Sad Cat Dance

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About

Sad Cat Dance is a redraw dancing meme trend that itself is an imagining of events that take place within the Chainsaw Man manga. Though originally a spin-off of a spin-off, Sad Cat Dance grew into its own distinct exploitable meme format and reference for different artists to redraw on top of in the early 2020s.

Origin

On January 16th, 2021, the video game creator Benedique uploaded a video of a dancing game they created called "Chainsaw Man Dance Game" to YouTube,^[1] which featured the character Kobeni dancing in a Dance Dance Revolution clone while crying sadly. The video of the game accumulated over 3 million views in one year, fueled primarily by fans of the manga who were happy with a pivotal moment being shown in this format (shown below).

On November 18th, 2021, inspired by Ankha Zone, the creator Ha Anime^[2] uploaded a video titled "Not Kobeni dance, but let's still make her dance" featuring the character dancing in cat ears, with her movement being the basis behind the Sad Cat Dance meme. The "Not Kobeni" dance video quickly racked up 6 million views in 10 months (shown below).

Spread

On August 22nd, 2022, the artist Dokun27^[3] finished the groundwork of the meme with his version in which the song "Gypsy In My Mind" is used for the dancing segment where a female character reluctantly decides to dance with the cat ears on after being begged to. Dokun27's dance video received over 122,000 likes on Twitter in two weeks and inspired the redraw trend to continue (shown below).

와르자 슬픈고양이 댄스 (아인이 만들어줌) pic.twitter.com/2QyAas3N6I

— 왈도쿤 (@Dokun27) August 22, 2022

On September 7th, 2022, the Twitter artist Darkra^[4] posted a version of the meme in which a Night-Elf Druid from World of Warcraft doesn't need to have fake cat ears and a tail, as they are able to add their own, gaining over 1,500 likes in one day (shown below).

This druid doesn't need fake cat ears!OC: LulusaSong : never dull – gypsy in my mindAnimation: broncelete</a><br>Edition: <a href="https://twitter.com/crisisbeat4?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">crisisbeat4Based on : @Dokun27Art by me.#sadcatdance #druid pic.twitter.com/DHX03nsRGy

— Darkra-SFW (@Darkrasfw) September 7, 2022

Various Examples

Katie😿sad cat dance pic.twitter.com/7AbxNCHzyJ

— q (kyubumlee) <a href="https://twitter.com/kyubumlee/status/1562328383769481216?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 24, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">🙏<a href="https://twitter.com/ProjektMelody?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">ProjektMelody Does The Sad Cat Dance! #projektmelody #sadcatdance pic.twitter.com/9bn0BlfYTS
— BigBangstudio (@BigBangStudio69) September 2, 2022