In order to reach an audience, the band challenged themselves by creating music for commercial tie-ups and television dramas.

Prior to the album, the band released three singles: two acting as theme songs for Japanese television dramas and another used in a commercial campaign for the design school Mode Gakuen.

The album featured a strong dance sound, influenced by the band members' current musical tastes.

Electronic musician Aoki Takamasa, who had previously created remixes for the band, collaborated with Sakanaction on the primarily instrumental songs "Structure" and "Inori".

From March to June 2013, the band promoted the album with the Sakanaquarium 2013 tour, including their first solely billed concert in Taiwan.

Critics were positive about the album, praising Sakanaction's stronger dance sound, however were either disappointed that there was not a greater change, or were alienated by the "internal" songs.

[1] The album was strongly affected by the events of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami which had occurred in March of that year, during the promotional period for their single "Rookie".

[5] The band's personal goal for Documentaly was to achieve 100,000 copies sold and to be able to perform at the 9,000-capacity Makuhari Messe event hall.

[12] However, while this was happening, the band were contacted to write a theme song for the Tsuyoshi Kusanagi drama 37-sai de Isha ni Natta Boku: Kenshui Junjō Monogatari,[9] which disrupted their plans for the single.

[14] During the same time period, Yamaguchi was commissioned to write the song "Moment" for the Japanese boy band SMAP.

[17] Critics praised "Boku to Hana" as highly entertaining,[18] noting its minimalist electro arrangement and its emotion,[19][20] while "Yoru no Odoriko"'s progressive structure and trance elements were seen as expressing an essential, core identity and style of Sakanaction.

[34] The next composition the band worked on after "Structure" was "Music", a song they envisioned as the leading promotional track for the album.

[36][37] Due to the drama tie-up, the band released "Music" as a two track single on January 23, 2013,[23][35] coupled with a demo take of the song "Eiga" recorded on November 16, 2012.

The band abandoned these plans due to their busy schedule, instead using lower case roman sakanaction as the album's title.

This was due to the band's greater exposure in Japan through their commercial tie-ups, which would mean a great number of people would be listening to Sakanaction for the first time for this album.

[32] He specifically saw "Aldebaran" as a Sakanaction-style song that could be on the children's interstitial program Minna no Uta, lyrically being inspired to write the story of a cat.

[46] The band members primarily listened to minimalist techno and instrument-focused music during the recording sessions of Sakanaction, which strongly affected the sound of the album.

[45] Yamaguchi noted that the other band members all listened to Akufen, and that bassist Ami Kusakari preferred goa trance.

[28][45] From "Aoi", the songs begin to adopt a "deep" and varied tone, until they reach what the band saw as the deepest place on the album, "Asa no Uta".

The final track list that they chose was extremely similar to how Yamaguchi envisioned (the only difference being that "Boku to Hana" and "Mellow" were switched).

While Yamaguchi was creating these tracks, he happened to talk to electronic musician Aoki Takamasa, who agreed to collaborate with the band on a new version of "Structure" and another song, "Inori".

In its original form, it had an arpeggio guitar-like arrangement, similar in feel to the B-side of their "Boku to Hana" single, "Neptunus".

[31] The song "Nantettatte Haru" was similarly a musical experiment, in that it used sampled drums instead of drummer Keiichi Ejima performing them live.

[39] The initial press of the album came with a bonus track, "Bach no Senritsu o Yoru ni Kiita Sei Desu (Ks_Remix)", a remix produced by the band primarily created by Kusakari.

The event, organized by Musica magazine, was also attended by electronic musician Aoki Takamasa, who had worked with Sakanaction on the songs "Structure" and "Inori".

[71] Mayumi Tsuchiya of Bounce felt that "Inori"'s place as the first song on Sakanaction was symbolic for the band's increased focus on dance music.

She strongly praised the album's middle section, composed solely of previously unpublished songs, for their "inflected grooves" and the lyrical convergence of "prayers meant for a great number of people" and the inner self.

She felt that "Nantettatte Haru da" was a "grief disco" that was the complete opposite of the band's singles, and likened "Asa no Uta" to John Lennon's "Imagine" (1971).

[74] When personally reviewing the album's critical reception, Yamaguchi noted a surprisingly lukewarm response from music magazine critics, believing that they wanted to have an album entirely composed of "external" songs such as "Aoi", which they responded well to, as opposed to "internal" songs such as "Inori", which they did not understand.

[78] The initial shipments to music stores in March was high enough for the Recording Industry Association of Japan to give Sakanaction a gold certification.