott chews out locals more than once for not standing up for themselves to the Invid. However, at one point, the conflict centers around the death of Alfred Nader, a man who argued for leaving the fighting with the Invid to the professionals and was killed for it before the start of the story.
• Is This Thing Still On?:
  • In Khyron's first appearance, a subordinate says that his fleet collided with four friendly ships and that the subordinate had won a bet. While Breetai is still watching them.
  • Roy Fokker had a similar moment in the first episode when he is giving an airshow when Rick Hunter comes barnstorming into the airspace. Fokker is yelling at Rick through the mike's radio function forgetting that the speakers are also amplifying his speech to the audience and they are laughing it up. Embarrassed, Fokker orders the mic to be switched to radio only.
  • As a meta-example, Robotech's ratings took a dip after the episode 'Force of Arms' because viewers had assumed the show was over now that the Zentraedi were destroyed and Rick had picked Lisa over Minmay. When they came back, they were shocked to find that the show was still going on, and that it was dealing with the aftermath. Some fans who had watched Robotech never came back, and didn't learn about Southern Cross or the Invid saga until years after its first run.
• Jerkass:
  • Many, with the biggest one being Zor in his early days for how he 'discovered' the secrets of Protoculture and the Flower of Life: he literally seduced the Invid Regess to convince her to spill the beans, in the process he convinced her to adopt her humanoid form, and then left her to fight with her husband the Regent.
  • Rand has a moment of this when he tells Rook's mother "get a job" before leaving Rook's home town with her.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Enough to deserve their own page.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Rick Hunter has shades of this, as does Sean Philips and Sgt. Angelo Dante. Even Rand has moments of this.
• Kansas City Shuffle: After Musica defects and comes with the 15th Squadron back to Earth, Angelo reminds them how the GMP treated Zor Prime once they got their hands on him and don't count on her being a civilian to give her any sort of protection, so they need a way to get her past the GMP at the spaceport. First it seems that they have her dress up as a Southern Cross Soldier. But Nova notices a trooper on a stretcher, and remembers Dana didn't note any troopers listed as that injured... Dana tries to stop Nova, but Nova takes their helmet off and... It's Sean claiming to have shrapnel in one of his big toes. Sean flusters Nova so much she's distracted from getting finer details. Musica is one of the troopers carrying him. It's only later that Nova realizes there is no soldier in the 15th squadron who matches the name Dana gave Musica while in disguise.
• Karma Houdini: A few:
  • Miriya: one can only imagine all the terrible things she did before encountering Max and the gang, and she doesn't exactly suffer for whatever crimes she committed prior to the series either.
    • Gloval actually, at her wedding no less, reminds the people of the many RDF pilots she's killed... and says that they need to move past this for the sake of peace (she was a soldier at war after all).
  • Before the First Robotech War, Anatole Leonard and T.R. Edwards were members of the Anti-Unification League, planning to reignite the Global War and use the chaos to take over the world, and took personally part in sabotaging Project Valkyrie and hijack Armor-1 (Earth's only functioning space warship, armed with Reflex missiles), the latter resulting in the death of many crewmembers who tried to resist and the destruction of Antarctic Base and the Southern Grand Cannon that was being built there, and would have resulted in the destruction of Macross Island and Alaska Base too had Roy not resolved the situation. They never paid for that, they were never found out, and in fact Leonard effectively succeeded.
• Kawaiiko: Minmei.
• Keystone Army: Breetai devises a plan to take out Dolza's large base/ship during the battle of Earth, so as to throw the lower chain of command into confusion, and allowing them enough time to defeat them while they're disorganized. It helps that the other commanding officers were in a state of shock at being exposed to human culture for the first time.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: Fate seems to do this to Scott when already shut down at seeing Point K's ruins, he spots the pendant Anne had tried to show him earlier and runs the holo-pendant that Marlene had given him before her death, and it turns out there's a SECOND much longer recording on it than the first one, where she says she happily accepts his marriage proposal, and jokes about the trouble of finding a wedding dress on a battleship in deep space. This causes wounds that, well, hadn't healed, but had scabbed over to open up again... And to top it off he remembers Colonel Wolfe dying his arms too. Ironically this all might have been what helped inspire him come to Ariel's rescue during the ensuing battle and snap out of his funk.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Did Supreme Commander Leonard REALLY need to tell Emerson that Bowie had gone AWOL right in the middle of a battle? Not really.
  • Donald, near the end of the episode he appears, reveals that he's had a real map showing a safe path through the mountains the whole time, he was still charging people a fortune for fake maps that ended with them killed off by invid patrols.
• Kid from the Future: The Titan Comics run has Dana Sterling showing up during The Macross Saga, sent back in Suspended Animation aboard the SDF-1 to warn about the "Event Horizon" Intra-Franchise Crossover about to begin. Robotech Remix continues with this plot point, with Dana's desperate search for a way back to her original timeline fueled by her angst over her parents very much not being in love with each other, even if they both love her like their own daughter anyway.
• Killed Off for Real:
  • Roy, Ben and then most of the population of Earth. Quite a series of shockers for the typical 1980s North American audience accustomed to Never Say "Die". Also a number of characters, most notably Scott's fiancée and Col. Wolfe in "New Generation".
  • The destruction from Dolza's attack in the first part continues to hang over the whole story, too. There's no magic recovery, Earth is a wreck afterward.
  • It is not immediately clear in the early episodes whether the main protagonist is Rick Hunter or Roy Fokker. It's only with the death of Roy that Rick comes fully into the spotlight... and Roy was a major character, with well-developed personality and connections. His presence is still felt many episodes later.
• Kissing Cousins: Minmei and Kyle, although it seems largely one sided on Kyle's part. Minmei doesn't seem romantically interested in him, despite what he may say, or what Rick sees.
• Know When to Fold 'Em:
  • Caught in a pincer move by Invid shock troopers, Rand wants the group to take the long way around back to the Alpha fighter, while Scott wants to power on through since they're only a few miles down the road from the Alpha fighter. Rand calls Scott's plan 'suicide' and cuts country and the rest follow... after a moment of staring down Invid mecha from both ends of the road, Scott concedes and follows too.
  • Later in the same episode, when they're caught between two patrols again, they're forced to make an even bigger detour, Scott objects, but this time doesn't hesitate to follow Rand's retreat.

• Landmark of Lore: The Statue of Liberty.
• Large and in Charge:
  • Among the Zentraedi, the officers tend to be taller and larger than the common soldiers, with Breetai being One Head Taller than the average soldier (even when Micronized in The Sentinels he's positively gigantic, around 2.5/3 meters tall and having trouble passing through doors) and Dolza towering over him.
  • Subverted by Exedore: as Breetai's second in command he's fairly high-ranking, but to Zentraedi standards he's a runt.
  • The Invid. The average Invid is shorter than a Human or a Tirolian, royal caste Invid are human-sized (at least post-transmutation, when they have effectively human form), the Regent is about as tall as the Invid Soldier power armour (2.5 meters tall) and larger than them, and the Regess' human-like form is at least twice as tall.
• Large Ham: The Invid Regess. It helps her role as Mrs. Exposition. Most notable is how she presents herself to Scott's group when they reach the core of Reflex Point:

  "The Hive has been contaminated. Foolish humans... You have come here to look upon the face of the Invid... So be it. You shall see."
  *Light goes out*
  *Regess starts materializing in a light*
  "Behold! I am the Invid! I am the Soul and the Spirit!"
  *An holografic galaxy appears to accompany her narration.*
  "I have guided my people across the magnitude of cosmos, from a world that is lost to a world that is found. I have led my people in flight from the dark tide of Shadows that engulfed our forefathers. That threatens to engulf us even now. I am the power, and the light. I am the Embodiment of the Life Force, that creates and protects."
