Robotech Remembrances: Southern Cross

I resolved that in 2009, I would take the time I put towards rewatching anime series (always in part to reassure myself I'm not so completely mastered by the large quantity of DVDs I buy that I never get back to anything, thus defeating a purpose of buying rather than at least trying to rent them) and return to the series put together to make Robotech. After viewing Macross at the beginning of the year, deciding to rewatch the Megazone 23 OVAs (which have a more or less tangential connection to Robotech as most know it) seemed to open up a fair-sized pause in my project. Now, though, I've once again seen the anime series put in the middle of Robotech, but also the one most dismissed in a breath both inside and outside that composite series, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross... and yet, both even before starting into that specific anime again and in the process of watching it, I kept thinking that I'm at least interested in Southern Cross "more than I'm supposed to," and at times contrasting that to other mecha anime series from the early 1980s that receive wide praise but, when I have seen them, I've wound up thinking "I'm supposed to like them more..." Maybe it's just a case of "sympathy for a frequent target" carried to bizarre lengths, as opposed to heaps of praise making me elevate my standards in some subconscious way until nothing can meet them. In any case, I can identify "flaws" in Southern Cross, and yet in acknowledging them they don't seem to bother me as much any more; they're just something to be thought about.
( Some increasingly disconnected reflections ahead )