I watched the English version of ADV Films translation of this. So parts of it may be different from the Japanese version.<br /><br />Plot Summary: The story centers around Hikaru, a young air show pilot. He is invited to attend the launching of the Macross, a restored alien space battleship that crashed onto Earth by his friend Roy Focker. But all hell breaks loose when the ship's original systems become active and accidentally fire upon and destroy ships of an alien fleet. War breaks out and Hikaru becomes a military pilot.<br /><br />The story explores the theme of war and what it means to the characters of the story. As events of the story occur, the characters begin to doubt their views/lifestyles that happened during the war and want to change society/themselves to be happier from it. Most prevalent of this is the love triangle that Hikaru haves with the two main female characters, the military officer Misa Hayase and Chinese-Japanese waitress turned music pop sensation Lynn Minmay. His conflict with his views towards war will ultimately decide which of the women he chooses.<br /><br />The character designs and mechs are great and beautiful despite the age of the anime. Vocal music of Makoto Fujiwara (opening and ending songs) and Mari Iijima (singer/voice actress of Lynn Minmay) perfectly reflects the tone of story, and it is great to listen to.<br /><br />However Macross does not come without its problems. The story lays the cheese factor heavily sometimes such as the characters going gaga over the "Power of Song" that either makes you laugh if how a society canonly united/saved through music of one girl (literally!), or drives you crazy with the (Minmay) songs playing over and over again. Producers try to tone down the "Power of Song" theme with the Rebuilding Earth arc of the story and making it less effective to enemies that are constanly exposed to it. <br /><br />However the producers do nothing to fix the real effect the war causes on the human population. Sure the city inside the Macross,the Earth gets destroyed, and death of some character etc reflects that war isn't great and deadly but everything is made peachy again with everything (environment and characters) nice, clean, happy go lucky and perfect again in the next episode. I know the producers are trying to keep the story upbeat butit gets stupid and repeative how they have to enforce the "happy" factor with a physical environment that would sent most of us (and the characters) to the loony bid.<br /><br />Overall Macross is a good story. It is worth watching