It's easy to mock Robotech for its cheesy Eightiesness, but I'm genuinely impressed by how well-crafted the series' story structure is. Even though it was made by surgically stitching three entirely unrelated anime series together, the artificial uber-arc holds together surprisingly well, as humanity deals with each threat to its existence only to discover an even greater threat lurking behind it. Just like real life, but with worse dialogue.
Robotech In Thirty Seconds (not with bunnies):Humans: An alien ship has crashed on our planet! Let's reverse-engineer this protoculture stuff we found inside and develop Robotechnology!
Zentraedi: Hey! That's our protoculture!
(war war battle battle death tragedy courage hope peace)
Humans: We are now at peace!
Zentraedi: But we were only the grunts. Our masters are coming now.
Robotech Masters: Hey! That's our protoculture!
(war war battle battle death tragedy courage hope peace)
Humans: We are now, more or less, at peace! For the moment!
Robotech Masters: But we stole the protoculture from another species! The Invid are coming now!
Invid: Hey! That's our protoculture!
(war war battle battle death tragedy courage hope peace)
Humans: Ha! Our new alien allies have given us superior weaponry!
Invid: But those are our ancient enemies who hate all protoculture! Run away!
Humans: Um, why do all our new weapons have built-in remote-controlled self-destruct sequences?
Children Of The Shadow: Hahahahaha! Suckers!
Humans: Ah, fuck.
(war war battle battle death tragedy courage hope cliffhanger)
Ahh yes, the eternal joys of Robotech and its superior writing styles :P
I’d like to say that we’ve come a long way, but I just spent a good half an hour watching the newest Yu-Gi-Oh cartoon (don’t ask why) and … well… yeah.