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Nightmare Fuel / Super Dimension Fortress Macross

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  • It's hard not to be traumatized by the part where the whole Zentraedi Main Fleet just pops up out of nowhere and immediately showers the Earth with their ships' cannons before the defense forces even gets to put up a fight. And that particular scene depicts a soldier's gallant but futile attempt to shield a little girl from the global destruction....
    • And the worst part comes from Word of God: there are other Zentraedi Main Fleets out there,note  each just as numerous as that one. Meaning this could happen again and again... And, in the alternate continuity of Macross II, they did-five times before the series happened.
    • Macross 7 makes this even worse by revealing it was a perfectly rational decision based on faulty data: so many Zentraedi second-guessing themselves and even defecting because of a song and cultural contamination, plus Vrlitwhai entering peace negotiations without permission, looked awfully like a Protodeviln infestation in the making, and wiping out all life on Earth and destroying the defecting fleet was the only way the Zentraedi knew to protect the universe from the monster. The Grand Cannon firing (see below) and the Minmay Attack distracting much of the fleet would have only reinforced the impression.
  • Almost every time the Macross fires its main guns, you can rest assured that Zentraedi are probably going to die en masse and screaming. It's so powerful that in the first case we see it cut across the crust of the Earth like someone set a blowtorch on a model globe, with the power to cut landmasses in half, and still precisely hit its target dead-on.
    • The Zentraedi have tens of thousands of ships with the same weapon. This only comes up when they bomb Earth into rubbles, as before that they had no reason to do it.
    • The Grand Cannon is effectively the same weapon, only powered by Earth's geomagnetic field and much larger. How larger? The one shot it managed to fire deleted hundreds of thousands of Zentraedi ships.
  • When Captain Global decides to have the Macross transform into its battle form in Episode 5, completely devastating the city the civilians had just managed to construct within it. The civilians are given next to no warning and the useless advice to hold onto something heavy while whole sections of their habitat shift and are torn apart. At least one section of the hull opens, causing blast winds strong enough to suck out cars into space and when that hole is sealed by an emergency hatch, said hatch lowers in front of several homes sealing them outside and does not open up again after the battle is done. How many people died there?

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