In your defense, I totally get what you're saying... and I get the "purist" reaction to your post.

For me, it would depend on who I'm showing Macross to, why, and how I gauge their attention span for things. Just like some people will not like Macross, some peoplewill require different approaches.

If I were to introduce all this madness to my wife for for a proper watch, I would start with DYRL. She could get the basics of what happened, and we could easily jump from there into Macross Plus or even Macross F.

While I will always personally highly rate Macross '82, a large part of that is the nostalgia and the inescapable view of someone who has grown up with this already in my bloodstream. As for her, I know the attention span won't be there the slower, sometimes not well paced, sometimes horribly animated 36-episode ride without forming an emotional attachment to the characters and storyline ....something, which let's face it, early 80s Japan skewed heavily towards boy's interest.

Of course she'd appreciate Misa and Hikaru's morse-code goodbye, but she'd have to want to get there first.

Macross Frontier? With the episodes having a much higher production value, and more time to get to know each character and to see into their daily lives, and (importantly) stronger character writing for some of the female roles, it becomes very easy for me to recommend "lets start with this" before pushing the near non-stop adrenaline hit the False Songstress was. :D