Melissa (Fullmetal Alchemist)

There's a scrappy garage-rock energy to this track that sets it immediately apart from the polished anthems that typically bookend anime of its era. Porno Graffitti built this song around a guitar tone that's slightly rough at the edges, intentionally so, giving the whole production a lived-in quality — like music played by people who've been on the road too long. The rhythm section locks in tight and propulsive but leaves room for the arrangement to breathe and occasionally surprise. Vocalist Akihito Okano delivers with a kind of confident swagger that reads as older-brother-who-knows-better, his timbre warm but never soft. The melodic phrasing has that distinctive quality of sounding like it was written for singing along, with phrases that resolve satisfyingly and hooks that embed themselves without force. Lyrically the song operates in the space of perseverance through disillusionment — not naive optimism but something harder-won, the decision to keep moving after you've already lost something. In the Fullmetal Alchemist canon, it became synonymous with the show's early emotional tone: wry, determined, a little battered. It fits best at the start of something difficult — the first day of a new job, the beginning of a long project, the moment you decide to start over.