Hmm...and of course, all of this is strictly IMHO.
I was too young to watch Robotech when it was on TV (and in any case, it didn't play on TV in the country where I am originally from, as far as i know). I am not even sure I was around then
When I started watching anime, I was in the US and I never got around to watching Macross because I had no access to subbed Macross and I heard all kinds of horrible things about Robotech.
I watched Macross Plus when it came out and was not impressed, to me it seemed like usual basic generic anime (with above average budget). Also watched Macross II and once again, thought it was your usual generic sci-fi stuff. This kinda put me off anything Macross related for a while. I watched first episode of Macross Zero when it came out and while it looked better than Plus and II, it wasn't enough to hold my interest.
I downloaded Frontier and haven't touched it for a while, then eventually when I had nothing to watch, I started watching it and I thought it was pretty good. Granted, it suffers from a ton of stereotypes and cliches that are there because these stereotypes and cliches are what a large portion of otaku population really wants (same old s**t with slightly different tasting sauce). 99% of anime is like that, anyway, so you try to ignore it and see if there is enough good stuff in the show to justify watching it.
In any case, I liked Frontier well enough to go back and give my saved episodes of Macross Zero a try and actually it turned out much better than I expected.
I tried Macross 7 but I couldn't stomach more than 4 episodes.
And finally a month ago I bought the original Macross AD Vision DVDs from various online stores (no single store carried them all). I didn't have very high expectations, in fact I expected to see something old and cheesy beyound belief.
I was very surprised. True, animation is, ahem, dated, but still quite passable and the art itself is good. Story and characters are as good if not better than any modern stuff out there. Sure, you can find a million plot holes, bad science and inconsistencies, but you can nit pick pretty much any show to death if you want, the bottom line is: is it entertaining despite its flaws, and I thought it was certainly at least as good as Frontier. What impressed me the most about the original Macross is how well it aged and how watchable it is despite it being a 30 year old show. Most anime from that time looks laughably bad today.
So, if you were to ask me, which Macross do you like the best, I would say that it's a tie between Frontier and the original series, and I just finished watching the original for the first time a few days ago and I went in with low expectations, to boot.
