Sora Tanka
As a lifelong otaku and pop culture enthusiast, I explore underground animation, vintage cinema, and the hidden gems of streaming media — and hunt down rare retro VHS tapes in my spare time. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, X/Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Published: September 4, 2026 | 5 min read | Last updated: September 4, 2026
A Romanian Eurodance banger from 2013. A TikToker who spent hours hand-cutting animated dance clips frame by frame. And somewhere between those two things, one of the most contagious viral anime trends the internet has ever produced. The Toca Toca anime dance — or Toca Toca anime AMV — swept TikTok and YouTube starting in late 2022, racking up tens of millions of views and spawning thousands of recreations, remixes, and spin-offs. If you've seen anime characters from Jujutsu Kaisen, Naruto, and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure all busting the same moves in perfect sync — and you couldn't stop watching — you've already experienced it. This piece breaks down exactly how it happened, who made it, every anime series featured, and where to find the best edits right now.
⚡ Quick Answer
The Toca Toca anime dance is a viral trend set to Fly Project's 2013 song "Toca Toca," featuring animated clips of characters dancing across dozens of anime series. It was originally created by TikToker @waifuonfire in October 2022 and exploded to over 10 million TikTok plays.
What Is "Toca Toca"? The Song Behind the Trend
Here's what most people watching the anime edits don't know: the song has absolutely nothing to do with anime. "Toca Toca" was released on 18 September 2013 by Fly Project, a Romanian electronic dance duo from Bucharest formed in 2005 by producers Tudor Ionescu and Dan Deneș. The track is a bilingual Latin dance–Eurodance hybrid sung in English and Spanish, with the chorus performed by Romanian jazz singer Irina Sârbu.
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The song became a significant European club hit after being included in the Kontor House of House, Vol. 19 dance compilation in early 2014. It reached the top 10 in France, charting for 24 consecutive weeks, and hit #17 in Spain's PROMUSICAE chart. It also performed well in Russia, Italy, and Latin America. By all rights, it should have faded into 2010s dance music nostalgia — but the internet had other plans.
📊 Key Stat: "Toca Toca" by Fly Project stayed in the French SNEP chart for 24 weeks and reached #17 on Spain's PROMUSICAE — before anime fans rediscovered it nearly a decade later and made it even bigger than its original run.
Who Made the Original Toca Toca Anime AMV?
On October 2nd, 2022, TikToker @waifuonfire uploaded what would become the spark for the entire phenomenon. The edit was a meticulously assembled compilation of anime dance scenes — each character's movement perfectly synced to a different beat drop or musical cue in the "Toca Toca" track. Think of it like a perfectly executed playlist shuffle: Naruto, then JoJo, then Love Live, each hitting exactly at the right moment.
The creator described the process themselves in a comment that went nearly as viral as the video: "You don't want to even know how much time I did spend cutting them from the original backgrounds but the result is beyond all my expectations!" That manual precision — frame-by-frame cutting of anime characters from their original backgrounds — is exactly what separates this edit from the hundreds of lazy AMVs that flood the platform weekly.
The numbers backed up the effort. Within five months, the TikTok alone accumulated roughly 10.6 million plays and 1.1 million likes. The simultaneous YouTube upload pulled another 5 million views and 90,000 likes in the same period.
How Did the Toca Toca Anime Dance Trend Spread So Fast?
What separates Toca Toca from the average viral AMV is a self-replicating loop of engagement. Within two weeks of the original post, Japanese TikToker @kotaroide posted a "real person" response — he and a friend physically mimicked every dance move from the animated compilation in live action. That video hit roughly 5.8 million plays and 346,000 likes. He followed up three weeks later with a second version using a new progression of dances, pulling 7.7 million plays and 529,000 likes. The pattern set by that second video — recreate the moves, pick your own anime sequence — was the template that broke the trend open.
