YMMV / Robotech II: The Sentinels

• Crosses the Line Twice: T.R. Edwards' defense of Optera is so ludicrous that is starts out as stupid, evolves into hilarious, and ends up just being awesome. Edwards and the Regent think they aren't going to be able to stop the Sentinels, but the Regent reveals the secret weapon that his wife left behind: an entire generation of a new mutation of Invid drones with enhanced abilities. Edwards decides to use the opportunity to screw with Rick and Lisa by giving them all the appearance of heroes of the First Robotech War (Gloval, Roy Fokker (to especially screw with Rick) and one that looks like Lisa but has twin laser cannons for breasts). When the Sentinels approach Optera he patterns the drones' deployment on the enemy waves in Galaga.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The series ends with Lisa, Rick and Minmei folding for Earth in the SDF-3, but it never arrives. Although Scott made it his mission to find them, they never return to their own time. According to Word of God in Macross the SDF-2 disappears (along with Misa, Hikaru and Minmay) and is never found.^note Considering that the Macross creators had some involvement with the production of The Sentinels that may not be a coincidence.
  • Max, Miriya and the rest of the Sentinels truck around the galaxy in the SDF-7. Ten years later Max and Milia would truck around the galaxy in the Macross 7.^note It should be noted that the Macross 7 is not the SDF-7, it isn't even the Megaroad-7.
• Narm: Rick and Lisa's wedding may also have some of this going for it when one remembers all the crap he pulled on her.
• Older Than They Think: The Haydenites are the main villains of Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles, but the concept that the they were planning to step in and fill the power vacuum caused by the defeat of the Invid dates back all the way to some of the epigraphs in the Rubicon novel, which speculates that the Sentinel alliance would fall apart once the Invid were gone and they would start fighting each other. (There is also a part early on in the series where Exedore is examining damaged Inorganics and notes that they are built with a technology he doesn't recognize, which suggests they weren't built by the Invid.)
• Writer Revolt: Brian Daley and James Luceno felt free to ignore the scripts while novelizing the series; since they were novelizing a canceled series, who would know the difference? Notable differences include:
  • Sue Graham and Scott Bernard were supposed to have fairly large supporting roles in the series. Graham being a Rita Skeeter-like pest to the heroes, and Scott being Lang's godson and assistant. They each get about one scene in the novelization.
  • A disguised Lynn Kyle was supposed to show up multiple times in the background as a minor REF soldier who does significant things, before revealing his identity in an attempt to save Minmei. The only one of these appearances that's in the novelization is as a bartender on the SDF-3 who turns on the ship's intercom when Minmei is singing a lonely rendition of We Will Win when the Sentinels leave the Tirol system.
  • There was originally supposed to be a year-long campaign to retake Praxis that was told in broad strokes over the course of five episodes. In the book the Sentinels are stranded on a deserted Praxis when their ship is destroyed, and spend several months figuring out a way to escape before the planet is destroyed (The Regis having doomed the planet by her Genesis Pit experiments).
  • In the novels Breetai is returned to giant size to head up the mining effort on Fantoma, he also gets a girlfriend. In the scripts he doesn't do much for most of the series, until...
  • Breetai was unceremoniously killed by T.R. Edwards during his coup. In the novelization he dies in the skies above Optera fighting the Regent, who is his oldest enemy. (This actually caused a Plot Hole since Breetai had been returned to giant size, which means that he could've crushed the Regent in one of his hands.)
  • Cabell does not die in the novelizations, but in the series had a dramatic death and used his last words to inform Rem that he was a clone of Zor. In the novelization Rem figures it out on his own and confronts Cabell about it.
  • T.R. Edwards doesn't kill the Regent, and doesn't take over his exoskeleton. He does however end up controlling the Invid. He sets up an elaborate defense of Optera, based on the enemy waves in Galaga, using some specially-evolved Invid drones that the Regis left behind which are modified to look like heroes of the First Robotech War.
  • The reason for the SDF-3 not returning to Earth right away is different. In the novelizations half of the Fold Drives are destroyed during the fight with the Invid. In the series the fold drives were repurposed from Breetai's flagship and were never intended to fold a ship as heavy as the SDF-3, so they burn out after they arrive (which may explain why they lost five years during the fold.) Lang's attempts to augment them to handle the extra weight used materials from Earth which couldn't handle the job. Therefore they need to mine monopole ore from Fantoma, and experimentally determine how to build Fold Engines capable of working on the SDF-3. This explains why they started building prototypes of other fortress designs (including the SDF-4 through SDF-7); this really doesn't make sense in the novelization and seems to be just be an excuse for the Sentinels to get an SDF of their own.
  • The liberation of Haydon-IV would involve our heroes learning how to use actual magic. They also later use their magic to defeat an actual curse that is keeping Peryton trapped in a single day of an endless war. Luceno and Daley decided to go with Clarke's Third Law instead: their technology is just so advanced that it appears to be magic.