About

Dancing Pikachu Army refers to videos of a dance troupe in large, inflatable costumes of the Pokémon Pikachu. Though widely considered cute, videos of their dances and performances have been remixed such that it appears as though the Pikachu are dancing to different songs to humorous effect.

Origin

The dancing Pikachu army was first introduced in Yokohama, Japan's "An Outbreak of Pikachu" summer event in 2014, where the troupe performed dances, marches, and took photographs with the attendees.^[1] There, the troupe of Pikachu was small, but in future festivals, the number of Pikachu would grow to over 1,000.

Spread

The event gained significantly more buzz the following year, as the troupe of dancing Pikachu began to appear at more events throughout Asia. In 2015, they unveiled the "Pikachu Dance" set to Flo Rida's "I Don't Like It, I Love It" ft. Robin Thicke and Verdine White (shown below, top). These videos would become fodder for popular remix videos in which the Pikachu are seen dancing to different music, including Carly Rae Jepsen's "Run Away With Me" (shown below, bottom left) and You Reposted In The Wrong Neighborhood (shown below, bottom right).

Another popular remix format is to take video of the Pikachu marching in line (shown below, top left) and change the music such that the scene looks sinister. Popular songs paired with the video include The Imperial March Star Wars (below, top right), The Hell March from Command and Conquer: Red Alert (below, bottom left), and Soviet war music (below, bottom right).

Pikachu Deflategate

On April 30th, 2017, YouTube user Green Lime uploaded a video of the troupe performing at the World Pokémon Festival in Songdo, South Korea. During the video, the costume of the front Pikachu begins to deflate, prompting an event staffer to rush onto the stage to grab the Pikachu. He is followed by event security to follow and grab the staffer, who did not realize he was working with the Pikachu.^[2]

The video generated a large amount of press coverage. It was first covered by The Verge^[3] on May 5th, and the Washington Post,^[1] NPR,^[2] and more followed.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References