Nya Arigato Dance

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Part of a series on TikTok. [View Related Entries]

About

Nya Arigato Dance refers to a dance trend set to the electronic song "Tokyo" by Leat'eq, likely based loosely on a cinematic from the anime-style visual novel Food Girls set to the same song. The dance was popular on TikTok in February 2021 at the same time as the ICHI-NI-SAN animation trend, also set to "Tokyo."

Origin

On May 12th, 2018, electronic music producer Leat'eq released the song "Tokyo." It was released that day by Lear'eq's label, Diversity, on YouTube,^[1] garnering over 1.2 million views in just under three years (shown below).

On December 9th, YouTuber^[2] Zonicky uploaded a video of a cinematic from visual novel Food Girls^[3] titled, "Nya! arigato (You can eat the girl)" set to "Tokyo" in which a series of anime girls dance and pose along to the song, garnering over 257,000 views in two years (shown below). The video was reuploaded to YouTube^[4]^[5] a number of times, with multiple uploads gaining over a million views by March 2021.

On February 4th, 2021, TikToker^[6]^[7] @papadragun uploaded a video tutorial showing off a dance she made up to "Tokyo" by Leat'eq, as well as teaching others how to do it (shown below, left). Part of the dance involves putting your hands up behind your head like cat ears, similar to how the character in the Food Girls animation does, possibly suggesting the dance is inspired by the video. Her dance 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).

Spread

The dance trend took off quickly on TikTok as videos of users performing it began going viral, resulting in over 1.1 million videos using @papadragun's original sound in a month. On February 5th, TikToker^[10] @zhi.binggg uploaded a video performing the dance, garnering over 12.3 million views in a month (shown below, left). On February 7th, TikToker^[11] @yskaela performed the dance, garnering over 6 million views in roughly the same span of time (shown below, right).

On that same day, YouTuber nono memes uploaded a compilation of "Nya Arigato" videos, garnering over 424,000 views in a month (shown below).

On February 12th, famous TikToker^[8] Bella Poarch posted a video performing the dance, garnering over 26.2 million views in three weeks (shown below). On the same day, TikTok Malaysia's Facebook^[9] page posted a compilation video of "Nya Arigato" videos advertising them as the "latest dance trend," garnering over 600 reactions in the same span of time.

ICHI-NI-SAN Animations

On January 24th, 2021, YouTuber^[12] 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 "Tokyo," 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 video quickly inspired animations mimicking the style set to the same song, often also animated on FlipAClip, replacing _ Bäiley _'s fursona with other fursonas or characters in general (examples shown below, left and right).^[13]^[14]

On February 6th, 2021, YouTuber^[15] Lillycats animation uploaded a video combining both trends, showing a furry performing the dance, garnering over 37,800 views in a month (shown below).