[magnuskn]

Originally Posted by reelyanoob

This is Macross, do standards of real-world human behaviour outweigh major plot points? With the earring, as I said to Wisteria, Alto get's to fly around a whole planet every day listening to their singing, while holding onto a symbolic memento of his Kobuki past.

It's "Kabuki". And while Macross certainly is about music breaching the distance between different people, it is also about people interacting with each other, bridging their distance in the normal manner as we normal humans do. What defined the relationship between Sheryl and Alto and Ranka was almost in its entirety how they interacted with each other, not that they go on extravaganzas on a higher plane of music.

Originally Posted by reelyanoob

This is obviously a scene which has polarized a lot of opinion. I've only seen the "So this is your love" version, so that's not an issue. I'm rewatching and giving a critique (Note to both Sheryl and Ranka fanatics - neither side may be totally happy with my verdict)
I agree that Alto starts by describing himself adrift. His words carry on (let me know if this conflicts with your subs) :-
"And Then ... I met Her, I chose to join SMS to protect her, to fight, to protect. Even Since then ...."
He trails off at "ever since then ..." implying that he has been doing the same thing he just described up to a time near the present, which in itself implies a love for Ranka.

I don't exactly follow how the "Since then" ( no "ever" in my translation ) implies romantic love for Ranka. Brotherly love? Sure, and that's not something I would try to dispute. There's a reason why his voice audibly breaks when he says he'd even kill Ranka.

Originally Posted by reelyanoob

After klan speaks, Alto continues "It's true I might've been running away this whole time" (family past?)
"Pretending NOT TO NOTICE a lot of things" (my reading = pretending not to notice Sheryl's advances for Ranka's sake - as he speaks these words you actually SEE Sheryl for the first time in the scene - a DEAD GIVEAWAY, these guys love visual cues)

Exactly how again does showing Sheryl in that particular say that he ignored her for loving Ranka? A reading of "I ignored Sheryl to not hurt Rankas feelings, which I noticed long ago but also ignored, because I am not interested in her in that way" would make make much more sense.

And in the whole context of his speech, going rah-rah over protecting everyone on Frontier, it could also very well mean that he ignored his love for Frontier until now, only seeing it as a barrier to his desire to fly freely. Not every single scene needs to be about the romantic triangle. Sheryl appearing at just that point could in that case simply be attributed to it being the perfect time for her to misunderstand what Alto was going on about.

Originally Posted by reelyanoob

He goes on "But ... that's over NOW. It's a puny world that could be destroyed by the slightest imbalance ..."
This statement about Frontier is only true after Frontier was heavily damaged by the recent Vajra outbreak. He is describing a sudden change in his outlook, not a gradual transformation. Ranka's departure obviously triggered the change.

Uh, no? He developed the worldview of us vs. them, which btw was one of his less admirable traits, after hearing the last words of the Kwamzin clone ( Temzin? ). While in the end it carried over to the much more admirable goal of wanting to protect everybody in his home, this adversarial view of "only one can survive" was nurtured over many incidents since episode fourteen and came into full blossom when Ranka turned up at Griffith Park with the evolved Ai-kun ( I still facepalm at that incredibly inconsiderate and stupid behaviour of hers. ).

Yeah, after Ranka left and didn't need to be protected anymore, he had the liberty to re-focus himself towards Sheryl and Frontier as a whole. So in that sense you are right. But in the sense that he only noticed Macross vulnerability and the need for decisive action, including killing Ranka if necessary, because of Rankas departure is patently wrong.

Originally Posted by reelyanoob

What he's saying here in regards to the relationships is that he was deliberately "not noticing" Sheryl because he wanted Ranka. If he didn't see a romantic future with Ranka previously he'd have no reason to pretend to "not notice" the other girl (whom he must have liked as well)
"but ... that's over now" implies 1-get with Sheryl("notice" her), and 2-No Ranka around, but ship is almost destroyed - new thing to fight for. 3- no more running away, accept the past

My verdict : Alto is saying He and Ranka are OVER (but he did LOVE her). And now he can NOTICE the thing he was PRETENDING not to - Sheryl.

That actually would work, if there wasn't a whole ton of evidence that he did, in fact, not love Ranka romantically. I don't really want to recite every shred of that evidence, although if you insist I'll do the research, but for all your analysis, it comes out in the end that the point you are making would work both with Alto not deciding for Sheryl because he either loved Ranka romantically or just loved her fraternally and didn't want to hurt her feelings. There has yet to be someone who can give convincing evidence of his romantical love for her after episode 15. There were eight episodes until ep 23 where no sign of romantic love was seen again, while there were a great number of events which brought Sheryl and Alto closer and closer. Hell, in episode 17 we got the ultimate romantic downer moment, when there was a perfectly good moment to advance the relationship between Alto and Ranka.