Continuing from my review of the light novel Misa Hayase: White Reminiscences, I’m turning my attention to the Hayase family – Misa’s father, Takashi, and her mother, Sakiko. The starting point for this multi-part analysis is Matteo Watzky’s 2020 article “Gender roles in Gundam and Macross” (also archived here) on his blog Animétudes. In his article, Watzky argues that Macross tries to somehow “teach” its heroine, Misa Hayase, how to conform to a certain standard of femininity – soft, romantic, loving, mated to a man – in order to be validated as a person. My reading of Misa and her arc differs greatly from Watzky’s for a number of reasons, methodological and interpretive. The most important of these reasons is that no character, especially one as carefully constructed and as fundamental to the series as Misa, exists in a vacuum. Therefore, to understand her emotional restraint, her attachment issues, her adherence to her military duty, and her narrative arc, we must examine the family she grew up in.