By November 2022, other TikTokers were posting their own versions without even overlaying the reference. The original TikTok sound was being used to soundtrack thousands of new takes, from cosplayers to high school dance clubs to professional animators. The trend accelerated into 2023: in February, YouTuber @ho_salt posted a completely original animation using the Toca Toca template, this time with hand-drawn cat characters. That video racked up roughly 38 million views and 1.3 million likes in just three weeks — one of the fastest-rising anime animation clips of that year. By March 2023, the original TikTok sound had been used in over 65,000 videos.
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"THE BEST anime dancing video ever!"
💡 Pro Tip: If you want to make your own Toca Toca-style AMV, the official 4K Dance Template version (YouTube ID: 2DFKIllyMOY) was specifically released with the caption "Feel free to download and use it for your dance videos." Creators have used it as a base to swap in their own characters.
Every Anime Series Featured in the Toca Toca Dance Video
The extended version of the AMV is essentially a greatest-hits reel of anime dance moments. Here's a breakdown of the confirmed series featured across the original and extended edits:
| Anime Series | Genre |
|---|---|
| Jujutsu Kaisen | Action / Supernatural |
| JoJo's Bizarre Adventure | Action / Adventure |
| Naruto | Action / Shonen |
| K-ON! | Music / Slice of Life |
| Love Live | Music / Idol |
| My Hero Academia | Superhero / Shonen |
| Chainsaw Man | Action / Dark Fantasy |
| Kaguya-sama: Love Is War | Romantic Comedy |
| Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid | Fantasy / Comedy |
| Konosuba | Isekai / Comedy |
| One Piece | Adventure / Shonen |
| Darling in the FranXX | Mecha / Romance |
| Fairy Tail | Magic / Adventure |
| Nichijou (My Ordinary Life) | Slice of Life / Comedy |
| Space Dandy | Sci-Fi / Comedy |
| The Quintessential Quintuplets | Harem / Romance |
| Carole & Tuesday | Music / Sci-Fi |
| Mashle: Magic and Muscles | Comedy / Action |
The curation is smarter than it looks. The edit deliberately mixes long-running giants like Naruto and One Piece with newer seasonal hits like Jujutsu Kaisen and Chainsaw Man. That spread means almost any anime fan — regardless of their era of entry into the hobby — spots at least one familiar face in the first few seconds and can't look away.
Why Does the Toca Toca Anime Dance Actually Work So Well?
I've watched a lot of anime AMVs. Like, a lot — it's a hazard of the job when you write about this stuff professionally. Most of them follow the same formula: dramatic shonen fight scenes cut to a Linkin Park track, or melancholy romance clips set to some lo-fi beat. They hit a ceiling because they're targeting one feeling, one audience, one show.
What @waifuonfire understood — whether by instinct or by craft — is that the Toca Toca edit works because it turns anime itself into the punchline. The joke isn't any single show. The joke is that anime characters from completely different universes, with completely different art styles and tones, all happen to have moments where they are absolutely losing their minds dancing. Sakura from Naruto doing her thing next to the Kaguya-sama ED dance next to Space Dandy groving in a literal space club — the contrast is the content. The song's relentless upbeat energy just seals it.
There's also a "spot the reference" dimension that keeps rewatching rewarding. I lost count of how many times I hit replay just to catch a blink-and-you'll-miss-it snippet from Nichijou's background animations. That's the same loop mechanic that makes "every Tarantino movie reference" compilations endlessly watchable. The internet runs on that stuff.
Notable Toca Toca Moments: From VAs to Spin-Offs
The trend generated some memorable milestones beyond view counts. Perhaps the most unexpected was when Mamoru Miyano — the voice actor behind Light Yagami in Death Note — posted his own Toca Toca dance to TikTok, performing the moves himself. A serious dramatic VA dancing to a Romanian Eurodance banger in 2023 is the kind of crossover content that perfectly encapsulates what the internet does best.
