Kenshi Yonezu live in London: A full-circle set for a new audience on first world tour

Kenshi Yonezu made his UK debut in London on Sunday March 30th, opening the western leg of his JUNK WORLD TOUR at a sold-out Eventim Apollo. For one of Japan’s biggest artists, it was a steep drop — from recent 55,000 capacity Tokyo Dome dates to just over 3,000 seated fans in a Grade II*-listed art deco theatre. But the shift suited him. Yonezu entered without fanfare, calm and composed, letting the staging and sound speak first. The room was smaller. The moment wasn’t.

The show began in near darkness, rain pattering through the speakers before a crash of thunder and the first thrum of ‘RED OUT’ jolted the crowd to attention. Horror-tinged visuals flooded the backdrop in crimson as Yonezu stood centre-stage, largely motionless. Movement came from elsewhere; the band, the lighting, the screen, the dancers. He remained a fixed point, the production orbiting around him.

A Quiet Kind of Charisma

That quiet detachment worked in his favour. Yonezu’s natural reclusiveness and awkwardness only added to his charm. When he did move — a spin, a glance, a point to the crowd — the response was explosive. “I love you”, one of his few English phrases of the night, was met with a deafening roar.

Despite his reserved presence, Yonezu was more talkative than expected. Speaking mostly in Japanese, with just a few hesitant phrases in English, he seemed at ease between songs. He shared thoughts and stories, including a past visit to the UK, where he bought a guitar only to lose it on the flight home. It was the kind of offbeat detail that made the night feel genuinely personal.

Each track was tightly staged, with lighting and visuals dialled to the mood. The smaller setup never felt like a compromise, just more concentrated. With the Eventim Apollo’s low stage and no barricade in sight, the front row must’ve felt less like a sold-out concert and more like a one-to-one.

The night’s first half leaned into easy-listening, mid-tempo cuts with jazz flourishes, like ‘Kanden’ and ‘LADY’, interspersed with more introspective slow burns. The bittersweet ‘Azalea’, a standalone single written for Netflix’s Beyond Goodbye, set a melancholic yet hopeful tone, carried by a lush arrangement and restrained vocal delivery. The sun-drenched ‘Sayonara, Mata Itsuka!’, his Asadora theme, followed. The bright, whimsical number was brought to life by dancers in traditional hakama, their movements echoing the lightness of the instrumentation.

Cinematic Worlds, Real Emotions

That shift led into a more cinematic stretch. ‘Chikyūgi (Spinning Globe)’, composed for The Boy and the Heron, played out against silhouetted animation of painterly landscapes — a haunting, orchestral ballad that sat comfortably in the Studio Ghibli universe. From there, ‘POST HUMAN’ dragged the room into mechanical ruin: smooth R&B buried beneath glitchy electronics, ambient noise, and bit-crushed textures that recalled the digital maximalism of Susumu Hirasawa. Yonezu’s falsetto faltered by design, accenting the track’s sense of tension and decay.

‘M87’, the theme for 2022’s Shin Ultraman, landed as one of the night’s most affecting performances. As cars floated over a post-apocalyptic skyline onscreen and headlights cut across the crowd, Yonezu stood still, letting the visuals carry the weight. The track’s calm build gave way to a chorus lifted by orchestral flourishes — triumphant, but never overblown.

That tension pivoted with ‘Lemon’, the track that arguably first brought Yonezu wider international attention. Written at the end of a tour and after his grandfather’s death, it sits between mourning and motion. Sorrowful lyrics meet a lilting, skipping rhythm. On stage, dancers held glowing spheres, moving slowly across an otherwise still stage. The song ended with Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment flashing onscreen. Not just a visual flourish, but a final echo of its reckoning with grief, memory, and what comes after.

‘Spirits of the Sea’ followed, led by its waltz-like tempo and drifting, dreamlike pull. Scenes from Children of the Sea, the 2019 anime it was written for, filled the screen in full colour and motion. The film may have divided audiences, but its visual grandeur was undeniable, and the song felt inseparable from it. Together, they created one of the evening’s most absorbing stretches, a moment that held the room without forcing it.

Full Circle: From Net Producer to Anime Icon

The energy snapped into focus in the final third. ‘Mainichi’ and ‘LOSER’ laid the groundwork, but ‘KICK BACK’, the Chainsaw Man opener and Yonezu’s biggest international hit, was the blowout. Twitchy, lurching, and loud, it became the first Japanese-language track to crack Spotify’s global Top 50, later going Gold via the RIAA. Live, it stayed unhinged to the end. Near the finish, Yonezu grabbed a handheld camera and sang straight into the lens, his face filling the screen in distorted close-up, dragging the crowd directly into his line of fire.

Without pause, he launched into his 2017 My Hero Academia opener, ‘Peace Sign’. As the intro landed, the floor flooded with raised hands forming the titular gesture. No prompting needed. Played back-to-back with ‘KICK BACK’, it was a snapshot of Yonezu’s anime-era rise: from cult favourite to global fixture.

That momentum rolled straight into ‘Donut Hole’, a full-circle moment for longtime fans. First released in 2013 under his Vocaloid producer alias Hachi, Yonezu performed his 2014 self-cover from his second album ‘YANKEE’, released during his shift from anonymous net producer to solo artist. On screen, the 2024 music video played: a shōnen-style anime where Vocaloids GUMI, Hatsune Miku, Megurine Luka and Kagamine Rin are junk collectors in a collapsing city. Paired with the track’s sprinting rhythm and emotionally knotted lyrics, it landed as both a nostalgia hit and a reminder of how deep his roots run.

“I’ll Come Back”

After a brief exit and instant encore chants, Yonezu returned with his two latest singles: ‘BOW AND ARROW’, written for the anime Medalist, and ‘Plazma’, tied to the Gundam franchise. Both tracks leaned into his DTM roots; crisp, synthetic, and sharply produced.

Before ‘Plazma’, Yonezu introduced the band. His guitarist stepped in as a kind of hypeman, speaking the most English of the night and calling Yonezu “perfect in every way”, before dubbing himself “one and only, super guitarist, hyper guitarist”. A quick back-and-forth about Big Ben and Harry Potter kept things light until someone in the crowd shouted, “Come back!”. Without missing a beat, Yonezu replied in Japanese, firm and clear: “I’ll come back”. The room erupted. It was a surprisingly passionate moment, quickly followed by a surprisingly human one, as he missed his cue for the next song. Grinning, he asked, “Give me one more chance”. The crowd didn’t hesitate. Like he ever needed to ask.

He closed with ‘LOST CORNER’, the title track of his sixth studio album, a brisk, buoyant track that was light on its feet. Funk guitars and a slick solo carried it forward, while the lyrics drifted between memory and change: reflections on cheap stereos, hangovers, and that guitar lost in Norfolk. He’d shared earlier that the album’s title was inspired by that Norfolk trip, prompted by Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, in which the region is described as a “lost corner” of England. As the final notes faded, he delivered the song’s, and the night’s, closing line: “Maa, sore wa sore de” (“Well, that’s it”).

A Gentle Close, A Lasting Impression

Kenshi Yonezu’s London debut didn’t hinge on scale or spectacle. It was precise, emotionally attuned, and stripped of excess. As part of a world tour that drew 440,000 fans across Asia, Europe, and North America, this stop felt like the exception: smaller, more intimate, and better off for it. In a room where every gesture landed, Yonezu didn’t overreach. He just showed up, and made the smallest venue on the tour feel like the one that mattered most.

Photography by Jiro Konami.

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