The Last Dance trend on TikTok: the Maretu song and where the meme started
That eerie waltz with two characters dancing on your For You page is 'The Last Dance'. The 2014 song behind it, how the format works and the best versions.
If your TikTok feed is suddenly full of two cartoon characters doing the same slow, slightly creepy dance, you have met “The Last Dance” trend. It is set to a 12-year-old song by the Japanese Vocaloid producer Maretu, and it has turned into one of the biggest fandom memes of the autumn, from anime edits to cosplayers dancing in their bedrooms.
What song is “The Last Dance”?
The track is called “fpd ff7 botsu 8”, a little-known piece Maretu uploaded to SoundCloud on 19 September 2014. “Botsu” roughly means a scrapped or rejected draft in Japanese, which fits: it was never a hit. That changed on 20 July 2026, when a YouTube user called InNirvanna re-uploaded the full version and it started spreading. Fans nicknamed it “The Last Dance”, and English-lyric covers made the name stick. One cover by TikTok creator @vinnmp4s, posted on 6 October, passed 3.3 million views.
Where the meme started
The earliest known example came on 14 August, when TikTok user fugashizzz._ paired the song with an animation of characters running along a turning wheel in front of a theatre backdrop. The real spark came on 28 August, when @amy_yayxd shared a ready-made animated background. Anyone could now drop their favourite characters into the scene, and that template alone pulled in about 6.8 million views.
What does it mean?
There is no hidden message. The format works because the music feels like a farewell waltz, so people use it for couples, best friends, rivals or characters saying goodbye. A sad goodbye in a cartoon, a ship from your favourite anime, a Phantom of the Opera tribute: the dance turns all of them into a tiny tragic scene.
The best versions
- The template by @amy_yayxd, the base most animations use.
- A Phantom of the Opera animation by @red.apple.piee, past 3 million views.
- The live-action turn: on 29 September a solo dancer captioned “With my favorite ghost” hit about 8.6 million views, and cosplayers of Undertale, Deltarune and Madoka Magica followed.
How to do it yourself
For the animated version, use one of the shared backgrounds or animation bases and place your two characters on it. For the live version, learn the short routine with a friend or sibling, and save the sound from a video you like so the timing matches. Pakistani drama fans have a ready-made cast for it: don’t be surprised if your favourite on-screen couple turns up on the wheel next.
The numbers above were correct at the time they were recorded and keep climbing.
