Every ‘Asian Kung-Fu Generation’ Album + EP Ranked
With their 10th studio album set for release on March 30th, 2022 and a still-burning passion for punk and emo-infused Japanese rock music, I felt it in me to do my first discography ranking list on here, something I was no stranger to doing on any of my older Tumblr blogs — for instance, my old ranking of every album by The Pillows that I still have friends ask about now and again as a gateway into discovering more of their own massive discography. And while Asian Kung-Fu Generation (I’ll mostly use AKG or AKFG from here on) don’t have quite as many albums as The Pillows yet, their reign in the forefront of worldwide-appealing J-rock has lasted almost as long as The Pillows have been in the spotlight.
With the warmer weather starting to rear its lovely head a bit early this year, I’m really in that mood for music like this and albums like these have been constantly in my album rotation (sorry, still not a big playlist kind of listener). This mood has left me in a place where I’ve rediscovered some of their albums I’ve listened to less than others and changed my opinions on them pretty dramatically so let’s just get right into it. On top of their albums, I’ll also be including both compilation albums as well as their EPs not just because they’re an equally-important part of Asian Kung-Fu Generation’s discography as major bodies of work themselves, but because it’ll give me a bit more of a challenge to fit them between the albums which I already have a clear vision of my ordering for. As opposed to The Tomo Awards, this is in best-to-worst rather than the opposite.
1. Surf Bungaku Kamakura (2008)
Starting off controversially right off the bat, aren’t we? Well, I personally think that Surf Bungaku Kamakura stands not only as AKFG’s finest musical achievement, but also their most underrated one by a wide margin. Released just 8 months after their previous album World World World released in the same year of 2008, Surf Bungaku Kamakura gets little praise by comparison despite its wonderful concept and masterful to-the-point songwriting. Surf Bungaku Kamakura is a very immediate album that both rushes through its tracklist while also still finding the time to breathe within its runtime. The incredible thing is that this album was made with a clear intent — the band had a plan. All of the singles from World World World featured a song from Surf Bungaku Kamakura as a B-side, hinting at the album’s release.
One of the most fascinating things about this album is its concept — its name Surf Bungaku Kamakura refers to the Enoshima Electric Railway, better known as the “Enoden”, a famous train line that runs along the beaches of Japan’s east coast from Fujisawa to Kamakura and through some of the nation’s most famous beach destinations like Enoshima. Each song on the album is named after the most popular stops on the station and allegedly line up perfectly with the cadence of arriving and departing each station were you to listen while riding the Enoden. It’s one of the absolute top things I have to do on my hypothetical bucket list and I’ve done it virtually countless times via YouTube videos and while playing through the Enoden’s appearance in the 2003 PS2 release of Densha De Go! Ryojouhen. How they did it? I’d love to know, but it’s a seriously high concept that I’ve never quite seen anything similar to from any other artist.
The album keeps a breezy and fun summery vibe throughout most of its brief 31 odd minutes, with the song ‘Fujisawa Loser’ opening the record with immediacy and leading us through to ‘Kugenuma Surf’ and then ‘Enoshima Esker’, one of the greatest three track runs in the band’s discography. Almost every song on Surf Bungaku Kamakura is brief with most sitting under 3 minutes in length, never overstaying its welcome for even a second before moving along to the next one much like Japan’s famously punctual trains do themselves. I even think that this album would function as an excellent introduction to the band for a new listener, with the kind of upbeat power pop you’d expect from them in tracks like ‘Enoshima Esker’ and ‘Inamuragasaki Jane’ to the mid-tempo swells like ‘Shichirigahama Skywalk’, and even a slower more emotional track in the heartbreaking closer ‘Kamakura Goodbye’. There are no lulls in the tracklist, every song is the perfect length and the songwriting is demonstrative of one of the greatest rock bands in the world at their creative peak.
My suggestion if you’ve never heard this masterpiece? Load up a video of the Enoden line’s full ride and press play on Surf Bungaku Kamakura when the train starts moving.
10/10, one of the most underrated albums in J-rock history.