The trend also spread hard across fandom niches outside of anime: Sonic the Hedgehog edits, Helluva Boss fan animations, My Little Pony recuts, and even country-themed "Countryhumans" versions all appeared using the Toca Toca template. When a trend can absorb completely unrelated fandoms without losing coherence, that's the sign of something with genuine staying power as a format.
📊 Key Stat: A secondary Toca Toca animation by YouTuber @ho_salt — using entirely original cat characters rather than any existing anime — pulled roughly 38 million views and 1.3 million likes in its first three weeks, demonstrating that the format itself had become more viral than any specific source material.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Toca Toca anime dance?
The Toca Toca anime dance is a viral trend in which animated clips of characters dancing from dozens of different anime series are edited together in sync to "Toca Toca" by Romanian duo Fly Project. It originated on TikTok in October 2022 and spread to YouTube, spawning tens of thousands of recreations and spin-offs by early 2023.
Who made the original Toca Toca anime AMV edit?
The original edit was created by TikToker @waifuonfire, who posted it on October 2nd, 2022. The creator manually cut anime dance clips from their original backgrounds frame-by-frame to create the seamless compilation. The TikTok version accumulated roughly 10.6 million plays and 1.1 million likes within five months.
What song is used in the Toca Toca anime dance?
The song is "Toca Toca" by Fly Project, a Romanian Eurodance duo from Bucharest. It was released on September 18, 2013, on Roton Records and became a club hit across Europe in 2014. The track is a bilingual Latin dance song sung in English and Spanish, with vocals by Romanian jazz singer Irina Sârbu.
Which anime shows appear in the Toca Toca dance video?
The extended version features over 18 anime series, including Jujutsu Kaisen, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Naruto, K-ON!, Love Live, My Hero Academia, Chainsaw Man, Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, Konosuba, One Piece, Darling in the FranXX, Fairy Tail, Nichijou, Space Dandy, The Quintessential Quintuplets, Carole & Tuesday, and Mashle: Magic and Muscles.
How did the Toca Toca dance trend go viral on TikTok?
After @waifuonfire posted the original edit, TikToker @kotaroide posted a live-action version mimicking every dance move, which generated millions of plays. That inspired a participation loop: other creators posted their own recreations using the same TikTok sound, which eventually exceeded 65,000 videos by March 2023 and spread to YouTube animators producing original character edits.
Where can I watch the best Toca Toca anime dance AMVs?
The best place to start is YouTube, where several high-quality versions live. Search "Toca Toca anime dance" to find the original by @waifuonfire, the extended full version, and the popular 4K Dance Template. TikTok remains active with thousands of recreations under the hashtags #tocatoca, #tocatocadance, and #animedance.
The Bottom Line
The Toca Toca anime dance is one of those trends where everything aligned perfectly: a piece of music that nobody in the anime community had claimed yet, a creator with the patience to execute a technically demanding edit, and a format that practically invited participation. From @waifuonfire's October 2022 TikTok to 38-million-view YouTube animations three months later, the trend demonstrated that the best viral content isn't just watched — it's remixed, recreated, and re-remixed until it becomes a genre unto itself.
Whether you're here as a binge-watcher looking for your next rabbit hole or a content creator eyeing a format to riff on, the Toca Toca edit universe has something for you. Start with the original, drop into the 4K template version, and then lose an afternoon in the rabbit hole of fan-made variations. You've been warned.
📚 Sources & References
- Toca Toca Toca Dance — Know Your Meme, Owen Carry, March 2023
- Toca-Toca — Wikipedia, Single by Fly Project (Released September 18, 2013)
- Fly Project — Wikipedia, Romanian dance group biography
- Best Anime Dancing Video EVER – Fly Project – Toca Toca — waifuonfire on YouTube
- Anime [amv]- Toca Toca Official Music Video 4K (Dance Template) — YouTube
- Light Yagami's VA Mamoru Miyano Goes Viral with Toca Toca TikTok Video — Sportskeeda
