Arona Dance

About

Arona Dance is a series of dance animation memes based on an animation of Arona from the mobile game Blue Archive dancing to a low quality version of "SexyBack" by Justin Timberlake. The dancing animation is sourced from a video by YouTuber Jin_rey and was popularized on TikTok and YouTube in March 2024 when a TikToker set it to "SexyBack," inspiring further animations where other characters do the same dance.

Origin

On January 4th, 2024, YouTuber^[1] Jin_rey posted an animation based on the mobile game Blue Archive that ends with the character Arona, an in-game NPC, dancing on a monitor (shown below). The video gained over 800,000 views in three months.

On March 12th, TikToker^[2] @north.sus posted a video placing the animation over a low quality version of Justin Timberlake's song "SexyBack," garnering over 3.1 million views in a month (shown below).

Spread

The animation inspired a trend on TikTok and YouTube where other characters are animated doing the same dance to "SexyBack." For example, on March 27th, 2024, TikToker^[3] @chubicitah posted an animation of Aury doing the dance, garnering over 3.3 million views in a month (shown below, left). On April 3rd, TikToker^[4] @_.alwx0 posted an animation of a cat doing the dance, garnering over 3.4 million views in four weeks (shown below, right).

On April 16th, YouTuber^[5] Stamaki posted an edit of a scene from Blue Archive the Animation in which a character receives an Arona Dance video on their phone, garnering over 199,000 views in two weeks (shown below).

On April 23rd, TikToker^[6] @anythingbecomemoe posted a version of the meme where Pomni dances to the song, garnering over 200,000 views in a week (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References