2. Sol-fa (2004)
What else could it be? It’s hard to not pick Sol-fa as Asian Kung-Fu Generation’s greatest album, but it has one tiny flaw that drops it down a notch to me so let’s just get that out of the way before I start talking about the rest of this album as if it’s the best thing since sliced bread. While Sol-fa is without a doubt host to the band’s most popular and cherished songs, I think I’ve always found an upbeat single like ‘Loop & Loop’ to be a strange closing track when the slower, more emotional ‘Kaigan Douri’ sits right behind it. I think the band themselves think this way as well, as the 2016 studio re-recording of Sol-fa places ‘Loop & Loop’ much earlier in the tracklist, the only rearrangement in the updated tracklist.
With those small issues out of the way, let me gush a bit. Sol-fa is one of the most perfect albums ever made, especially when you listen to it with the updated tracklist order from 2016. Play ‘Rewrite’ to any J-music or anime fan who doesn’t even speak Japanese and they will sing every single word back to you. I’ve never even seen Full Metal Alchemist and I can still sing the nostalgic praise of ‘Rewrite’. It’s truly one of the most exhilarating and infectious rock songs of all time.
There are other huge highlights all over Sol-fa that define AKFG’s signature emotional, post-Weezer songwriting from lower mid-tempo tracks like ‘My World’ and ‘Last Scene’ to the peppy ‘Re:Re:’ and the thunderous opener ‘Shindoukaku’. Sol-fa is the kind of sophomore album that follows up on everything a band did right on their debut and improves upon it on every front to prove that they’re a group with serious staying power. Every song on here is an absolute masterpiece of emotion and energy, despite the tracklist hiccup it still stands as one of the finest achievements of any band in any style of rock music.
10/10, one of the greatest albums ever made, full stop.
3. World World World (2008)
Released in March of 2008, a few months before Surf Bungaku Kamakura, World World World is generally thought of as the band’s main major release from that year, and the same sonic characteristics of Surf Bungaku Kamakura are present here, although World World World seems like the more traditional and less concept-driven idea of an album. While a brief instrumental opener lulls us in, the drums quickly pick up and welcome us to the next 45 odd minutes with ‘After Dark’, a song that’s definitively the band’s tried-and-true style with an upbeat tempo, singalong chorus, and wide vocal range from singer Gotch with some rare falsettos as well that make up the catchiest part of the song at the end of the chorus.
While no singular song on World World World really stands high above any others, it’s exactly that level of consistency with its songs that makes this album so special, as you’re essentially in for 45 minutes of excellent and energetic power pop songwriting. It’s an AKFG album to the core, with their usual signature emotional lyricism and powerful melodies. One of my favorite tracks, ‘Laika’, uses some really interesting semi-dissonant chord choices in its refrain and a skippy beat throughout the core of the song to create a unique and nostalgic mood. Surprisingly of all, most of the singles for this album aren’t the ones that would feel like it. Take for instance a track like ‘Wakusei’, which has all the single power as a song like ‘Rewrite’, but is instead just delegated to being an album track midway through the tracklist.
9.5/10, an excellent album that is slightly eclipsed by its more refined companion album released some few months later.
4. Kimi Tsunagi Five M (2003)
Finally here we are at the one release most fans of the band reading this are shocked to see not in one of the top 2 spots. Asian Kung-Fu Generation’s ferocious lightning-in-a-bottle debut album Kimi Tsunagi Five M might be the sound of a band still finding their own sound after a string of Weezer-imitating indie EPs, but it’s nonetheless also the sound of a band so young and full of fire, potential, and heart that it’s hard to knock it any points for its less focused and influence-driven sound. The first song ‘Flashback’ is the rawest that the band has ever sounded on an album, with Gotch even reaching his voice into its fry register, a vocal style found all over this album but done rarely on releases since — my guess is he realized the damage that doing this vocal technique can quickly do on the vocal cords.