  *The light returns, and the Regess appears in all her glory, in the form of a woman with alien dress and looks*
  "In the primitive terminology of your people, I am... *dramatic pause* The Mother."
  *Everyone looks at her in shock*
  "You are surprised."
  *Continues her speech, hammily explaining why the Invid are on Earth*

• La Résistance: Scott Bernard's rebellion against the Invid; The Sentinels.
• Last-Second Term of Respect: After undergoing basic training and being made a member of the Robotech forces, Rick Hunter is walking through Macross City with Roy Fokker, when they encounter Lisa Hayes and the Bridge Bunnies. Rick, while still a civilian, had once referred to Lisa as "That Old Sourpuss". So, when she remembers who he is during this chance encounter...
  Lisa: I remember now! You're that loudmouthed pilot, aren't you?
  Rick: (alarmed, points, then claps a hand over his mouth) Then you must be...
  Lisa: (stern look) Yep!
  Rick: (saluting) Sir!
• Legacy Character: Dana Sterling.

• Lemony Narrator: Very occasionally. Most of the time the narration is straightforward exposition, but occasionally it gets some shots in, such as when the SDF-1 comes under attack while Lisa is separated from the bridge.
  Lisa: I wonder how Sammie is handling things.
  Narrator: As a matter of fact, so is the rest of the bridge.
  [Cut to Sammie in command, trying and failing to give clear orders for the SDF-1's defenses.]
• Let Them Die Happy: Nova doesn't intend this trope when she tells Captain Komodo, who is in unrequited love with her, to come back from a mission. He dies in the action knowing that at least she wishes him well.
• Love at First Punch: This is how Max and Miriya's relationship start off. First they fight on opposite sides, then she tries to kill him with a set of knives... and then he asks her to marry him and she replies; "Of course, Max, if you wish it. What is 'marry'?".
• Love at First Sight: Slightly justified in that Musica's never experienced romantic love or had love ever explained to her in any fashion, so she has absolutely no idea how to handle those emotions, in particular that when she meets Bowie for the first time, he shows that he understands what music is and managed to play a nice tune on her harp, not the sort of thing you expect from an 'inferior species.'
• Love Makes You Crazy: Sera has this opinion of HERSELF, when she saves Lancer during the final battle, knowing she's marked herself for death by saving the life of an enemy in the middle of a battle.
• Love Triangle: Fittingly for a series that consistenly has the Arc Number "3", several significant Love Triangles appear.
  • Between Lisa, Rick, and Minmei in The Macross Saga.
  • Robotech Masters has a triangle between Dana, Zor Prime, and Angelo. Musica is also caught between Bowie and the guard clone she had been betrothed to.
  • New Generation manages to avoid this trope in the main story, although the McKinney novels lampshade some Unresolved Sexual Tension between Rand and Ariel/Marlene before she and Scott are firmly paired up. However, the Expanded Universe reveals that the triangle between the Invid Regess, her mate the Regent, and the original Zor was what incited the entire story.
  • The prequel arc of the Wildstorm comic set up one between Roy, Claudia, and Jan Morris (the aging starlet Minmei defeated in the Miss Macross pageant), although it's played as Jan's pursuit of the handsome test pilot aggravating issues between the other two.
• Loving a Shadow: Rick and Lisa both felt this towards other characters - Rick to Minmei, Lisa to Lynn Kyle (Minmei's cousin, who reminded her of her dead lover). Fortunately, they got over it.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The series is partially based on the Trope Namer, and all three sagas feature impressive Itano-style missile barrages.
• Magnetic Plot Device: The Protoculture Matrix.
• Major Injury Underreaction: In the spirit of the trope. In the final battle, after Scott has hammered Corg's mecha with a full salvo of missiles, Corg doesn't realize how critically damaged his mecha has been and even takes a moment to comment on Scott's move before it begins detonating around him to his alarm. We cut to a wash of green liquid spewing out of the mecha (remember what color Invid blood is), as the mecha's pieces explode in every direction.
• Martial Pacifist: In the Robotech novelizations, Lynn Kyle is an unbuilt trope of the martial pacifist... which actually first hints that his anti-military attitude is skewered that he can't tell the difference between hating war and hating soldiers in a series that is most certainly not pro-war. In the end, his black and white thinking without looking at the context of the situation only makes things worse. Someone that dedicated to finding a better solution than violence would not be that good at the easy solution.
• Mama Bear: While in the Genesis Pit, Anne mistakes some giant dinosaur eggs for some 'weird white balls' and balances on one for fun... Then the mother attacks her... Scott and Rand have no choice put to put her down to save Anne's life. Rand outright says it might have left them alone if Anne hadn't been messing around. The fate of the now orphaned eggs is almost mercifully wrapped up when the Genesis Pit collapses, killing everything still inside.
• Masochism Tango: Lisa, Rick and Minmei's triangle can be pretty painful to watch at times.
• Mecha-Enabling Phlebotinum: The reverse-engineered technology of the SDF-1.
• Mechanistic Alien Culture: Not directly, but Rick at one point thinks of the Zentradi's way of life as no better than machines.
• Meet the New Boss: The Invid have no real interest in dictating policies or changing the existing power structure as long as their human labor force behaves themselves.
• The Mentor: Roy Fokker for Rick Hunter in Macross Saga, Scott Bernard for Rand in New Generation.
• Mercy Kill: Rand says this about the dinosaurs killed when the Genesis Pit collapses, as it was likely the quicker death than them trying to survive on a planet that is no longer suited for them.
• Military Maverick: Dana.
• Minion with an F in Evil: Bron, Konda, and Rico are the first sympathetic zentraedi who lead the defection to the SDF-1
• Mobile Factory: A number of examples.
• The Mole: Ariel was MEANT to be this in the dub by the Invid, however, accidental memory loss likely due to being the first human type Invid besides the Regess herself caused this to be changed.
• Mooks: Zentraedi Battle Pods, Triumviroids and Invid Scouts. The Bioroids don't start out as this. Dana describes them as easily outclassing Battloids in battle... at first. Then the Robotech Masters begin to suffer a resource shortage, and their Bioroid pilots begin to lose their edge into this.
• Mook Chivalry:
  • Subverted: the Invid trooper in the second episode doesn't attack Scott and Rand on the spot and it waits until it can ambush him with greater numbers (with mounted lasers rather than relying on melee weapons). Given the Invid have a sorts of Hive Mind and Scott previously took out three Invid shock troopers by himself, it's rather understandable why.
  • That the Invid don't often subscribe to this is why Scott thinks a lone Invid might have spotted them when it flies off after searching their camp sight and just went back for reinforcements.
• Mook Promotion:
  • Invid who magically managed to survive more than one episode against the heroes get promoted into piloting more deadly mecha, or rather, their mecha shell is unmade, and a new one created around them.
  • A notable example is the Invid who eventually becomes Corg. The only things that identifies him as different is the blue lens of his mecha, but unlike every other Invid who fights the Robotech Rebels, he actually retreats when the fight becomes unwinnable without any prompt from the Regess, and actually dodges Scott's missiles and gives him trouble when Corg was just a humble Invid scout. He's eventually promoted and becomes a Prince and a major threat.
• The Movie: Robotech: The Movie was adopted from Megazone 23, but after endless conflicts with Cannon Films, as well as poor feedback from the test audience, Macek shelved the film, and has since disowned it.
• Mrs. Exposition: The Invid Regess seems to have an almost compulsive need to explain everything she's doing and that is happening, in a suitably melodramatic way.
