Lynn Minmay: A soldier's life

Spoilers 

Immediately upon witnessing the battle in episode 27, when Minmay is singing to the destruction of an entire species, I suddenly became drawn to a theme. It's not really addressed in the series itself, and the show barely does anything with the idea, but it is an existing aspect to the story that I personally find fascinating. That is, while Minmay is singing on her stage at the front of the battle, culture becomes a weapon; Minmay's mech is the entire fleet, and heartstrings are her controls.

Space war makes for a really great laser and pyrotechnics show.

Humanity's culture became Earth's most powerful weapon. When Minmay first debuted with "Watashi no Kare wa Pilot" during the battle between Macross and the Zentradi in episode 10, it was the first attack by humanity's ultimate weapon. The final battle's "Love Drifts Away" was the final charge, culminated from 27 episodes of building and charging it up. Minmay's songs could then be considered the military's ammunition for mass genocide, which ultimately discredits Kaifun's preaching of an entirely peaceful society in place of any militarization.

It was, in fact, culture that tore these people from their world, caused mass death and betrayal, and forced the survivors to adapt to an entirely new way of life. War simply kept that culture at bay.

The show, however, did not decide to go this route with Minmay, and instead invented the true theme to Minmay's character arc: The hard life of a performer, and how it relates to and parallels a soldier's life.
Minamy was an obnoxious little girl. She was a troublemaker, too young to understand how she affected people, and too young to understand how important she was. The entire series, including after the time-skip, had Minmay in a constant hustle as she fought for people's hearts on stage, all the while dreaming of simpler, less busy times.
During her assault on the Zentradi main fleet in episode 27, she might have realized her all-important role as general of humanity's culture. She may have then understood the terrible reality of her career: She had been unknowingly drafted into the front lines of humanity's war against non-existence.
Whether she glimpsed this truth or not, after the time-skip, she had become distraught about her career, which had become depressingly difficult to maintain. Her life as a singer took her to emotionally dark places. Kaifun is her only manager left, and, since the time-skip, he's developed a drinking habit with his growing hate for the military. He decidedly never gives her a concert in Macross City, the heart of the military's influence, and he never accepts any aid from them. Minmay's songs support the two, but they barely get by: Her venues get smaller, and people can only spare so much in terms of payment on the post-apocalyptic world. Kaifun's stress as her manager builds, and his subsequent bursts of anger and lashing out at the military has Minmay question why she is even singing anymore. The lonely girl thinks of Hikaru and those childhood times of innocence, before either of them became soldiers in adulthood.

In the final episode, "Farewell to Tenderness", A threat to the remainder of humanity appears in Quamzin's army. Macross flies in front of it's civilians and fires it's canon with the very last of it's energy. This final lurching of the giant who stood as the protector of mankind and the symbol of humanity's culture and cooperation inspired the people watching, among them, Minmay. On that stage in the sky, the military expressed it's necessity, and perhaps this is when Minmay understood the significance of Hikaru in his Vakyrie fighting for humanity, and similarly her own significance as a singer. In the next scene, she resolves to leave Hikaru and Misa because she now understands that, as an artist, she cannot be part of the military's world, who destroy themselves to protect artists.With hope that she'll find the songs she really wants to sing, Minmay sets off for an unknown city for an unscheduled performance, giving up on her dreams of innocent love and a life with Hikaru as a civilian.

They fight to protect humanity, so Minmay had to realize that she must sing to do the same.

When I first saw the ED, "Runner", I assumed the photo album next to the helmet on the desk to be Hikaru's, or at least I knew it belonged to the image of a battle-worn soldier, for him to look back onto more innocent times in his life. I wasn't wrong, as evidenced in the episodes after the time-skip, where that album made an appearance, property of Hikaru. When the final episode completed Minmay's arc and resolved the end of the series, we hear Mari Iijima, the voice of Lynn Minmay, come in with the vocals instead of the usual Makoto Fujiwara. This was a beautifully-done book end to how Minmay's career made her feel battle-worn just as heavily as Hikaru, who had also accepted the life of a soldier.

The episodes after the time-skip has Minmay have to accept the burden and separation of a soldier's life, mirroring how Hikaru had done the same at the end of the first portion of the series.

In the film, "Do you Remember Love?", Minmay's arc and character was shafted in comparison. Most of the focus of the film is dedicated to Misa's arc, and in the film version of events, Minmay was portrayed as almost an entirely different person. Here, Minmay began as a singer, with no small city girl backstory to give her character an arc. She was never really friends with Hikaru, and only met him after he saves her during a Zentradi attack. She's more like an unwilling performer, tired of the celebrity life, and she wanted to escape that life with the relationship she found in Hikaru. When he chooses Misa over her, however, she is forced to give up the relationship and the hope of the escape she sought with it.

The final shot of the movie; A portrait of Minmay's hard work, heartbreak and separation a part of it.

Minmay, as the face of humanity's culture, represents the life of an artist and civilian in a wisened society. Her life is by nature separated from those in the military, and more life might be separated from her because of the military's wars. However, Hikaru gave up his life as a civilian so he can protect Minmay and culture as a soldier. In return, her duty is to go war with him by fulfilling her role as a performer and fighting through the fields of love, sorrow, romance, and pain for the good of mankind. This is the same sense of duty all artists should have in a society intent on survival, because without the arts at the front line of humanity's endeavor against death, we might realistically destroy ourselves with the impulse to war. Minmay carries the weight of an entire species' future with her when she steps onto the greatest battlefield against humanity's end: the stage of culture.

The duty of a performer is equal to the duty of a soldier.