While the production is a little more raw and muffled on Kimi Tsunagi Five M, its still a pleasant listen before the band’s sound was drastically cleaned up on Sol-fa. Despite these more inexperienced qualities, one thing that still is present here however is the band’s talent for catchy choruses and dynamic songwriting. Songs like ‘Understand’ see clearly defined structure with low verses and high choruses with a singalong quality. Of course, while songs like that and ‘Kimi to Iu Hana’ show a sneak peak at what the band would eventually become, they still pay very direct tribute to their influences on many of the songs here. For instance, ‘N.G.S.’, which stands for “Number Girl Syndrome”, is clearly the band trying their best at sounding like Japan’s own legendary post-hardcore band Number Girl (they even covered Toumei Shoujo live in 2014, which is just incredible), while the song ‘E’ features the same exact note-for-note guitar solo as Noel Gallagher’s legendary performance on Oasis’s ‘Live Forever’.
9.5/10, the sound of a band saying one last goodbye to their influences and finding their own signature sound with very little issue.
5. Landmark (2012)
Landmark is an album I thought I hated for the longest time, but as it turns out after so many returned listens this year actually might be one of my favorites in their discography. Landmark is the moment AKFG almost “sold out” as it were, opting for a much more pop-oriented sound, going as far as recruiting Chatmonchy (one of Japan’s biggest and longest-running pop-rock bands) frontwoman Erika Hashimoto to assist with the vocals on the opening track ‘All Right part2’. This however is not the huge “sellout” move it seems though as the song itself is still very clearly Asian Kung-Fu Generation, just with a heavier focus on a simpler more pop-appealing chorus, and it stands as one of the best and most fun songs in the band’s discography and easily my favorite on the album.
That’s not to say the rest of the album isn’t excellent as well. The grooving tom-drum rhythms, shoegazey guitars, and angelic vocal harmonies of the dreamy alt rock-infused ‘A & Z’ also stands as a massive high point not just on Landmark, but in the band’s whole discography. Of course, the band’s signature style of emotive power pop is here too on songs like ‘Sore de wa, Mata Ashita’ and ‘Taiyou Kouro’. Landmark is just a front-to-back great record of a band finally broken out of their shell and trying new things, and the experiment pays off handsomely despite feeling maybe a song or two too long, though I couldn’t necessarily pick any song I’d want to pick out or skip.
9.5/10, easily the band’s most-misunderstood and second most-underrated album, very very very easy on the ears.
6. Magic Disk (2010)
While I sometimes find Magic Disk to be a bit of an inconsistent and overly long album that can be difficult to sit through, I think looking at each song individually shows that they’re all excellent, and it shows the band at a point where they want to try something to different and break out of their shell a bit more without necessarily wanting to take the full step. What results is an album that sees them trying out different instrumental arrangements with their usual style of 4-piece rock songwriting to pretty incredible results. As opposed to all of their albums leading up to this point, the opener ‘Shinseiki no Love Song’ is a fairly slow-burning track that leads us into the usual tempo of an AKFG album opener in the follow-up namesake track ‘Magic Disk’. Gotch’s voice on this track however takes a slightly lower place in the mix to let the sound of vocal harmonies and dub-influenced delay effects breathe more in the song’s more densely packed sound.
As a whole, Magic Disk could almost be described as AKFG’s “ballads” album, though I’d describe them more as “power ballads” without the connotation of cheesy ’80s hair metal bullshit that that phrase is usually associated with. One of the album’s biggest high points is the single ‘Maigoinu to Ame no Beat’, which served as the opening theme song for The Tatami Galaxy, simply one of the most artful and underrated anime shows ever made. As a quick side note, the animation for The Tatami Galaxy was also creatively lead by Yusuke Nakamura, the artist responsible for every Asian Kung-Fu Generation album cover besides 2015’s Wonder Future, leaving the show looking like one of their album covers come to life, a perfect companion to the show’s adaptation of the 2004 light novel’s brilliant and abstract storytelling. The closing track on Magic Disk, the single ‘Solanin’, is also widely regarded as one of the band’s greatest songs and it practically oozes with their definitively nostalgic and emotional sound.