• Ms. Fanservice: Multiple examples, from shower scenes of Minmei and Dana to skinny dipping for Rook and Ariel, but generally avoided with Claudia, Lisa and Miriya.
• Multiple-Choice Past: The Regent either already existed when Zor seduced the Regis, or the Regent was a separate consciousness created from the trauma within the Invid hive-mind when the Zentradi obliterate all traces of the Flower of Life from Optera and thus Zor's apparent betrayal.
• Mushroom Samba: Combined with dream sequence and Clip Show, Rand goes out looking for water in the middle of a sandstorm. Instead he falls into a sand pit and falls unconscious, but spores from the Invid Flower of Life had been carried by the sandstorm, resulting in one of these. Played With, since the Flowers of Life have a symbiotic link to the Invid, it isn't just random nonsense from his own subconscious, but actually give Rand a peak into the Invid's mindset (and since Marlene/Ariel is a human type Invid, she might have actually shared his dream). When talking about his dream with the others, Rand realizes that the Invid aren't doing what they're doing 'For the Evulz,' but just trying to survive. Scott doesn't give a damn, not caring if they survive or go extinct, just that they leave Earth alone.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Zor Prime, when he regains memory of the original Zor's past.

• Naked People Are Funny: Anne when she jumps up and down for joy and victory after taking a bath, she drops her towel (it's seen from behind so nothing is actually shown).
• Needle in a Stack of Needles: The robotech rebels make their get away after raiding a protoculture cache because they steal a police van to make their get away... and all the police vans are scrambled to find them... actually making their own job harder as Lunk stole the uniform while he was at it.
• Never Say "Die": Despite all of the changes made, this was averted wholesale (See Killed off for Real above). The only real time this is played straight is an awkward line during Southern Cross when Zor Prime talks about knowing the pain a clone goes through when they 'regenerate.'
• The Neidermeyer: Lt. Sue Graham focused on her main objective of testing weapons and gathering intel with little concerns for her former comrades and Scott's group. Though she suffer from Heel Realization after suffering from fatal wounds.
• Nice Guy: Scott Bernard.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Everything save for the Children of Shadows was caused by one such moment: Zor solving Tirol's energy problems by seducing the secrets of Protoculture out of the Invid Regess and bringing them to Tirol, where he developed the Robotechnology. Cue the Robotech Masters using his Robotechnology to create an empire with the Zentraedi as enforcers and, to cap it off, defoliate Optera of every trace of the Flower of Live, thus driving the Invid in their Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
  • In the third episode captain Gloval orders his crew to use their untested Space Fold Drive to reposition the ship behind the moon to flank the attacking Zentraedi - This backfires spectacularly. Not only does the ship appear beyond the orbit of Pluto, it brings a spherical chunk of ocean and most of the island of Macross (including the city that was built around it during it's reconstruction) along for the ride. And on top of that, the Space Fold Drive vanishes in the process, stranding them there.
    • In the novels, this is even worse. The citizens of Macross Island survived because they had already evacuated to the bunkers, which were sealed. The Daedalus and Prometheus were regular supercarriers only intended for sea combat. When Gloval orders them to be pulled in and connected to the SDF-1, part of those orders are to collect the bodies of the crews for burial, catalogue their supplies, and retrofit them for use in space.
  • The SDF-1's barrier system overloads while over Toronto caused a chain reaction which destroys the city, killed a chunk of Khyron's forces, and Ben Dixon. Not just that, but the whole reason they were over Toronto in the first place was because Gloval was trying to have the civilians evacuated from the SDF-1, but the military had denied their request, feeling that allowing the SDF-1 too close to Earth would attract danger. Toronto was the first city to act against this and actually offer shelter... and then the barrier overload happens, which among everything else just causes the military to point and say "see, we were right!"
    • Doubles as a Nice Job Breaking It, Herod moment. The only reason the barrier overloaded is because Khyron ignored communications saying that the barrier was building up to critical mass due to the sheer amount of firepower being thrown at it all at once. He wanted the glory of capturing the SDF-1 for the Zentraedi Armada.
  • Azonia, worried that Breetai's peace offerings could cause trouble for the Zentraedi, called Dolza and informed him. Dolza reacted by assembling the Zentraedi Grand Fleet and coming to Earth to bomb it into rubble and kill every single member of Breetai's force, Azonia included.
  • Zor's tendency to do this may be genetic: his clone Zor Prime attempted to protect Earth from the Invi by destroying the Flower of Life that was there before the Sensor Nebula could detect it and warn them, but all he obtained was to seed the entire planet with the Flower of Life and get the Sensor Nebula to detect it.
  • The 15th's scheme to get Musica past the GMP worked perfectly, but Dana oversold it by addressing Musica by the name of a soldier who died during the season's first battle. Things don't fall apart on the spot, but it puts Nova on the right track.
• No Macguffin No Winner:
  • Happens with the prototype Synchro Cannon, as Rand's only options were either blow it up or let the Invid capture the weapon intact. Unusually for this trope, he actually gets some mileage out of it before blowing it up, destroying as many enemies as possible before doing so.
  • This happens at the end of the second Robotech War, with the Protoculture Matrix the Robotech Masters sacrificed everything they had left to try and claim destroyed.
  • At the end of the Third Robotech War, the Regress decides to take the Invid and leave Earth after she realizes that no matter what side wins, they aren't likely to be much better off than the losers due to this trope.
• Non-Action Big Bad: All the leaders of the alien factions are this to some extent.
  • Dolza has fought before, but he doesn't do any during the first Robotech War directly, rather he commands the Zentradi fleet from his base. Rick and his friends meet him personally only once during their interrogation. He bears witness to the SDF-1 bearing down on him as he's blown to bits, in the novels, he begs them to stop (revealing to the readers at least that Dolza had already planned to rebel against the Robotech Masters), but falls on deaf ears as he's obliterated.
  • The Robotech Master Elders are old men with no combat ability of their own, once the heroes get past their Bioroids and guards, their only choice is to run for their lives, they don't get far.
  • The Regess is an interesting case, as the nexus of the Invid Hive Mind, she is technically present for every battle with the Robotech rebels. But the the rebels only face her directly in last couple of episodes, where instead of attacking her, things break down into a debate between her, the Rebels, and her children, if the Invid are really justified in everything they're doing.
• The Not-Love Interest: Minmei is pretty much this at the end of The Macross Saga as Rick finally figures out that he's meant to be with Lisa.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Inverted: Sera gives this opinion on humans and Invid to the Regess, saying the Invid are in no position to claim a moral high ground.
• Novelization: The Jack McKinney novels.
• Now What?: Repeatedly averted, as apocalyptic events that would spell the end of nearly any other series keep happening again and again, yet this series accepts the challenge to keep on going and shows what happens next. Part of this is baked into the original Macross, and part is a fortunate consequence of the stitched-together nature of the American series.

• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: We don't see anything of the fight, but Zor Prime takes on a squadron's worth of Invid Fighters single handedly in his technologically inferior red Bioroid and next we see him, he is still there, they are not, and his Bioroid hasn't suffered any significant damage.
• Oh, Crap!: In an anime of this caliber, there are plenty.
  • Max Sterling, upon finding out that his dream woman, Miriya Parino is in fact a Zentradi Pilot and is trying to kill him.
  Miriya: I am Quadrano Leader Miriya Parino, Zentradi Air Force!
  Max: There goes our first date.
  • Rick Hunter, as he finds himself caught in friendly fire, thanks to Lisa. Oops.
  • Another one from Rick is finding out that the woman who he called an 'old sourpuss' is his commanding officer.
  • Rick and Lisa, while captured, witness the horrifying firepower of the Zentradi fleet as it blows up an unknown planet in a show of force.
