AKB48 adds 4th team

During Himawari H1 revival stage AKB48 announced the formation of a 4th team. The 4th team will be called Team 4 and will consist of 10 research students who were recently promoted. The team will consist of the following members:

Shimada Haruka

Shimazaki Haruka
Oba Mina
Takeuchi Miyu
Nakamura Mariko
Yamauchi Suzuran
Nagao Mariya
Mori Anna
Ichikawa Miori
Nakamata Shiori


Since a lot of research students have been added without a team, most fans have been speculating that there was going to be members graduationg. But that's obviously not the case. I'm a little shocked to see AKB48 adding another team. Mostly because with the addition of this team, that bring AKB48 up to 58 members. Which kind of throws off their name now. I also wonder if this means the other groups will add Team 4. They would have to follow what SKE48 did with their Team E, and name then Team 4II, Team 4III, etc. And I also wonder if they will add a Team 8. If they do and each Team has a full Team, that will bring AKB48 up to 80 members. Which would be insanly huge and a little ridiculous.

I'm a little thrown off by all of this. I understand wanting to include Research Students to the mix because they have a lot of talent, but I'm not sure they had to add another Team to do so. They could have just put them in a completely new group, or have them release another single. I also don't know if this is the best idea for AKB48. If they did add full Team 4 and Team 8 and were at 80 members and had the other 48 groups follow suit, I think a lot of fans would get tired of the whole franchise. It would absolutely be too much of a good thing. Because if every 48 group beacame that huge, there would be 320 official 48 group members plus Research Students. Which would make the 48 group franchise burn out quicker than intended.


But this is all speculation. And just because AKB48 adds a Team 4 doesn't mean another group will and it doesn't mean they will add a Team 8. This is obviously just a "what if" situation. But in responce to that, could you imagine if it really did happen? 320 members is astronomical. I sure hope management knows what they are doing with this Team 4.