Melissa is Mithril's Uruz-2 and second-in-command of the SRT under Gail McAllen. She started as a Sergeant Major but got promoted to Second Lieutenant by the time of Dancing Very Merry Christmas, officially crossing into commissioned officer territory. Her real strength is electronic warfare, which has made her essential to the Tuatha de Danaan's Pacific operations.
She's a solid Arm Slave pilot—fast and aggressive rather than precise—though she rarely gets behind the controls in later episodes. Still, she can't touch Sousuke or Kurz in terms of raw piloting skill. Beyond combat, she's fluent in Cantonese from her years in Hong Kong, especially Kowloon.
Personality-wise, she's basically a walking disaster in the best way. Fans often note her resemblance to Misato from Neon Genesis Evangelion—same voice actress too—and it's not just the heavy drinking (20 beer cans on a coffee table isn't uncommon for her). She's brutally rude, loves a good insult, chain-smokes, and doesn't hold back with profanity. She's also the kind of person who'll pull a prank on you without hesitation. When Sousuke called complaining about Tessa sleeping over, Melissa gave him the green light to "jump her bones" just to mess with him—and when Tessa tried again the next episode, Melissa literally handcuffed her to herself to stop her.
Her backstory explains a lot. Born in New York to Chinese-American parents, she grew up under strict traditional expectations, including an arranged marriage she wanted no part of. She literally walked into a Marine Corps recruitment office still wearing her wedding dress and bailed. After several years of service, she got a dishonorable discharge—a wound that still stings. Her relationship with her Air Force father remains rocky. She eventually landed in Hong Kong (back when it was still British territory) and stayed with relatives before Mithril found her.
McAllen gave her the codename Urzu-2 and put her in charge of her own team, but two squad members got permanently injured on a mission. That led to her being sent to Mithril's training camp in Berutarube's forests to recruit replacements. She was initially interested in Kurz despite his terrible marksmanship, but quickly crossed him off the list after witnessing his relentless womanizing firsthand. Sousuke wasn't even on her radar—too low test scores, seemed mediocre. She only noticed him by chance during an AS sim test, where he absolutely demolished a top recruit's M6 using an RK-92 Savage.
Everything changed during the Berugan mission to rescue the president's kidnapped daughter and wipe out a communist cell. Most of the instructors and recruits got captured in the first attempt, leaving Melissa with just Sousuke, Kurz, and Jimmer. She realized these two were sandbagging her the whole time, forced them to admit it, and sent them against the guerrillas. They crushed it. Impressed enough, she made both of them permanent squad members.
From there, she moved to Tokyo with the team to protect Kaname Chidori. Near the end of the first series, she took serious damage from Gauron during an AS fight at a U.S. chemical facility on Berildaobu Island but still managed to help Kurz take down Guen Bien Bo by throwing surgical scalpels at him—a skill that caught everyone off guard.
She and Tessa are actually close friends, which gives her the run of Tessa's office. She's also maintained solid friendships with her old comrades Gail McAllen and Belfangan Grouseax, both now commanding officers on the Tuatha de Danaan's SRT, though Grouseax asked her to keep their friendship quiet around the troops. When the SRT took heavy casualties defending Merida Island, she moved up to second-in-command.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