  • The Earth's military upon seeing Dolza's entire Zentradi Fleet warp into Earth's orbit. They find out that Lisa was in fact right. Cue carpet-bombing of the entire planet.
  • The look on Dolza's face when he sees the SDF-1 finally breach his fortress with its shield intact, prepared to launch its final Macross Missile Massacre.
  • After robbing a protoculture cache and finding their loot floating down to the planned spot on the balloons from Yellow Dancer's concert, and bamboozling the human security, the Robotech Rebels see five Invid shock troopers fly in to take care of business themselves. But it turns the other way as the rebels with their gear now fully charged manage to kill off three with just the cyclones, and Scott takes out the last two with the Veritech.
  • Dana jokes with Bowie how she'll end up in the stockade while saving him for performing a rescue operation without orders, then it hits her that she likely IS going to end up in the stockade for enacting an operation without orders. Thankfully General Emmerson pulls some strings.
• The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: The Robotech Masters.
• One-Gender Race: The male and female Zentraedi were segregated by gender, and effectively fulfilled this trope.
• One-Liner: Scott is not above giving these in the middle of battle. Given Scott has an understandable grudge against the Invid, he might be enjoying shooting them down.
• One-Person Birthday Party: Annie implies all her birthdays were these. Apparently her family had somehow managed to be well off before the world went to hell for a forth time in a row. Revealing that she had to read HERSELF a bedtime story, tuck herself in, and her only party guest was her pet cat (Implying even her parents didn't attend).
• One-Word Title: Robotech, which, as a compound word, is also a Portmantitle.
• Only Sane Man: Sgt. Angelo Dante is this compared to Dana, Bowie and pretty much everyone else in his squad.

• Our Doors Are Different: Many of the doors onboard the Robotech Masters' City Ships will open every way except split open horizontally.
• Persona Non Grata: After the Robotech rebels save themselves from being killed by the Invid troopers' trap offered up by the locals, the inhabitants of the city in the lake tell them to get lost.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Donald sacrifice his three prized family heirloom combat jet fighters to buy time for the heroes to escape an Invid swarm after his wife forces his hand by being with the rebels at the time.
  • Subverted due to the dub. In the original animation, Ariel was lost by accident while in transport, and the Invid begin searching the village they lost her in, when the Rebels show up, the Invid decide to hide instead of attack, since a fire fight could end up crushing a building she might be in. They later spare the heroes carrying her for the same reason. When given a choice to destroy her enemies the Regess still won't endanger her children. In the Robotech dub, this is for pragmatic reasons so the rebels can find her and take her back to base as a spy (not realizing said spy ended up as a blank slate instead).
• Playing Both Sides: Anne is given the job of revving up the crowd for Yellow Dancer's concert, telling the crowd how at the last concert people managed to get on stage and got to personally meet with Yellow Dancer. Meanwhile Yellow Dancer recounts how on the last concert people got on stage and made a mess of things so be sure to provide security that would otherwise be guarding that protocol cache.
• Point Defenseless: As impressive as they look while firing, the turrets/mechs on the surface of the SDF-1 don't seem to accomplish anything aside from getting blown up. Averted at several points in the novelizations, where the Destroids arrive just in time to relieve the exhausted fighters, including a memorable moment when the SDF-1 Monsters arrive on deck just in time to rip the attacking Zentraedi mecha a new one with their sixteen inch guns. Played straight, and painfully at that, in the "New Generation" saga, where the Regis' Invid rely exclusively on mechs and kamikaze attacks yet the final generation of REF ships have an unbelievably low number of point defence turrets, with the Garfish-class light cruisers (their most numerous capital ship) having none at all. Justified by the fact the previously encountered Invid belonging to the Regent also fielded gun-armed capital ships and the best way to deal with the Invid's Zerg Rush is to blow up the carriers before they can launch the mechs, but still has dreadful results (the opening battle of the "New Generation" has the REF Mars Division annihilated in two minutes with a single survivor, who merely survived his plane's crash, and the Battle of Reflex Point at the end sees the whole force of the REF slowly losing as the Invid start bringing in carriers faster than they can be shot down).
• Poor Communication Kills: Every saga has one such occurrence causing a lot of avoidable trouble:
  • When Breetai first comes to Earth he's still deciding what course of action to adopt and Earth wants to talk, but then the SDF-1 wipes out Breetai's scouts and Earth command (wrongly) assumes the Zentraedi will refuse to talk, and attack. It's only at this point that Breetai decides that conflict is inevitable...
  • When the Masters arrive to Earth, Leonard wants to talk, but before that he trains a few guns at the mothership orbiting over Monument City (the capital) and sends a few fighters to do a fly-by as an implied threat, with the Masters keeping their shields down because, at this point, they aren't completely hostile. Then an officer in control of a missile launcher panics and fires all his weapons, scoring a hit because the Masters didn't expect such a stupid action and started firing their point defence guns late, at which point the Masters decide for war.
  • Due their experience with the Regent's forces, the Robotech Expeditionary Force believe that the Invid on Earth have enslaved everyone they didn't kill and they have to kill all of them for the good of the universe, even if it means destroying Earth itself, and thus outright refuse to communicate. The Regess is actually a Pragmatic Villain who couldn't care less for the Humans and prefer to keep them calm long enough to complete her plan and leave Earth, that she actually healed of the damage caused by the Rain of Death, but nobody on the REF side even imagines until the Battle of Reflex Point, where they meet her and find out she had no idea why the REF continues to attack.
  • This is also the Regess' own fault: the Invid have installed numerous jamming stations to prevent the anti-Invid resistance to coordinate with the REF, thus the people on Earth cannot warn the REF command that these Invid repaired the damage from the Zentraedi bombardment (in fact Lancer and Scott are surprised when they land and find a blooming ecosystem) and aren't completely evil, and any ship that comes close enough to see is attacked and shot down. At least one such stations ends up being destroyed on the REF's request to get some data for the attack on Reflex Point, but by then it's too late.
• Portmantitle: Robotech, is a compound word. Is also a One-Word Title.
• Possession Implies Mastery:
  • In the very first episode, Rick Hunter, a stunt flyer, is accidentally sent into a battle inside a Veritech. Roy had explained the basics to him before, but that doesn't mean he has the experience to pilot it well enough to avoid being shot down.
  • Averted in The Macross Saga considering that the SDF-1 crew barely understand what the retrofitted ship can or can't do, making each new maneuver in combat a desperate shot in the dark.
  • Played with, once Rand gets his hands on a Cyclone he rides it well enough, but he absolutely fails to get it to transform on his own.
  • Subverted when Anne, while having a tantrum and a freak out after Rand accidentally lands on top of her and she jumps to conclusions, scampers to a pile of weapons, and she proves as effective with them as any child would picking up a weapon for the first time.
  • Also subverted when Rand is NOT good at piloting the beta-fighter when he first tries to fly it (he cuts it close just getting into the air, has to be saved by the much more experienced Scott, and ends up crashing the dang thing into an Invid Storm Trooper and through two crashed space ships... Rick Hunter would be proud.) Thankfully he proves to a lot more competent with a normal Alpha.
  • Scott and Rand are able to ride a pair of horses no problem after being given them in spite of likely never having laid an eye on a horse before.
• Posthumous Character: Alfred Nader, who told the people of his town to leave fighting the Invid to the professionals, died not long after.

• Powered Armor: Many models:
  • Mankind has two models: the Cyclone series of the Robotech Expeditionary Force and the MODAT prototypes of the Southern Cross (the latter only appearing in The Untold Story). Both types are motorbikes that change into powered armour, but the MODATs are more powerful and large enough to straddle the line between this and Mini-Mecha;
  • The Zentraedi have two models of powered armour... That, being made for giants, are larger than most mecha in the series;
  • The Invid have the Soldier.
