Pokédance

About

Pokédance, also known as the Pokemon Dance, is a dance created by The Pokémon Company in which participants twist their bodies from side to side while pointing, then shake their hips, to the beat of an original song by Yuki Honda, Tsukasa Kikuchi and Nanahira. The dance was revealed on Pokémon Day in late February 2024 when The Pokémon Company released an animated video in which several characters perform it with their Pokémon, sparking an IRL dance trend on TikTok and inspiring animation memes in which characters do the dance on YouTube and X / Twitter.

Origin

On February 27th, 2024, in celebration of Pokémon Day, The Pokémon Company posted an animation to YouTube^[1] and TikTok^[2] in which several generations of Pokémon dance the "Pokédance" alongside their trainers, garnering over 2.7 million views on the former and 23.6 million views on the latter in a month (shown below).

The credits for the video are listed in the description. The video includes animations by kantaro, mitarashi santa, USGMEN, Komugiko2000, QuickObake, ASCAN, kariya, misato. and alpha@. The video was directed by MimicryMeta and the dance was choreographed by Bunkei. The song was performed by Yuki Honda, sung by Nanahira and recorded and mixed by Tsukasa Kikuchi.

Spread

The video's original sound gained over 217,000 uses on TikTok over the next month as the dance gained viral spread, inspiring both IRL dance videos and reanimations with other characters. On February 27th, 2024, the @pokemon TikTok^[3] page posted a video of the K-pop group ENHYPEN doing the dance, garnering over 12 million views in a month.

On March 7th and 11th, TikTokers^[4][5] @nonoka2023 and @scarletsaya0831 posted videos set to the sound, the former depicting characters from Mashle doing the dance and the latter an IRL version of the dance, garnering over 5.2 million views and 16 million views, respectively, in three weeks (shown below, left and right).

On March 21st, X^[6] user @kofucchi posted an animation of Kikuri from Bocchi The Rock doing the dance, garnering over 15,000 likes in two weeks. On March 28th, YouTuber^[7] TW0NE posted an animation that gained over 52,000 views in three days.

On March 30th, 2024, X^[8] user @ialjnnn posted an animation of Frieren from Frieren: Beyond Journey's End doing the dance, garnering over 38,000 likes in two days (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References