9/10, a lot of ballads but not in a bad way. Watch The Tatami Galaxy.
7. Fanclub (2006)
Fanclub is a bit of a difficult one. It has the misfortune of following up not just one, but two albums so well-received that they’re not considered classics. Despite doing a damn good job at it, I don’t think anyone would soon refer to Fanclub in much the same way, despite a few cuts on it definitely standing high in their overall discography. The opener, ‘Angou no Waltz’ for instance is an incredibly solid track to open up the follow-up to Sol-fa, with its upbeat 3/4 cadence, shuffling drum intro, and furiously pounding chorus. The next few tracks to follow deliver equally if not stronger results. ‘World Apart’ for example stands in my eyes as the band’s best song, full stop. It wouldn’t feel out of place at all on Sol-fa with its similar style of guitar riffing, song structure, and unbelievably catchy chorus which sees Gotch nearly screaming his brains out with a rare appearance from his fry register as he approaches the high notes.
The following song ‘Blackout’ also follows in suit with a similar sound to Sol-fa cuts like ‘Last Scene’ and ‘Re:Re:’, and this itself is one of Fanclub’s biggest issues: it’s just not unique enough as its own album, feeling more like the band retreading the same ground as their previous album, even if more of the same isn’t a bad thing. It could very well be named Sol-fa 2 and the feelings around it would remain the same. And again, this isn’t inherently a bad thing, Sol-fa is a damn good album, so it’s something like a compliment to say another album sounds just like it. There’s also a small mid-album lull with songs like ‘Mafuyu no Dance’ and ‘Senseless’ not really pulling their weight in being fully memorable songs.
8.5/10, the band showing slight signs of hesitation in moving their sound forward and ultimately just playing it safe.
8. Feedback File (2006)
An actual compilation album, the first Feedback File album mostly collects the B-sides of singles from Kimi Tsunagi Five M but mostly Sol-fa and Fanclub, as well as two new songs made just for this release, essentially leaving the album feeling like Sol-fa Part 3 which again is a really good thing. The opening track, ‘Entrance’ was the B-side off of their first single from Kimi Tsunagi Five M, ‘Mirai no Kakera’, and functions as a surprisingly great album opener to Feedback File as well. It’s the kind of album that’s so well-paced you wouldn’t be wrong for assuming it actually was a studio album with intent.
‘Kaiga Kyoushitsu’, one of the two songs made just for Feedback File feels especially good within the tracklist and previews that the band are ready to move their sound away from Fanclub and into World World World. Another interesting choice on here is a re-recording of ‘Hold Me Tight’, the opening track from their final indie EP from 2001, I’m Standing Here. The new mix really makes the song fit in with the rest of the album, even if it’s the only song here with entirely English lyrics. The closing track ‘Eien ni’ which was the B-side to ‘World Apart’ is an excellent closer the way ‘Entrance’ felt like an intent opener. While Feedback File isn’t a real studio album, it’s the first time that the band showed an express interest in great track arrangement, a feat they would take to World World World and every future release since.
8/10, you’re telling me this isn’t an actual album?
9. Houkai Amplifier (2002)
Before releasing their big major label debut studio album Kimi Tsunagi Five M, AKFG tested the waters with their recent contract with Ki/oon Music, a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment with a short 6-track EP called Houkai Amplifier and giving them their first taste of superstardom with the leading track ‘Haruka Kanata’ featuring in the hit anime series Naruto. ‘Haruka Kanata’ is a perfect taste of the band’s signature sound at its earliest peak much like on their debut album. And just like that debut album, the fury and energy is ever-present as is the influence-driven tracks as well, with ‘Sunday’ sounding very Weezer-influenced, something that their earlier EPs were a little too decked out in.
Other tracks like ‘Konayuki’ even show hints at where the band would even go ten years later. The only thing left desired here is more consistency in its production. A track like ‘Haruka Kanata’ — while still incredibly raw and full of life — is still a cut above in quality than songs like the closing track ‘12’.
8/10, another early highlight for a band ready to become stars.
