I like idol shows. Unironically. I'm as much as a music enjoyer as I am an anime enjoyer, so idol shows really strike this spot for me. During my venture on osu! and the likes, seeing Macross Delta's music has very much piqued my interest in the series, just by how many bangers there are, but I put off watching it for suuuuuuuch a long time. Fast forward a few years, I pulled it to my media server's hard drive, and seeing that we needed to free up some space, I decided to go and watch it to see how the show truly is outside of the songs. And I didn't expect myself to be pulled in So. Damn. Hard.

TL;DR, and if you wanted to avoid spoilers: 7.5/10, watch it if you have a soft spot for idol-esque shows like me, you wanna listen to absolute bangers being inserted within a show, or you're interested in the Macross franchise as a whole.

Potential wasted on a few characters, but overall well developed. Art was amazing for a 2016 production, maybe even better than currently airing shows. Music is absolutely amazing, I cannot recommend their songs enough.

Spoilers warning! You have been warned.

Let's start with the characters! I like Freyja. She is probably the most likable idol-anime-main-character to date for me, and I'm not usually one to really just go for the main girl in an idol anime. Her character development within the show is amazing, especially with the situations that she's being put in, being a Windermerean, choosing to side with the Earthlings and Walküre during a war against Windermere.

Kaname is probably one of my favorite characters to see as well. She's a very strong person, being motivated instead of being depressed from Mikumo's appearance replacing her role as the center of Walküre. Hers and Messer's joint arc really developed their characters well in my opinion, but at the same time I wished Messer's character and relationships were explored more within the show.

Mirage was the woman I rooted for within the Hayate - Freyja - Mirage love triangle, but as track records showed, every woman I root for lost their romance arcs </3 It's cute to see Freyja and Hayate's relationship develop, but at the same time it felt like Mirage barely touched the surface of her feelings towards Hayate. _{I'm so heartbroken my tall redhead elf woman lost…}

The rest of the characters felt like… recurring background characters that you see here and there, funnily enough. It doesn't feel like they play a large enough role during the story and you barely remember the names and faces of them. It feels like a lot of wasted potential, especially during Messer's (and later on Hayate's) duels against Keith, where they often made it just 1-on-1 fights and very heavily focused on them. Even the two Walküre members, Makina and Reina, felt like they were just there to be the harmony for Freyja and Mikumo during songs.

In terms of story, I'm unsure how much they have Zettai Live!!!!! in mind while writing the original script for the TV show, but how it ended felt really… incomplete. The literal conflict that was happening within the show didn't get resolved towards the end, and it gives you this feeling of being left hanging.

The music is definitely where Macross Delta shines the most. The insert songs are bangers by themselves, and how they incorporated them into the show is insane too. You often see idol-esque shows just having the audio recorded and played during the episodes, but certain situations really made it feel like the Walküre members are truly live on stage. Their vocals are re-recorded to make you really hear the situation they're in, like how they mixed in Makina's weak singing voice trying to harmonize with her group after taking a sniper shot to protect Freyja, or their voices straining as they are trying to move around while being attacked by the Aerial Knights.

Honestly, Macross Delta's art stands very well against a lot of anime, in my opinion. They don't often have weird frames where the characters are insanely lowres, the fights are choreographed really nicely, the characters are very well done too.

Generally, it was a very enjoyable experience. I was pretty hooked in for the 26 episodes and I am one to have a short attention span. So there's that, now GO WATCH IT!