YAMANAIAME (Song)

The song serves as the ending theme of the anime film Attack on Titan Part 1: Guren no Yumiya. It debuted as the opening track of the YAMANAIAME album on November 19, 2014, then closed the film's own original soundtrack in a shortened 2:46 cut on March 18, 2015, and finally appeared eighth on disc one of the "Attack on Titan" Season 2 Original Soundtrack on June 7, 2017. The full version runs about four and a half minutes.

Benjamin and mpi wrote the lyrics, and three singers, Mica Caldito, mpi, and Mika Kobayashi, share the vocal. Hiroyuki Sawano composed and arranged it, as he did every piece of the score before The Final Season, playing piano, keyboards, and all remaining instruments with YU "Masshoi" Yamauchi on drums, Toshino Tanabe on bass, and Hiroshi Iimuro on guitars.

The title comes from the Japanese 止まない雨 (Yamanai ame), the rain that never lets up. The lyrics follow a soldier training recruits so young they have only just set down their toys for guns and kissed their lullabies goodbye. Between questions about what all the fighting was for, the chorus urges chasing the light and refusing to give up, even while crawling through the grass and losing oneself. The final verses mourn a comrade who returned to help, only to end up lying dead on the ground, left to stand the endless rain while the singer regrets not doing more the day before the death.

Few tracks in the score spawned as many descendants. Four remixes exist: ymniam-orch, EMAymniam, ymniam-MKorch, and YAMANAIAME FMv. Beyond full remixes, the opening ostinato, the chorus, and the bridge each reappear as independent motifs inside EMAymniam.

Within the film itself the song has a single placement, rolling over the ending credits of Guren no Yumiya. Its wider footprint comes through its offspring, with EMAymniam and the other remixes carrying its melodies into the television series.

The three album appearances differ slightly in length: the original 4:25 cut on the YAMANAIAME album, the trimmed 2:46 edit on the film soundtrack, and a 4:26 version on the Season 2 release. The parent album also includes a separate movie edit as its fourth track.