In 1983, Super Dimensional Space Fortress Macross debuted in Japan. By the airing of its last episode, it was already a legend. Macross consisted of 23 episodes chronicling the adventures of the young men and women who journeyed into space (rather unwittingly) onboard the Super Dimensional Space Fortess 01, an alien spacecraft which had landed on Earth 10 years before (the year 1999 - I can't wait!). The fortess' secrets included the existance of a race of giants genetically engineered to be a formidable space faring army. These "Zentraiti" followed the SDF-01 to Earth and launched an attack throwing the SDF-01 into a war it seemed doomed to lose. But the humans carried something special in their appropriated giant space battleship - the secrets of song and love. In the end the humans own nature saved them and their planet (though nearly everyone on Earth was killed).
The japanese language has no "L" sound in its vocabulary. The "R" sound is thus often written as "L" in romanized japanese. Thus "Millia" is pronounced "Miria"; "Exedol" pronounced "Exedor". However, the european name "Maximillian" is *not* pronounced "Maximirian". That would be ridiculous. As for Gloval/Global; the "buh" sound and the "vuh" sound are interchangable and "Shammy" is just "Sammy" in reality. Ah, the troubles of translating japanese kanji into romanized english names....
