Vu en DVD (merci à Déclic, et aux fonds de tiroir de Black Box)
Un mélange original de drame à base de science-fiction et de soap romantique capable par moments de passer efficacement du léger au sérieux.
La série divague beaucoup en plusieurs occasions alors que les dessins (voire l'animation) montrent une importante baisse de qualité à de très grandes reprises, les sommets étant bien moins souvent atteints (probablement le seul fait du chara-designer prenant le siège de directeur de l'animation).
The love triangle aspect was overall fine but some things sounded odd, like Claudia being hell bent on patching her friend with the young pilot like she was talking on behalf of the creators. Its conclusion's logic is symptomatic of how the makers cornered themselves with Minmei. Also, I don't think the japanese audience back then believed Minmei was the heroin (and not the third wheel she was) for nothing, they failed to establish rapidly Hayase as the one.
The approach of the idol system was pretty good even if it wasn't more focused on: Minmei is a "normal/common girl" who will make a break out thanks to her beauty first then be made a singer rapidly becoming a phenomenon. It meshed strangely well with this kind of Lili Marlene war story the show seemed to go for: a little restaurant girl in wartime who sings for the soldiers (among others) then get to appear in a movie etc. Too bad the soldier love wasn't fully used.
A side problem would be the obvious plot elements abandoned over the course of the show: the famous gravity well/black hole found inside the Macross was never exploited (thank God, we escaped the perverted underwears lover and dumb commandant defecting to the Zentradi and got Global instead), or the looming menace of the Supervision Army who was clearly thought as a major actor but ended up as an absent plot device triggering the whole story (that's fine, though) and probably some others.
Score: 7.5/10
Last word: I'm glad Kawamori wasn't free to do whatever he wanted or this would have been some idiotic mess more often than not rather than this memorable series who still has its share of negative points.