Toca Toca

Origin

The song is "Toca Toca" by the Romanian group Fly Project. Recorded at the Fly Records studio in late 2012, it was released on September 18th, 2013. It became a meme nine years after that release.

The trigger was an edit posted on October 2nd, 2022 by the TikTok user @waifuonfire, who assembled dance scenes from a range of anime — from Jujutsu Kaisen to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure — and cut them to the song. According to Know Your Meme's account, that video drew roughly 10.6 million plays and 1.1 million likes over five months.

Every ingredient, in other words, already existed. A European dance track nearly a decade old and dance scenes from unrelated anime, cut to the beat — the only new thing is the edit itself.

Spread

From early 2023, edits and animations in the same format poured onto TikTok and YouTube. By March 2023, more than 65,000 videos were using the original sound.

It spread along two tracks. One is editing existing anime footage to the song; the other is drawing characters performing the dance from scratch. The latter let characters with no dance scene in their source material take part, which widened the trend considerably on the fan art side.

Live-action versions circulated alongside them, with people performing the same movements themselves. Animation and live action mixing under one song is what characterized this trend.

How it is used

• As edits and reanimations putting a favorite character through the dance
• As compilation videos gathering dance scenes from many works under one track
• As a short-form challenge performing the moves oneself
• As background music signalling high spirits

Sources

• Know Your Meme, "Toca Toca Toca Dance" — the October 2nd, 2022 @waifuonfire edit and its figures, the spread in early 2023, and the 65,000-plus videos using the sound by March 2023
• Wikipedia, "Toca-Toca" — the Fly Project song, released September 18th, 2013 and recorded in late 2012