• Powers via Possession: While possessed by the Regess inside the Genesis Pit, Anne somehow is able to make the camp fire huge in size and shows the shadowy form of her humanoid shape (which hadn't been shown in the season yet).
• Pragmatic Hero: When the Robotech Rebels find Point K obliterated, Lancer objects to abandoning the bleak graveyard and instead says it's best to salvage anything and everything they can (they do get three new Alphas and a Beta out of it). This becomes a bit gruesome when you realize they're taking this all from a dead army.
• Pragmatic Villainy: The Invid Regess. She lets the Humans on Earth do as they please as long as they don't attack her children, during the invasion she let the Southern Cross survivors leave (while keeping pressure on them to make sure they don't get any funny idea), and she even tolerates the presence of a few REF strongholds on Earth (Jonathan Wolfe's city and resistance base and Point K's army of ten thousand VFs) as long as they don't act out (Wolfe was luring soldiers into Invid hands to keep his city safe, and after he turns them we see an Invid army approach his city. Why? Because she doesn't care in the slightest of what the Humans do as long as they don't oppose the Invid or pose a danger. But if they do... Well, the first (and only) we see of Point K is its ruins from the Invid reaction to them starting to pose a danger.
• Precursors In the original Macross anime, this was part of the setting, while in the Robotech adaption, Max theorizes humans and Zentradi must have a common ancestor. Exador eventually chalks their similar genetics up to pure chance... an incredulous Rick call out the sheer mathematical impossibility of this. The obvious but unspoken idea that humans and the Robotech Masters share a common origin isn't directly discussed (again, in the Southern Cross anime, humans and the Zor (the species not the character) DID have a common origin).
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: The Zentraedi.
• Punch-Clock Villain: The Zentraedi could be considered this as they were only acting under orders from their bosses, the Robotech Masters, and even the Robotech Masters themselves could be seen as this given that at one point, they openly state that they never actually wanted to harm the human race (all the conflicts stem from a series of communication clusterfucks).
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Khyron does this while punching his mech's controls in frustration.
  Khyron: I HATE TO! LOSE! A! FIGHT!
• Psychic Link: Ariel it turns out hasn't completely lost her link to the Invid hive mind, but it's pretty much just subconscious, and only one way. She can sense when other Invid are nearby (it isn't pleasant). The rebels have no idea HOW she knows, and neither does she, but they quickly learn to trust her when she does or doesn't feel the Invid's presence. (In the novels, Ariel not sensing Invid nearby foreshadow's Anne's surprise party.)
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Scott Bernard's rebellion against the Invid; The Sentinels.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: Zentraedi officers are stronger, larger and usually more skilled than their subordinates. A common Zentraedi soldier dealing with a VF-1 in hand to hand is easily defeated, but a Zentraedi officer like Khyron is a match for the usual pilot as long as he wears body armour, and Breetai once fought off Rick, Ben and Max, demolishing the mechas of the first two, wearing his normal non-armoured uniform and armed with a Zentraedi-sized metal pipe, and shrugged off Rick's fighter exploding on his face.
• Rapid-Fire "No!": Right near the end of the series, Marlene-Ariel finds out she's an human-type invid after everyone (including her) sees her bleed for the first time, and sees green blood.
• Reactionless Drive: The Tirolian Motherships have it. This actually backfires on them once, as improper protection allows Dana to down the Robotech Masters' flagship with a single shot from her Spartas, but, knowing well their technology and not being stupid, the Masters track down the flaw and fix in time for their flagship to be rescued (indeed, in the rescue attempt Dana shoots the rescuing mothership in another weak spot expecting to shoot that one down too, but it does nothing).
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • Captain Gloval and Commander Breetai in the First Robotech War.
  • General Rolf Emerson in the Second Robotech War.
  • Scott and surprisingly enough, the Invid Regess, who leaves after being convinced by Ariel/Marlene that humanity isn't all bad, and decides to even take out the neutron-S missiles the REF launches in an attempted scorched earth attack before leaving.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning:
  • Robotech rebels have a pair of glowing red eyes spying on them and following them. It's not Invid, and what it is isn't explained, but it might have been the grizzly bear that attacks them later with Rook feeling something that wasn't the Invid was stalking them.
  • Purely for dramatic effect, Zor Prime in the penultimate episode of the second Robotech War, as he forcibly makes his way through the Robotech Masters' city ship.
• Remember the New Guy?: Unlike the Invid that would become Corg, the Invid that becomes Sera doesn't appear until the scenes where the two Invid are evolved into their human forms, and named 'Prince and Princess' of their race.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Everything the Invid do is one of these boiling back down to the Zentradi devastating the Invid homeworld on the Robotech Masters' orders and Zor's apparent betrayal. However, it's hinted that the Regess is still carrying the torch, and almost considers Earth a gift from Zor.
• Roboteching: The Trope Namer.
• Rock Beats Laser: Subverted when some tribal humans wail on Invid Shock Troopers with rocks and spears. The Invid don't even notice.
• Rousing Speech: Lancer tries to give Scott one of these when he's shut down at seeing the destruction of Point K... sadly it doesn't work.
• Rule of Three: Diana Sterling and Zor Prime duel each other three times.
• Spanner in the Works: The defenders of the SDF-1 Macross and Minmei were this to the Zentraedi plans to capture the ship.
• Scary Dogmatic Aliens: The Invid could be taken as a stereotype of Communist China, and the Zentraedi as...Americans.
• The Scream: Seeing battle for the first time, Marlene-Ariel reacts this way. It causes Scott to see Marlene screaming instead, and snaps him out of his Heroic Blue Screen Death and rushes to join the battle instead of doing nothing.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!:
  • Captain Gloval defies the orders from his superiors to take off from the Earth in order to bait the Zentraedi forces away from Earth.
  • The Original Zor could count as this as he rebelled against his species corrupt rule and took the last known Protoculture Matrix where he hid it aboard his Battle Fortress known as the SDF-1 that was crewed by a mixture of Tirolians and Zentraedi. Their mission was seeding a mutated strain of the Flower of Life on the worlds of the Local Group. During this time, their expedition came under attack from the now war-like Invid who called for Zor death but not before he sent the SDF-1 on a course for a distant unknown world to hide the Protoculture Matrix. The novelizations avert this by implying that the Protoculture itself has an independent will and caused Zor to send the ship to Earth, which turns out to be the original source of the Flower of Life as part of a complex, long range plan to free itself of all the entities that were using it for their own ends.
• Second Love:
  • Lisa Hayes is this for Rick Hunter (and vice versa) - they even make it to the altar in Sentinels.
  • Ariel (AKA: the other Marlene) is this to Scott Bernard in The New Generation/The Shadow Chronicles.
• Secret Identity: Male Lancer's stage persona as the female Yellow Dancer, and uses "her" VIP status to rub shoulders with the few privileged humans left, and give the people something to feel good about.
• Secret-Keeper: Yellow Dancer's manager is implied to be this, at least knowing Yellow is a rebel. By the episode The Big Apple, it's confirmed he knows "her" secret.
• Secret Underground Passage: Scott and co make use of this to help make their get away after raiding a protoculture warehouse... except while they'd taken care of the new fancy electronic security system, the old castle booby traps turn out to still work, and they end up in a sealed room filling with water. Thankfully there turns out to be a second one in the ceiling that saves their lives.
• Self-Healing Phlebotinum: The Robotech Master's ships start out as this, but as their Protoculture breaks down, they have their mooks repair them manually.
