Melissa (Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 OP1)

Porno Graffitti's "Melissa" operates with the comfortable authority of a band that knows precisely what they are doing and has no interest in overexplaining it. The guitar work is the foundation — crunchy, riff-forward, with a groove that sits slightly behind the beat in a way that gives the whole track a swagger it never has to announce. The production has the quality of early-2000s Japanese rock at its most assured: not chasing Western trends, not positioning itself as underground, simply executing the form at a high level with complete conviction. Haruichi Shindo's vocals are warm but slightly abraded at the edges, carrying a natural charisma that makes even direct, unadorned delivery feel fully inhabited. He does not oversell anything — the restraint is its own form of confidence. Lyrically the song moves through longing and determined persistence, a kind of yearning that hasn't given up on itself, which made it an ideal match for the alchemist's pursuit at the center of the show it introduced. Within Japanese popular music, Porno Graffitti occupied a specific and underappreciated intersection: genuine guitar-rock credibility combined with enormous commercial reach, and "Melissa" is perhaps the clearest evidence of how that balance worked at its best. You reach for it at beginnings — the start of a drive that should feel like departure, the first track of a playlist that needs to establish that something is about to happen.