10. Mada Minu Ashita ni (2008)
Released as an EP in the summer between World World World and Surf Bungaku Kamakura, Mada Minu Ashita ni (I’ve also seen it spelled as “Imada Minu Asu ni”) is like the perfect midway point between the two albums and stands as the great black sheep of the band’s discography, often forgotten in the shadow of the two albums sandwiching it. What it offers though is more of the band’s brilliant creative streak from that year, even if it does feel like World World World b-sides and leftovers. The real highlight here is the fourth track ‘Shinkokyuu’, a mid-tempo and broodingly emotional track (have I said “emotional” and “nostalgic” enough yet?) that sees the band performing with the utmost intensity as the song’s loud climax starts a little over halfway through and ends with this strange, fuzzy-filtered and almost jazzy rendition of the track.
8/10, it might just be a collection of leftovers but oh man are they good leftovers.
11. Hometown (2018)
Released only a few years ago, Hometown is another great record in the band’s discography and sits at a cozy 10 songs long. One of the most unique things about Hometown however is just how back to their roots the band goes. You see, AKFG essentially started off as a Weezer tribute band, with their first few EPs being almost carbon copies of The Blue Album and Pinkerton eras. After finally escaping that sound on Sol-fa however, Hometown finds Gotch living out what I could only assume is the absolute dream, by working with Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo as a co-writer for the album. Yeah, the songwriter behind the band AKFG started off imitating joins the band here as a co-writer for a handful of tracks, obviously seeing the band returning to their roots and — well — sounding like Weezer again.
This is most notable on the Cuomo-assisted songs like opener ‘Clock Work’ and ‘Dancing Girl’ as well as Circus — which absolutely reeks of ‘Undone (The Sweater Song)’. ‘Dancing Girl’ in particular just feels so Pinkerton, something Cuomo himself has been so hesitant to revisit with his own band. The title track ‘Hometown’ on the other hand sounds like it could have come off of an album like Magic Disk. More so, ‘Kouya wo Aruke’ much like ‘Maigoinu To Ame No Beat’ off of Magic Disk serves as the theme song to the film The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl, which itself is a spinoff/successor to The Tatami Galaxy which the latter song served as the theme for as I previously mentioned. While it’s still an excellent record, it feeling like a glorified Weezer album does leave a lot to be desired for a return to form for the band, and with any luck their upcoming album Planet Folks could be just that, or at least another brand new evolution for the band based on my brief time listening to its singles.
7.5/10, Gotch actually fulfilled his dream and made an official Weezer album.
12. Feedback File 2 (2014)
Feedback File 2 strangely features less B-sides from album singles with a good chunk of songs of their contributions to their Nano-Mugen compilation albums, which are used to promote the band’s own annual Nano-Mugen Music Festival, with these compilations featuring tracks from other massive artists who played at the festival like Sakanaction, Boom Boom Satellites, Chatmonchy, and even international artists like Ben Folds, Weezer, Motion City Soundtrack, and Third Eye Blind among dozens of others.
While I find the second Feedback File compilation to be still-great collection of Asian Kung-Fu Generation tracks, it feels far less thought-out as the first one and more like an actual compilation of loose tracks. Certainly the intro and outro feel fitting for their placement, but the songs in between feel rather thrown in wherever and overall leaving Feedback File 2 feeling quite a bit too long at around 62 minutes long, their longest album to date. That being said, songs like ‘Slow Down’ and ‘Hikari’ are beyond excellent, with the latter feeling like the band fiddling around again with wanting to sound like Weezer with fantastic results. The re-recorded version of ‘Mustang’ from the Mada Inu Ashita ni EP is also greatly welcome with its addition of dreamy synthesizers in the mix, though this trades off the ferocity that the ending of the original song had for something a bit more well-produced, but the impact is still there just in a different way.
7/10, a bit long but there are some serious highlights amidst the snoozers.
