Fun fact about Macross: all the movies, tv series, games, and such? They're the in-setting dramatizations of the in-setting events! In other words, if you were actually in the Macross universe and you felt like watching the dramatized retelling of Space War 1, then you'd be watching the very same show you would here! (That being fist series, Super Dimensional Fortress Macross.)

Yeah, it's meta as all hell, almost to the point of being trippy. But it sure gave them a heck of a lot of wiggle room for creative license, though, and explains very much why the visual style shifts so much from one series/movie/game to another. (The utter outlandishness of the series, Macross 7, makes soooo much more sense in this context.)