Summary

Cat Breakdancing is a viral video of gameplay from SAKURA School Simulator showing a cat breakdancing to the song "Only You" by Intense while a schoolgirl watches. First going viral on TikTok, the clip gained virality as a redraw reference for fan animations in July 2022 with animators replacing the cat and the girl with various characters.

Origin

Prior to February 12th, 2022, TikToker @g4t0cu1n (@nwxxmw) uploaded a clip from the 2018 video game SAKURA School Simulator in which a tuxedo cat breakdances in front of a schoolgirl, with the video set to "Shake" by iShowSpeed. On February 13th, TikToker^[1] @ilokied reuploaded the clip (shown below).

On February 12th, TikToker^[2] @vfxbabiiy then posted the earliest found edit of the video, adding a disco lights effect. On March 20th, 2022, Twitter^[3] user @neonvectors posted a version in which the music was changed to her own, with the video gaining over 460 views in four months (shown below).

Yoo this cat vibing to my music pic.twitter.com/PwFaOJGqkX

— Neon V 💘 (@neonvectors) March 21, 2022

On March 22nd, 2022, YouTuber^[15] Hello nathaniel uploaded another version of the video, this time set to "Only You" by Intense, claiming that they took it from a Telegram meme page and edited it. The upload gained over 276,000 views in four months (seen below). On April 2nd, 2022, YouTuber^[4] Swept uploaded a shorter version of the same video, incorrectly describing it as Sims 4 footage. The upload received over 2.4 million views in three months.

Spread

On April 3rd, 2022, Twitter^[5] user @rintaichou reuploaded the clip, with the video gaining over 4,700 views, 170 retweets and 560 likes in three months.

On May 1st, 2022, YouTuber^[6] milkbox posted the earliest edit in which the cat was replaced with another character, a Jerma985 edit that accumulated over 25,400 views in two months (shown below, left). On May 28th, the YouTube^[7] channel Hi-spec productions uploaded a reanimated version titled "Blender 3.0 – cat breakdance meme" (shown below, right). The video gained 75,900 views in six weeks.

On June 4th, YouTuber^[8] VΞGΛ uploaded an edit titled "Cat breakdancing, but the girl too." The video received over 807,000 views in one month (shown below, left). On June 11th, YouTuber^[9] Feyrirx uploaded a better-synched version of the edit that gained over 1.4 million views in one month (shown below, right.)

Starting in mid-June 2022, the video inspired more fan animations that used it as a reference. For example, on June 12th, 2022, YouTuber^[10] Mishimox posted an edit that gained over 5,100 views in one month. On June 23rd, 2022, Twitter^[11] user @annoying_flower posted a Hollow Knight animation that received over 1.9 million views, 40,600 retweets and 173,000 likes in three weeks, popularizing the format on Twitter (shown below).

sealed siblings #hollowknight pic.twitter.com/Xh5vkAM5Jd

— AnnoyingFlower (@annoying_flower) June 23, 2022

The format achieved virality on Twitter in early July 2022 with the Disco Elysium,^[12] Garfield ^[13] and Undertale ^[14] versions gaining over 903,000 views, 1.4 million views and 540,000 views in a week, respectively.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References