• Senseless Sacrifice: Lunk blows up the abandoned City of Denver, or at least a city with its namesake in the frozen rocky mountains, hoping to destroy Corg and his escort after burying them in the ice... as we see next episode, Corg is still leading the hunt for the Rebels.
• Sequel Hook: Most installments have at least one:
  • The Macross Saga has the episodes showing the Robotech Masters are coming to Earth (for the second part of the series) and the announcement Earth is going to send a diplomatic expedition to the Masters' homeworld (for the intended Sentinels spin-off);
  • The Masters has the Masters' warnings about the Invid, and concludes with the narrator announcing that the Invid are in fact arriving (for The New Generation).
    • The Masters have also mentioned someone called Disciples of Zor as a possible enemy, and someone called Children of Zor was slated to appear in the aborted Robotech: Academy.
  • "The New Generation" has the unexplained disappearance of admiral Hunter and the mention the Invid lost their homeworld twice, that, with the talk about 'Children of Shadows', end up as the hook for The Shadow Chronicles
• Shapeshifter: The Zentraedi's "micronization process."
• Shipper on Deck: Claudia Grant ships Lisa Hayes with Rick Hunter; Max Sterling showed signs of this as well. Roy was all for Team Minmei though.
• Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: Though Prince Corg's mecha is obviously best suited for ranged combat, in the final episode, he reeks havoc on Rand and Rook's Veritechs. After being shot down once by Corg, Scott fights him again using the Beta-Fighter, and shows Corg what happens when you invoke this trope and your opponent stops letting you set the pace of the battle. Corg gets a face full of missiles.
• Shouting Shooter: Finding a Point K has become a Robotech graveyard, Scott fires his laser in the air, screaming for someone, anyone to answer.
• Shout-Out:
  • The visual references that Macross made to several other popular anime of the day, as well as to the Macross production staff, are largely left intact. The novels and older comics also incorporate some homages and extra data from the component series, and also include references to several science fiction properties.
  • In "The Big Escape" (Macross Saga episode 12), Lisa Hayes suggests that humans and Zentraedi might actually be related somehow, and it is commented upon by both Zentraedi and human scientists that physical makeup, cell structure, biology, etc between the two species is almost identical. In the original Macross anime; humans, Zentraedi and Meltrandi (female Zentraedi) were all directly related species of Human Aliens, being different offshoot branches of The Protoculture.
  • See that fighter Roy and Rick fly? Looks pretty sweet doesn't it? Guess what? Its color design's real. The VF-84 Jolly Rogers fighter squadron did fly white jets with yellow ribbons, black tails and skull & crossbones logos.
  • To the Lupin III Franchise: A video game in episode 24, intended to be similar to the game "Cliff Hanger", which uses footage of the car-chase scene from The Castle of Cagliostro. The character playing the game seems to be in Lupin III cosplay, complete with smoking cigarette.
  • At one point, the 15th Squadron end up in a garbage compactor on board on the Robotech Masters' City Ship. The novelization heavily lampshades it, including the part where Dana's laser bounces off the walls... except here Dana successfully gambles on the floor NOT being shielded.
• Sixth Ranger: Zor Prime.
• Skewed Priorities: While fishing up their dinner, Rand is giving a warning by Lunk that Invid are on their way... but that's exactly when Rand gets a bite. Instead of running for cover to keep from being spotted, Rand tries to catch the fish first. And the link breaks and the fish gets away, and Rand has to dive underwater to hide and almost drowns for nothing.
• The Smart Guy: Louie Nichols
• Smug Super: In the Robotech RPG books, the introduced new generation of post-humanoid Invid acts this way even towards their fellow Invid. This results in there being chaffing between the humanoid and the post-humanoid Invid. When facing earthlings, the post-humanoid Invid's ego is even described as reaching pathological levels. Thankfully, the source book describes them as being only a couple dozen on Earth total, and they have to combined their efforts to pull off the tricks the Regess herself has shown.
• Snap Back: The city inside the SDF-1 is shown to be seriously damaged in many space battles, not to mention every time the ship transforms. It's always fine in the next episode. It could be said that eventually they would figure out where damage would be and make it easily repairable. This is lampshaded in the novels, where the civil engineers were marvelous, able to both synthesize new building materials at an incredible pace, and devised a way of setting up the city in such a way it sustained minimal damage during transformation. The novels particularly have this as a secondary reason for the Zentraedi to do a Heel–Face Turn: The humans know how to repair things, an almost magical ability from their point of view. This is Lampshaded by the fact that when Breetai's main viewscreen on his ship's bridge is smashed by a veritech flying through it, it is never repaired, simply replaced by another screen with the smashed viewscreen still in place.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: Rook and Rand have their moments, they're the archetypical couple who Rand keeps shifting between hitting on and teasing, but then grow to life each other. Ironically, Rook is the better fighter easily, with only little Anne having less combat experience than Rand, but his wilderness experience and ingenuity helps out the group more than once.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Subverted: the Zentraedi (who appear first) are actually the strongest faction thanks to sheer numbers; they're followed by the Robotech Masters, who have more advanced technology than their old Slave Mooks Zentraedi but just don't have the numbers to compete; following them are the Invid, who the Masters originally considered an annoyance until losses against the Southern Cross depleted their own numbers, implying that the only reason the Invid conquered Earth was that the Masters and the Southern Cross effectively destroyed each other. Then possibly played straight with the Children of Shadows, who may be far more dangerous than the Invid even after they build up their forces on Earth.

• Spear Counterpart: The Sentinels introduced the Invid Regent, the estranged mate of the Regess from "New Generation" who served as the Big Bad.
• Spiritual Antithesis: Oddly, Macross and Robotech became this to each other as their timelines progressed. In Macross, the Zentraedi become more like humanity, while in Robotech, thanks to repeated invasions, humanity is becoming a warrior race like the Zentraedi.
• The Spock: Exedore for both Breetai and later the Robotech Expeditionary Force.
• Stalker without a Crush: At the end of Marlene's introduction episode, the last shot is enemy pov focused on her, and Regess ordering 'continue to observe' and the camera gives us a close up the Invid Scout's unique blue eye-lens.
• The Starscream: Khyron, who gets bonus points for Dragon Their Feet during the Colony Drop.
• Supporting Leader: Roy Fokker and Captain Gloval in The Macross Saga. General Emerson in The Masters. Implied with Admiral Rick Hunter in The New Generation.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Dana shot down the Masters' flagship by hitting a weakness in the ship's reaction-less drive. When another Mothership comes to the rescue, Dana shoots it another weak spot to take it down... And fails: the Masters have the plans for their own technology and know it well, and the moment they were aware that one such weakness existed they figured out what happened and how and fixed it and the others faster than they could be identified by the ASC.
  • While on board the Robotech Masters' flagship, Sean is confident General Emerson isn't going to destroy the ship while his godson, Bowie, is on board. Bowie shoots down this presumption, knowing his godfather isn't about to risk the fleet and the mission for the life of one soldier.
  • Improbable Aiming Skills is adverted in one episode where Rand sets up an elaborate trap for an Invid shock trooper, and gets it upside down for a few moments before its weight causes the trees hanging it to snap... Rand missing the eye lens, as trying to hit a small moving target isn't easy.
  • Invoked by Scott in a Heroic Blue Screen of Death, when Lunk says how with their new firepower they've salvaged from Point K they'll send the Invid packing with Anne adding they'll be their own miniature army! Scott snarls it won't make a difference, they'll end up like "this!" (bangs fist against wrecked Robotech ship of Point K) What can four veritechs and four cyclones do that 2000 veritechs couldn't?
