Deja Vu — Takumi Fujiwara leaning on his white Toyota AE86 Trueno from Initial D anime

Deja Vu

2016viral videoclassic

Published August 17, 2026

Deja Vu is a 1999 Eurobeat song by Dave Rogers, made famous by the anime Initial D and later turned into a YouTube meme format built around looped or rewound clips that hit the chorus as if the viewer has seen the moment before.

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Overview

"Deja Vu" is a 1999 Italo-Eurobeat track by British vocalist Dave Rogers that got a second life on YouTube as the soundtrack to a loop-video meme1. The joke plays on the song title, footage rewinds, repeats, or cuts back on itself right as the chorus lands, giving the viewer the exact feeling of having watched the shot before2.

The song is welded in most viewers' minds to Initial D, the street-racing anime that used it during mountain-pass drift scenes3. That association means most "Deja Vu" edits either use Initial D footage directly or riff on the aesthetic of AE86 tofu deliveries and hairpin turns set to blaring Eurobeat4.

Origin & Background

Platform
Initial D anime (song source) / YouTube (viral spread)
Creator
Dave Rogers; MashAllPotatoes and Naaquh popularized the meme format
Date
2016

Dave Rogers first released "Deja Vu" on the compilation Super Eurobeat Presents Euromach 2 on November 10, 19991. Several months later, on January 20, 2000, the track was placed in episode 13 of Initial D Second Stage, giving it the anime association that later powered the meme3. The song was re-released on November 22, 2000 as part of the Initial D compilation "Super Eurobeat Presents Initial D Super Euro Best," cementing the pairing between the track and the show3.

How It Spread

The meme form took shape on YouTube in 2016. On April 18, 2016, YouTuber Naaquh posted "Eurobeat/Initial D WEBM Compilation #1," a collection of short clips scored with "Deja Vu" and other Eurobeat tracks that pulled in more than 644,000 views by January 20185.

Two months later, on June 11, 2016, YouTuber MashAllPotatoes uploaded "I've just been in this meme before," the video most credited with codifying the loop-back format where a clip snaps back on itself the moment the "Deja Vu" chorus hits2. It gathered around 273,000 views inside eighteen months2.

The format hit its widest audience on June 5, 2018, when YouTuber Aerofiles posted "Deja Vu meme compilation," a supercut of edits using the song4. The video crossed 6 million views within three years and is still the go-to reference clip when people talk about the meme4.

How to Use This Meme

A typical "Deja Vu" edit pairs any short video clip with the opening synth stab and chorus of the Dave Rogers track. The common convention is to loop the footage back to the start, rewind partway, or splice in a repeat cut right as the chorus lands, so the visual mirrors the song title4. Initial D drift footage is the classic pairing, but the format often includes unrelated video game, sports, or real-life clips too2.

Frequently Asked Questions