One of the biggest reasons to keep coming back to Fuji Rock year after year is to watch artists grow. In a bubble, one individual gathering out in Naeba can be a blast — lots of music, chance to to be surrounded by verdant mountains, ample supply of booze — but the real thrill of making this a regular part of your life is seeing how everything changes. When I first came to Fuji Rock in 2012, the crowd demographics skewed towards folks in their 20s and early 30s, and the Orange Court stage still existed. And my favorite performance came from the Japanese band Sakanaction, which delivered an anthemic mix of rock and dance music from the White Stage, managing that feel of a whole crowd coming together to lose it to the same music that makes life at a festival worth it. It was the type of show that made me think they should be on the Green Stage in a few years, ready for a new challenge.

Now it’s 2018, the amount of toddlers in Naeba this weekend is genuinely eye-opening, the geography of the grounds has changed and Sakanaction played as the penultimate act on the Green Stage Friday night. Plenty of acts who deliver a sparkplug set at Fuji Rock never jump up to the bigger spots at the fest, but here was a case where one did just that. Of course I had to get as close as I could to the front.

I went into this set with high expectations — the aforementioned White Stage gig six years back probably did more to sell me on Fuji Rock as a yearly must-visit than anything else, so them leveling up meant they had to really deliver this year. After an intro mixing video of the ocean with monochrome shots of the city, the band came out and pivoted towards subdued songs such as “mellow” and “enough,” bordering on ballads. This felt like a group forcing themselves to adjust to a brighter spotlight and bigger audience, opting for something all the folks sitting in chairs could enjoy as well as the folks crowded towards the front. Early on, it felt too safe and lacked an energy that could get everyone going.

But it ended up being a stroke of pacing genius, because all those slow numbers made the eventual release all the better. Each subsequent song saw Sakanaction up the tempo just a little bit, finally boiling over with the call-and-response of “Yoru no Odoriko,” wherein everyone up front at the Green Stage gave in to bobbing around and screaming the words right back at Ichiro Yamaguchi and the rest of the band. From there, it was a hit parade — Sakanaction has set themselves apart in the Japanese rock scene thanks to how they meld arena-eyeing rock with nervy dance music, and the back stretch of their Fuji set saw them hit on all the songs that pull this balance off just right. The rumbling funk of “Identity” proved to be the perfect segue into the Underworld-indebted “Rookie,” complete with a planetarium’s worth of green lasers shooting off. The band even nodded to their electronic side for the first half of “Music,” everyone standing behind a table loaded with gear and a MacBook, which made for a nice nod to the fact field-filling music can be made on a laptop. Still, when they stepped back to their instruments and ripped into the song’s final stretch. The crowd lost it.

Many moments felt like nods to that 2012 show, but just bigger. But it all felt right, and the Friday night set — my highlight for the first day — confirmed that Sakanaction deserve to be placed that high up on the bill. And when they ripped into their biggest hit, the Showa-flavored “Shin Takarajima,” they delivered one of those rare fest moments where everyone is just losing it to a shared number. Even better — it was the sound of a band hitting on all of their big-stage potential.