• Surrounded by Idiots: Rand feels this way around Anne when she has to ask Rand what pine and redwood look like for a camp fire, which for him is common knowledge.

• Team Mom: Dana Sterling to the members of the 15th Tactical Armored Squad. Sometimes it gets comical as in the episode The Hunters, where some high ranking types express some serious interest in Louis' latest invention: The Pupil Pistol.
  Dana: Oh, give me a hug, Louie!
  Louie: I'd be glad to, ma'am.
  Dana: I'm so proud of my brainy boy!
• Tears of Joy: When Anne is given a birthday with other people for the first time in her life, complete with peppermints, she breaks down in these.
• That Man Is Dead: Invoked in a variation. When the Robotech Masters ague with Zor Prime that surely he can't be willing to write a death sentence to his native civilization by ruining their plans, Zor Prime responds, "My civilization is already dead!"
• The Cavalry Arrives Late: For the villains in 'Curtain Call', by the time the human police show up, all five of the Invid Shock Troopers present have been killed, and Scott and co have plenty of time to load the protoculture and make a clean get away.
• The Farmer and the Viper: A heroic version of this happens when Anne and Rook pretend to have a faulty bike and get a truck driver to stop and give them a hand... then steal his truck at gun point and leave him tied up next to the road, since they need the guy's truck as part of an infiltration.
• The Unmasking: In the final episode, Lancer reveals to Yellow Dancer's fans his true identity as Yellow Dancer.
• Throw the Dog a Bone
  • Senator Alphonso Russo when the Zentradi first arrive demands Captain Gloval launch the SDF-1 as soon as possible in spite of it currently having mostly recruits on board, rightfully arguing it better than it being destroyed in the ground... then quickly revises his demand to NOT take off until he'd left the ship.
  • In the novels, Dr. Zand finds Russo after the first Robotech War, a broke man, and is easily able to control what's left of Russo's mind, using Russo as Zand's political mouth piece and personal Igor (the Southern Cross officers referring to him as "that"). When Zand gets what's coming to him, Russo begins screaming and runs off into the wilderness.
  • When the heroes find him years later, he's become a work hand at a farm and seems to have built a new life for himself.
• Time-Limit Boss: Non-video game version. As the entrance to the Genesis Pit begins to close, the Robotech Rebels are given only a brief window of time to kill the two Invid Shock Troopers trying to use it too and get the Hell out of there.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Rick Hunter and Lynn Kyle both went through this in the "Reconstruction" era episodes of The Macross Saga. Granted, Rick had been a bit of a jerk earlier in the series but he started to grow up, getting over his initial infatuation with Minmei and seemingly moving on to Lisa... only to regress back to being infatuated with Minmei (who also got a bit derailed herself). His behavior towards Lisa in Brokenheart and A Rainy Night is especially disgusting, and they're supposed to be the show's primary couple! Kyle started off a nice guy with slightly unrealistic views of war and peace who degenerated into an alcholic control freak in the aftermath of the war, due in no small part to his unhealthy relationship with Minmei, which he himself eventually got tired of and left her when he realized the situation was hurting her as much as it was him.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Robotech: The Sentinels portrays Rick Hunter as a much wiser and kinder person than he was in the actual Macross Saga, which makes sense given that Sentinels is set around 10 years later, which seems to have given him enough time to finally grow up and grow more into his responsibilities.
• Touched by Vorlons:
  • Starting with the Jack McKinney novelizations, Dr. Emil Lang has been consistently portrayed as receiving enhanced intelligence, and strange powers, after a Freak Lab Accident during the initial exploration of the SDF-1.
  • Lazlo Zand, Lang's Evil Counterpart, also found a way to duplicate Lang's transformation.
  • In the Titan comics, Rick and Minmei are both accidentally exposed to Protoculture while stranded aboard the SDF-1. Rick is left blind, but with an almost mystic Protoculture-powered sight that allows him to pilot. Meanwhile, Minmei's voice is literally able to compel Zentraedi to obey (which causes some angst about her talent). Not to mention the Wonder Twin Powers they gain when together.

• Transformation Is a Free Action: For the main characters, at least. There's a recycled animation background for The Macross Saga where a veritech is blown up while transforming.
• Transforming Mecha: Referred to in-universe as Veritechs, including the fighters, as well as the Cyclones, the Hovertanks, and the AJAX attack helicopters.
• The Tokyo Fireball: Twice in The Macross Saga. Once in the first episode, and then in the climactic battle with Dolza.
• They Look Like Us Now: Zentraedi becoming human sized. The Masters, particularly Zor Prime being sent in as a Fake Defector, and the Invid Simulagents.
• This Is Gonna Suck:
  • Rand's reaction when an Invid patrol senses them nearby and opens fire.
  • When the 15th Squadron mount an unauthorized rescue of Bowie Grant, Lt. Dana succinctly reminds her men of how technologically outmatched they are against the Robotech Masters' bioroids. The squad begin quoting 'Charge of the Light Brigade' until she shuts them up.
• This Is Not a Drill: Frequently on the SDF-1.
• Town with a Dark Secret: In The New Generation.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Anne's is peppermint candy.
• True Companions:
  • The Robotech Rebels. Rook outright calls them her new family. Which makes it sadder that they go their separate ways when the war is over. (Though Rook had already planned to finally go back home after the war was over.)
  • The narrator spells it out at the end of Birthday Blues, saying the Robotech Rebels have at this point become a family.
• Unreliable Narrator: The narrator often says things that directly contradict what we actually see happen, most notably Lisa Hayes "volunteering" for a certain mission in Blind Game.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: Played for Laughs, Rand goes completely 'fan boy crush' on female idol singer Yellow Dancer at the start of the episode getting an autograph 'for his sister' on a handkerchief. When Yellow Dancer reveals 'she' is actually a male RDF pilot named 'Lancer' who does the female idol singer thing as a cover as there are plenty of humans eager to turn in any RDF trooper they find over to the Invid: Rand gives a brief but melodramatic teary eyes lament that he was 'her' biggest fan, and the episode ends with him blowing his nose on the handkerchief. Lancer continues to use his Yellow Dancer persona whenever possible until the final episode when he publicly reveals his real identity, shocking 'her' fans, and Lancer thanks them for making Yellow Dancer's final concert a good one and giving them a goodbye song in a more masculine voice opposed to the feminine one he's used before.
• Unwanted Rescue:
  • Dealing with the local gang of thugs, Rook is none too happy when Scott and Rand 'butt in' saving her. Scott actually told Rand not to interfere at first since Scott could tell she wasn't a damsel in distress... They only help once Rook is dragged up by the armpits from behind and the gang leader has a knife right at her face. Yellow Dancer would have actually stepped in to help with a discarded knife if Rand and Scott hadn't made their move first. And since 'Yellow Dancer' is actually a trained solider, they likely (if unintentionally) saved these goons lives.
  • Lisa on Mars is rescued by Rick Hunter when the base she's on is about to explode. Problem is at the time she's swept up in the nostalgia of having found her dead lover's room. Thankfully she apparently comes to her senses right after and seems more frustrated that Rick got promoted for saving her from her own worse possibly timed trip down memory lane (though she'd have likely needed pick up before the place exploded anyway).
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Humanity repairing the SDF-1 restored the ship's main cannon and targeting system. This allowed the automated boobytrap to fire upon the Zentraedi when they arrived. Earth firing the first shot and demonstrating possession of Protoculture technology, led the Zentradi to abandon non-violent first contact.
• Video Phone: Common on the Veritechs for pilots to communicate face to face with their commanding officers. Also seen within Macross City itself.
