Strictly speaking, it wasn't the "original Japanese" I was watching this time around (that was released on DVD a few years ago now), but a new, more faithful English adaptation of it. Still, I'm glad that somebody found this post interesting.

I suppose I was a little too young to even hear about Star Blazers until well after the fact, although I do know it was a formative experience for a good number of people. I also know that a lot of Robotech fans and watchers weren't a big fan of Reba West's Minmei: some point to the performance, some to certain bits of rewriting, some to that she didn't have as many songs as in the original. The original Minmay, on the other hand, was very popular. (One particular opinionated Robotech fan declared there weren't as many differences between the two characters as everyone else thought, just that characters like her are more acceptable to the Japanese mindset... but I'm not absolutely sure I agree with everything he's ever said.) The differences in character may make the "love triangle" a bit different between the two shows... one difference I was sort of surprised to see between Robotech and Macross was that Robotech's narrator, who has a much greater role than Macross's, seems to make Rick Hunter and Lisa Hayes's interest in each other explicit much earlier than it seemed for Hikaru Ichijo and Misa Hayase in Macross.