Awesome moments in Super Dimension Fortress Macross. See here for moments from the film version.
- Typical reaction upon first seeing the Daedalus Attack: "Dude, did the Macross just punch a battleship in the face?" Considering that the arms of the SDF-1 are spaceships, it's literally punching battleships with battleships.
- Interestingly, we know that Vrlitwhai and Exedore had that same reaction. Followed by summoning reinforcements.
- Misa gets her tactical moment, coinciding with the Macross' super robot moment in Ep 06 "Daedalus Attack". After the main gun fails to fire due to the interference from the pin-point barrier system, Misa gets the pin-points to concentrate on the bow of the Daedalus (right arm) and punch through the bow of Zeril's battleship. The Daedalus opens up and all 587(!!!) Destroids open fire into the innards of Zeril's ship. The battleship literally begins swelling up before exploding. No other anime has this and no other should.
- Captain Global shutting Kaifun up in episode 26 without even raising his voice
- Hikaru's moment comes during the epic
"Force of Arms""Love Slips Away" episode, which starts with the near-destruction of Earth and ends with the destruction of the main Zentradi fleet. While his Valkyrie disintegrates, he returns to Earth to rescue Misa.- And don't forget his moment in "Big Escape," when he and Misa are surprised by a Zentradi in an armory. He takes a kick in the face from a 40-foot giant into a rack of huge rifles (which promptly collapse on him) and Misa is captured, yet he manages to dig his way out, haul a rifle five times his size into position, and score a perfect headshot.
- Breetai gets thrown into space in the episode where Hikaru boards his ship. Breetai manages to walk across the ship to another airlock and then beat down two Valkyries with a pipe.
- A UN Spacy Zentradi infiltrator soldier makes a fake distress call to Kamjin and gets his cigarette lit up by allowing a Valkyrie fire his assault rifle in order to use the muzzle flash as light.
- Right before that we have Kaifun, taken hostage by Kamjin, calling him a coward who only fights because he's too scared of change and peace to his face.
- How does Kamjin respond to the fake distress call? He leads a group of battlepod riding on top of a captured Destroid Monster.
- For all of her undeserved fame as The Obstructive Love Interest, Minmei actually earns one that crosses into Heartwarming Moment when she does acknowledge in the end that Misa and Hikaru are in love, and very gracefully and calmly wishes them well... while acting way more mature than the whiny fans.
- The first, and last, stand of the Grand Cannon lives up to its name even if it was to be useless in the long run. The novelization makes it a little more delicious by stating that the Zentradi never lost so many ships so quickly.
- Even better, that one shot was not useless: the loss of so many ships, and the immense shock, is what allowed the Macross' charge against the Zentraedi home base to happen and be successful, keeping them distracted long enough for the Macross and its allies to set up their attack and, once the initial effect of the culture attack waned, leaving them without enough ships in position to stop it.
- The Destroid Monster. Infamous for the fact it's one of the biggest robots in the UN Spacy's arsenal, having effectively battleship guns on a giant robot.
- Even more terrifying is it's successor, the New UN Spacy's König Monster. You see a shuttlecraft flying down towards the battlefield with a fighter escort. Not too much of a problem... until the cargo area of the shuttle opens up and reveals that they turned one of the most terrifying weapons of the UN Spacy into a variable geometry craft.
- Maximilian Jenius' first battle. When Kakizaki fails to live up to his boasts and has to be rescued by Hikaru, the two lose track of the more modest Max. They find him destroying battlepods left and right with deadly ease.
- It should be noted that the above battle was Max's first ever combat mission, and yet he downed nearly twice the number of enemies as his commanding officer, series protagonist Hikaru Ichijo.
- Let's not forget that in-universe, Max is the first person to marry a hot alien babe, and had seven(!) daughters with her by the start of Macross 7.
- The way he proposed to said wife also counts, she attacks him with a knife and Max disarms her and then asks her to marry him.
- Don't forget their marriage either. Remember the scene at high-profile marriages where a line of guys cross their swords above the couple? Macross does it with Valkyries in Battroid mode crossing their guns' muzzle flashes. And don't forget about the Macross-shaped cake either.
- Oh, and the jaw-dropping dogfight with Milia (the hot alien babe mentioned above). Max comes out on top, proving that by beating the best Zentradi fighter pilot, he's technically the best pilot in all the Macross universe.
- This is more of a Fridge Logic CMoA, but the time Max managed to use his Valkyrie to mug a Zentraedi guard and steal his uniform. The Robotech novelization devotes an entire Encyclopedia Exposita Epigraph to lampshading exactly how many impossible things this involved, and just how awesome that was. And Max Sterling had a mental interface to help outnote — Max Jenius had to improvise all of this with manual controls clearly not designed for this kind of thing.
- Really, just about anything Max does qualifies for this page. After all, he isn't called Maximilian THE AWESOME Jenius for nothing. He is a genius, after all.