• Villain Decay: Justified with the Robotech Masters: they're weakening because they're running out of power and thus their threat decreases. At the beginning of the series their city ships could nigh instantly repair any damage, by the end their power is so low that they have to have their mecha pilots doing it manually.
• Villain Has a Point: More like Fallen Hero has a point. Colonel Wolfe explains him handing off his own men to the Invid a handful of unwitting dupes at a time keeps the whole town alive. He's not bluffing. As soon as he's gotten sick of sending fellow trusting RDF soldiers to the slaughters and turns on the Invid... the last shot we get of the town is it surrounded by the Invid army.
• Villain with Good Publicity: T.R. Edwards and Anatole Leonard. Before the Zentraedi they were members of the Anti-Unification League, planning to take over the world and personally involved in a plan that, even if stopped, resulted in the death of thousands and the destruction of the Southern Grand Cannon... And nobody ever had any idea. And while Edwards eventually loses the good publicity, it's for something completely different.
• Villain World: Invid-occupied Earth.
• Villainous Rescue: When a grizzly bear attacks the Robotech Rebels, Rand can't hit it, and Scott freaks out when a spider lands right on his blaster right in front of his face. The commotion attracts an invid that blows up the grizzly bear for them.
• Voices Are Mental: While in the Genesis Pit, the Regess speaks through Anne, being the first time she has ever spoken to the Robotech Rebels, the Regess speaks in her voice, not Anne's.
• Voice of the Legion: The Regess, who has a telepathic link with nearly every Invid on Earth. Her voice is heard constantly speaking through her children, adding to this.
• Wagon Train to the Stars: The SDF-2 and SDF-3 missions.
• Wave-Motion Gun: The Macross Reflex Cannon. It doubles as a fancy light show for special occasions.
• War Is Hell: Colonel Wolfe says "There are no winners or losers here, only survivors." Take a look at how all three Robotech Wars ended, and he has a point.
• We Have Reserves: Dolza's Grand Fleet consists of 4.8 million ships. It would have been more, but the others had just defected...
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Basically every villain but the Children of Shadow (who are apparently evil), Corg (who is apparently crazy), and possibly the Children of Zor (who were to appear in the aborted Robotech Academy) has good intentions. Even the Regent:
  • Bodolza wanted the means to free his people, that were on the SDF-1. If he had to kill an entire planet to achieve it... Well, it's not like he hadn't given them the choice of surrender before doing it.
  • Khyron and Azonia wanted to save the surviving Zentraedi from the Robotech Masters' revenge. As they expected the Masters to win (and in fact it nearly happened), that meant either the destruction of Mankind's military capability or the capture of the Protoculture Matrix.
  • T.R. Edwards and Anatole Leonard wanted a strong and independent Humanity. To them that meant taking over the world and kill every alien who could pose a threat.
  • In spite of what they had done in the past, by the time they show up the Masters wanted to save their race and to defeat the Invid. That recovering the Protoculture Matrix and rebuilding the Tirolian Empire, and if they had to kill Earth's population... Well, they didn't fire first, and they did give them a chance to surrender and/or leave the planet.
  • The Invid Regent's main goal was to recover the Protoculture Matrix and the Flower of Life and save the Invid. His means to that are a mere consequence that by now he's gone crazy.
  • The Invid Regess too wanted the Protoculture Matrix and the Flower of Life, and once she got them she remained on Earth and occupied the planet because that was were the Flower was. And she treated the Humans well, as long as they didn't actively fight her children.
• Wham Episode: Episode 18, "Farewell, Big Brother". Goddamn pineapple salad!
  • The canon comic book miniseries "To the Stars" reveals that T.R. Edwards and Anatole Leonard were members of the Anti-Unification League. While Edwards' membership doesn't surprise anyone, Leonard's comes out of the blue and changes everything about The Masters saga.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Due to the time skip, the casts of both The Macross Saga and The Masters get shuffled out with little to no closure.
  • The gang that kidnapped Lunk's friend run away from an Invid patrol and cower inside their shack after their bikes are blown to bits. The last we see of them is the boss covering up his own fear. That the Invid blew up their firepower could be a good or bad thing as the owner of the local club claims this gang of blood thirsty bullies are the closest thing the town has to 'local authorities.'
  • The Triumviroid was a floating AI controlled attack robot created by the Robotech Masters meant to phase out the Bioroid pilots praised as 'functioning as perfectly as ourselves' by the Masters, and after its showing in one scene, it never appears in the show again except in some vague background shots (Justified in the Expanded Universe, where it's explained they proved to be gas guzzlers, and the modifying of the Masters' production lines would be far more trouble than for producing the Invid Fighter).
  • The "protoculture wraiths" appear on the Robotech Masters' view screen when they're first taking a peek at the ruins of the SDF-1. The Robotech Masters wonder what is up with them, and they're never seen, nor brought up, again. (The McKinney novelization regularly invoked them to justify why the Masters couldn't find the Matrix on their sensors, and they're shown as the reason the final explosion of the mothership only scatters the Flower Of Life across the planet.)
  • Lynn Jason shows up in the early episodes as as a member of Mingmei's family... but vanishes after the first few episodes.
• What the Hell, Hero?: When a disillusioned Scott angrily retorts to little Anne's optimistic boast about becoming a miniature army with their new firepower, that they'll all ending up like "this!" (bangs against a hulk of a destroyed Point K wreck). Anne breaks down in tears. Lunk is not pleased and demands he stands up.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Lancer/Yellow Dancer.
• Who Would Want to Watch Us?: Rand talks about writing his autobiography, Rook tells him he's at the beginning of his life, not the end. Rand says he's just had some amazing adventures that people will want to read about. Rook says he's cute but dumb. Taken to its natural conclusion with the Robotech novels, which include POV narratives from Rand.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: The Robotech Masters debate this when they have the 15th Squadron at their mercy, one suggests reprocessing them into clones, while his brother remarks the chosen course of action to simply execute them and be done with them. If Musica didn't do the unthinkable and help them escape they'd have been dead.
• Women Are Wiser: Thade and Corg are obedient toward the Regess and hateful towards humanity. Sera and Ariel, on the other hand, prove to have no stomach for genocide.
• Worst Aid: Rand rightfully warns Scott NOT to try and pull the leeches off Anne and Rook, but then uses the old cigarette and apply heat trick to make them fall off. This will actually make the leech vomit as it falls off, and risk infection.
• You Are in Command Now: Lancer silently slips into the role of leader while Scott is emotionally shut down at the ruins of Point K, ordering the savage of gear and supplies. He seamlessly steps aside when Scotts snaps out of it.
• You Are Number 6: Rank and file Invid seem to be given names only once they've reached a certain level of prestige. When Rand and Anne infiltrate an Robotech fortress converted into an Invid hive, they overhear the Regess referring to an Invid drone as Nine-X-Nineteen.
• You Are What You Hate:
  • The Regent points out that the Regess' 'evolved' form looks suspiciously like one of Zor's species. The Regent ironically, begins to adopt the Robotech Masters' militant attitude. T.R. Edwards in the novelization notes that the Regent's personal chambers feel like a movie set, set up in imitation of something else.
  • Marlene/Ariel points out to her fellow Invid they're delivering the exact same evil onto humanity that was delivered onto the Invid when their own home world was stolen from them. It takes a while for it to sink in.
  • The Regess implies this is humanity fate as they've absorbed traits from the Zentradi and Robotech Masters. Scott is fixated on his duty and mission... much like a Zentradi. She vaporizers some of the RDF fleet on her way out as her way of rejecting humans becoming a second group of Robotech Masters.
• You Need to Get Laid: Claudia Grant is constantly telling Lisa Hayes this in one way or another. The Bridge Bunnies agree with Claudia.

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