13. Can’t Sleep EP (2018)
Released the same day as Hometown as a sort of EP compiling leftovers, the Can’t Sleep EP features songs mostly written by other songwriters besides Gotch to mixed results. Gotch’s only songwriting credits — besides for the lyrics on every song — are on the opener ‘Sleep’ and the closer ‘Seija no March’. Atsushi Horie from the band Straightener joins the band as a guest, taking up the pen and the microphone on the second track ‘Haikyo no Kiyoku’ for a peppy pop-rock track that almost reminds of a more polished Judy & Mary or PUFFY AmiYumi track, and it’s a unique experiment that actually kind of sticks the landing as I kind of have a soft spot for those latter two bands’ huge influence over the J-punk landscape of the late 90s and early 2000s. The following ‘Yellow’ on the other hand was written by bassist Takahiro Yamada and is frankly annoying, with its obnoxious vocoded vocal refrains and dissonant chord intervals leading to a song that’s neither catchy nor warranting of further listens. On the other hand, the fourth track ‘Hajimari no Kisetsu’ which was written by THE CHARM PARK is a pretty solid track that reminds almost of the Surf Bungaku Kamakura era without the beachy vibes.
6.5/10, nothing essential here though the track with Atsushi Horie is pretty damn good.
14. Wonder Future (2015)
Another black sheep in the band’s discography, Wonder Future is the band’s weakest album to date. The most immediately strange thing about the album before even listening to it is its album cover, their only major label release to not feature artwork by Yusuke Nakamura. It’s instead a completely blank white with the band’s name and album’s title written on it in a light grey hue. It frankly looks more like a default iTunes placeholder for missing artwork. The intro track ‘Fukkatsusai’ shows the band trying out a type of song they’ve never quite tried out before to an actually pretty promising result. Likewise, the following ‘Chisana Lennon’ sees this new direction expanded, particularly in the guitar-playing with lots of droning tones juxtaposed with dissonant harmonies. This is a different band altogether, and only when the more melodic choruses start does it become clear that this is still the same band who made Sol-fa, though so far removed from it.
I read somewhere once that Wonder Future was Gotch’s attempt at going back to capture that same raw energy as Kimi Tsunagi Five M again, and while I can see how raw energy is certainly the vibe here, it doesn’t sound anything like Kimi Tsunagi Five M beyond that, especially in Gotch’s more tired vocal performances and behind the production which frankly sounds like it’s trying so hard to be raw that it ends up feeling a bit polished. Hey bands, here’s an idea: if you want to make your new album as raw as your first album was, how about you let an amateur produce it instead of a seasoned producer trying to make it sound like shit on purpose. It just never works.
The one big thing Wonder Future had going for it was this raw dissonance in its guitar work, and I think with better (read: more amateurish) production it actually could be significantly better of an album. Another benefit to the album was its length. At only 43 minutes, it’s not the worst album to listen through. There are still some serious highlights here like ‘Imomushi’ and its follow-up ‘Eien no Youko’ which are the first two songs on the tracklist that aren’t entirely dark and dissonant and wouldn’t feel too out of place on World World World or Magic Disk. The album’s closer ‘Opera Glasses’ however sees the band closing the album once again with a song that…doesn’t really feel like a closer. Feels like the album just kind of ends in the middle of it, as if left incomplete.
5/10, is Yusuke Nakamura’s absence a curse?
15. I’m Standing Here (2001)
Before Yusuke Nakamura and before the major record label, AKFG released two EPs that basically just sound like Weezer. This is one of them. The final track ‘E’ would reappear again in much higher quality on Kimi Tsunagi Five M, but much of what else is here is essentially just Weezer tribute and doesn’t make for an essential listening experience. All of the songs here are written in English, as well, something that band abandoned once going major. Its title track can be more enjoyably re-experienced on Feedback File, however the second track ‘Need Your Love’ is an incredibly fun and raw straight up punk rock song, the most traditionally punk rock the band has ever sounded.
4/10, pretty good if you want to hear a band trying to figure out how to sound like Weezer but too talented to not sound like themselves even this early.
16. The Time Past And I Could Not See You Again (2000)
Their very first EP. Very hard to find and not very good. Huh, wonder why. You guys like Weezer?
2/10, you guys like Weezer?
