Tear Jerker / Macross: Do You Remember Love?

• Misa and Hikaru realizing that the devastated planet they're marooned on is actually Earth.
  • Misa had Hikaru bring her to Alaska Base, where her father was. When they only found pools of lava she reached the Despair Event Horizon.
• The backstory of the Protoculture colony of Altira: its builders were people who refused the battle between genders that had caused the war between Zentraedi and Meltrandi and had seeked refuge on Earth, and temporarily left to protect the planet when the war arrived in the Sol system... But they never returned, and the city remained underwater for 20,000 years until the Zentraedi arrived and the computer mistook them for the returning colonists.
• When Hikaru and Misa return to the Macross, Claudia asks them about Roy, and if he died fighting. They answer yes, and she looks at them with both sadness and a little bit of relief (knowing his death wasn't senseless) and merely says "Thank you." Cue waterworks.
• The resolution of the love triangle. Especially because of how Minmay finds out she's too late.
• Minmay singing "Ai Oboete Imasuka" (aka "Do You Remember Love?"), the Zentradi realizing there's more in life than just being soldiers and fighting, and then Breetai and Exedol allying with the Macross to destroy Bodolza. And the scene finishes with Zentradi, Meltrandi, and everyone else crying out loud when the song is over. It's both epic and sad, in many ways, to think that they had been fighting for such a long time, and it all ended in such a fast way, after that much suffering and devastation. In the Exedol and Breetai exchange that follows, it's implied that the universe is filled with the grief of Zentradi and Meltrandi fighting each other forever, and they glimpse a ray of hope with Minmay's song.
  • The song itself is heart touching, not just because of the deep sincerity and feelings it transmits, but also because of its backstory. That song could very well be thought to be legendary, considering that it was so popular that even eons afterwards in one extreme of the universe, Bodolza found the melody, and in the other extreme Hikaru and Misa found the lyrics. Both pieces were put together after such a long time to be sung by Minmay in humanity's darkest hour.