Endless (Sakanaction song)

Created primarily by the band's vocalist Ichiro Yamaguchi over a period of eight months, the song was written as a record of what it was like to live in 2011.

[11] Band vocalist and songwriter Ichiro Yamaguchi had difficulty finalising "Endless", feeling dissatisfied with the lyrics.

[12] Considering this, he wanted to create a song that directly reflected his inner feelings perfectly, but felt that he needed new lyrical techniques to do so.

[16] Yamaguchi utilised a technique where he slowly added a progression of instruments to the song, which he believed would control the emotional sentiment.

[12] During the trial and error process, Yamaguchi removed an entire section of the song's melody, in order to make the composition simpler.

[12] The events of 2011 greatly affected the writing process for the song, including the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in March, the death of electronic musician Rei Harakami in July and turmoil in Yamaguchi's personal life.

[20] "Endless" debuted on Japanese radio on August 31, 2011, during the Tokyo FM program School of Lock!.

[24] The strong airplay led "Endless" to reach number eight on the Billboard Japan Hot 100 in the same week.

[26][27] The music video was co-directed by Takumi Shiga alongside the band's long-time stylist Hisashi "Momo" Kitazawa,[28] and was unveiled on YouTube on September 28, 2011, the same day as the album's release.

Over the top of the shape, bright patterned lights are cast, sometimes showing brief glimpses of the band member's faces, primarily of Yamaguchi.

One shot briefly shows Yamaguchi falling overlaid with words, in the style of the Documentaly album cover artwork.

Shiga had only four days to create the projections before the video shoot, so contracted the work to an artist he previous collaborated with called Masaya Yoshida, as well as an art creation company.

No trial run was done before the video's shooting, and instead Shiga modelled the set-up as a computer-aided design until he was satisfied with the arrangement.

[30] Yuya Shimizu of Rolling Stone Japan praised the effort that went into "Endless", calling a "compilation-like work".