Robotech/YMMV


 * Fair for Its Day: Yeah, they changed the names. Yeah the voice acting is sub-par by 21st century standards. Yeah, they took three unrelated series and spliced them together for the sake of a TV deal. But they left many of the more mature story elements (such as character death) intact along with an arc-driven story line, and as stated before, the only real changes to the Macross story come at the very end when they are fitting it together with the other shows. Considering this was The Eighties this was groundbreaking.
 * Fan Myopia: A large number of fans are still hung up on the misconception that the Macross Saga characters (Rick, Lisa, Max, ect) are the central main characters of the entire saga. Many want The Sentinels to be finally animated in its entirety. Because the original series ended with the unknown fate of Admiral Rick Hunter, they also demand closure for those characters. There is heavy debate over whether Admiral Hunter should return to lead one last great battle and die heroically, or lead one last great battle and retire to live with Lisa and his new family happily ever after. Harmony Gold on the other hand, is expressing more interest in distancing Robotech (wisely) from Macross. Also, other fans simply feel that, regardless of their final fate, Rick Hunter and the rest of the Macross characters have already told their story and would prefer Robotech to move forward.
 * Fanon Discontinuity: Some of the Robotech fandom to refuses to acknowledge the Expanded Universe material.
 * And now, officially, Harmony Gold does, too.
 * Gannon Banned: Putting aside the whole Macross adaptation/licensing issue, do not treat the Jack McKinney novelizations as canon unless you itch for a flamewar. Especially "The Shapings" or "Thinking Caps".
 * Not even Palladium's Tabletop RPG is safe. "Nose Lasers."
 * Gateway Series: An early wave of anime fans came from the show.
 * Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Robotech was really popular in China [where it's known as Taikong Baolei (Space Fortress)] along with the Transformers.
 * Also, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross and Genesis Climber Mospeada are much better known in America (due to Robotech) than in Japan (where they are very obscure).
 * Hate Dumb: People are extremely bitter about the legal troubles Harmony Gold created with Macross, blaming them--and Carl Macek, in particular--for blocking any Macross series in the U.S. (nevermind the fact that Macross 7 and Macross Frontier are hidden in a fortress of red tape for the music, that Super Dimension Fortress Macross was released in the U.S. by ADV Films, and Macross Plus was also released in the U.S.) On the other hand Tokyo Pop had already licensed Haruhiko Mikimoto's Macross7 Trash manga from Big West but didn't release it because Harmony Gold wanted its share which Big West naturally didn't accept and Harmony Gold has trademarked Macross name UN Spacy logo in several western countries which would prevent licensing of even Macross Zero without them interfering. (Also, several years ago Harmony Gold threatened Asian-toy importers with legal action unless they stopped importing and selling any Macross-related toys from Japan.) Some fans are so irritated that they even refused to buy the ADV license of Macross, because that meant supporting Harmony Gold, seeing as ADV had to pay them a check to use Macross. And it only got worse once Carl Macek passed away....
 * Like You Would Really Do It: Part of what make the series stand out so much in the 1980s. For instance, you see Roy Fokker seriously wounded and you'd think they pull some crude last minute save, they kill him off for real. In the very next episode, you'd think that they would never do that again, they suddenly kill off Ben Dixon too. Finally, when the Zentraedi fleet are charging up their main guns to bombard Earth, you'll have been still convinced that the producers would never show them actually destroying the planet, they do!, reducing the planetary human population from billions to 50,000 in seconds. For a 1980s kid accustomed to the indigenous content limits watching this, this series was as shocking as it was unpredictable!
 * Macekre: The Trope Namer, but oddly, showing that Tropes Are Not Bad.
 * Newer Than They Think (with regards to the Broken Base: When the show first debuted, it was actually quite popular with the Science Fiction crowd as well as the fledgling American Anime community at the time.
 * Seinfeld Is Unfunny: The main reason this show does not get all much respect these days. See Fair for Its Day and Dude, Where's My Respect? for details.
 * The Scrappy: Minmei (childish attitude, adored by everybody in the series, somewhat ditzy, complaints about her voice/singing). Honorable mention goes to Lynn Kyle (arrogant Jerkass who complains about everything anyone even slightly associated with the military) and Dana Sterling (childish attitude, thoughtless, spoiled).
 * They Changed It, Now It Sucks: The Shadow Chronicles comes in for a special dose of fan hatred due to the changes it made to its retelling of the original segments of the TV series with which it overlapped. Most notably, several major characters present in the TV series version were cut from the movie's reenactment of an important scene so as not to confuse new viewers with these other characters they didn't know and wouldn't have the chance to meet in the rest of the movie. (Harmony Gold representatives somewhat disingenuously claimed those other characters were still there, just outside of camera view. Yeah, as if that makes the scene any more coherent.)
 * A number of other problems with Shadow Chronicles can be laid at the feet of not wanting to confuse a new audience who had not seen the original series. No mention is made of the Zentraedi or Robotech Masters (even the half-Zentraedi character is referred to as "half-alien"; I suppose which half is "alien" depends on which planet she's currently on) or a number of other elements that are important to the backstory but don't play any role in the current movie. The result is that dialogue often seems stilted and omissions make little sense.
 * In their defense, they did not want to spend too much time getting new viewers up to speed. Marcus's monologue near the beginning actually summed up the three sagas to that point in just a few lines.
 * Ugly Cute: Exedore and Rico.