About

Toca Toca Toca Dance, also known as Toca Toca Dance or Toca Toca Anime Dance, refers to a dance trend in which both real people and animated characters mimic the movements of anime dances to the song "Toca Toca" by Fly Project. The trend became prevalent on TikTok and YouTube as multiple Toca Toca memes and animations surfaced in early 2023.

Origin

On October 2nd, 2022, TikToker^[1] @waifuonfire posted an original animation to the song "Toca Toca" by Fly Project.^[2] The animation used various dancing clips from various animes, ranging from Jujutsu Kaisen to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, among others. Over the course of five months, the video received roughly 10.6 million plays and 1.1 million likes (shown below). Also, waifuonfire posted the video to their YouTube^[3] channel on the same day, where it received roughly 5 million views and 90,000 likes in the same time period.

On October 18th, 2022, TikToker^[4] @kotaroide posted a dance video in which he and his friend mimicked all of the dances in @waifuonfire's edit, earning roughly 5.8 million plays and 346,300 likes in five months (shown below, left). A few weeks later, on November 6th, 2022, TikToker^[5] @kotaroide posted another video, using @waifuonfire's TikTok^[6] sound but instead overlaying a new progression of anime dances to mimic. Over the course of four months 7.7 million plays and 529,200 likes (shown below, right).

Spread

TikToker^[5] @kotaroide's second video started an anime dance challenge that used the "Toca Toca" song and sound^[6] in which others also recreated the dance movements of @kotaroide's compilation. For instance, on November 20th, 2022, TikToker^[7] @ponpokopon000 posted an iteration with no reference video overlayed, earning roughly 7.2 million plays and 660,600 likes in four months (shown below, left). On December 30th, 2022, TikToker^[8] @mumeixxx posted an iteration with a reference video overlayed, earning roughly 3.6 million plays and 230,700 likes in three months (shown below, right).

Going into 2023, the trend spread to YouTube where many animators inserted their original characters or other, non-original characters into the dancing template. For instance, on February 11th, 2023, YouTuber^[9] @ho_salt posted an animation a part of the trend that showed multiple, original cat characters dancing along to the dances. Over the course of three weeks, the video received roughly 38 million views and 1.3 million likes (shown below).

The iterations continued to go viral in March 2023 as the original TikTok^[6] sound gained over 65,000 videos using it.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References