About

ICHI-NI-SAN Animations refers to a series of animations based on an animated video of an anthropomorphic furry character posing and rhythmically moving to the song "Tokyo" by Leat'eq. The video inspired a number of tributes mimicking its style in early 2021, peaking in mid-to-late February.

Origin

On January 24th, 2021, YouTuber^[1] _ Bäiley _, popular in the furry community for their original furry-related animations, uploaded an animated video made with the app FlipAClip in which an anthropomorphic furry character strikes various poses and moves rhythmically to Leat'eq's track "Tokyo,"^[2] which features an audio clip of someone counting to three in Japanese ("ichi, ni, san" meaning "one, two, three" in Japanese, animation shown below). The video gained over 227,000 views in roughly a month.

The animation quickly inspired animations mimicking the style and set to the same song, often also animated on FlipAClip, replacing _ Bäiley 's fursona with other fursonas or characters in general. For example, on January 25th YouTuber^[3] Fox_Girl uploaded a FlipAClip animation mimicking the original with a different fursona (shown below, left). On January 26th, YouTuber^[4] Zeruk uploaded a copycat animation using a fursona named Zeruk, garnering over 35,000 views in a month (shown below, right).

Spread

Over the next month, YouTubers continued to upload ICHI-NI-SAN animations to the site, some gaining considerable attention as the trend reached a peak throughout February. On February 4th, YouTuber^[6] Lemros uploaded an original version of the animation based on the Skephalo shipdom,^[7] garnering over 57,000 views in a month (shown below).

On February 11th, YouTuber^[5] Siege YT uploaded an original version of the animation, garnering over 118,000 views in three weeks (shown below, left). On February 16th, YouTuber^[8] Alice WoW uploaded a Friday Night Funkin' themed version of the animation, garnering over 211,000 views in two weeks (shown below, right).

The animations have also seen popularity on the Chinese video-sharing site Bilibili, many of which are reuploads.^[9][10]

Related Memes

Nya Arigato TikTok Dance Trend

At the same time the ICHI-NI-SAN animation became popular, so did a dance trend set to the same song on TikTok. On February 4th, 2021, TikToker^[11][12] @papadragun uploaded a video showing off a dance she made up to "Tokyo" by Leat'eq, as well as teaching others how to do it (shown below, left). The video gained over 14.6 million views in a month. Later that day, she uploaded another video doing the dance under an original sound so people could post their versions of the dance to it, garnering over 7 million views in the same span of time (shown below, right).

The sound became extremely popular over the course of February, with over 1.1 million videos set to it within the month (most popular examples shown below, left and right).

On February 6th, 2021, YouTuber^[13] Lillycats animation uploaded a video combining both trends, showing a furry performing the dance, garnering over 37,800 views in a month (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References