To quote Ms. Iijima.
Interviewer: "Being a singer songwriter and the actress who played Minmay hasn't always been easy, but you've really come to peace with it recently. Tell us about that."
Mari Iijima: "It only happened two or three months ago. I think the process happened slowly, little by little, but when I attended this some kind of a small....it was not a convention but Macross fans, a meeting thing and I was invited. I agreed to be there and I was talking about Macross, honestly, what happened and they were giving me questions. I thought I did fine but after that I got some kind of negative reactions."
"I went to see some BBS and people were not pleased about my answers and I felt kind of scared, oh my gosh I can't say anything right, anything about Macross or animation, if I open my mouth I offend people. So, umm I have to decide maybe this is it. I'm not going to talk about Macross, I'm not gonna talk about animation maybe this is it. Because It seems like we have no connection me and the animation world. I don't know what to do,I'm a very sensitive person so I take things personally really hard."
"Then something happened, ummm like why don't you it was almost I heard a voice. Why don't you watch the whole Macross series from the first episode to the end. So, a long time ago more than ten years ago my friend copied each episode onto VHS tapes. So I took out those tapes from the closet and I started to watch each episode and I saw the whole thing like in three or four days. So, when I focus I focus real good. When I finished watching I felt wow it didn't seem old at all, it didn't age the series."
"I didn't know everything about acting but I gave everything I had and it was really refreshing to see me playing Minmay. The stories were very interesting, the love triangle and the space war. Maybe when I was playing Minmay I wasn't following the stories that closely, and I was busy doing all kinds of stuff. Ummmm, I had a brand new appreciation for Macross. Then I thought I felt like my heart melted (almost like blushing) and then Macross was fun and then a week after your company contacted me if I want to play Minmay again. Hehehe. Interesting."