All I can say is thank god I grew up with this series and not the cookie cutter factory processed anime of today. Real human characters who act not in a stylistic detached way but a flawed and human way, they can excel to our greatest dreams like Roy Fokker's claims of shooting down 108 planes, or fail like Rick Hunter's fumbling and foolish self confidence at times. If you remember the time we kids of the 1980's had very little of epic stories that had continuity to follow, most shows were meant to sell a toy line not express the joy, beauty, triumph and sadness and loss that a life of a human on planet earth can entail. Robotech comes pretty dang close to surpassing literature, art and film in the attempt and analyzing the human attempt at greatness thru hard times such as war. As this episode begins years after a world war three scenario only ended by an alien crash landing. Yeah, and it has some pretty cool robots too.