AKB48 unpopular members leave, open up spots for new unpopular members

Creator and marketing mad scientist behind AKB48, Akimoto Yasushi, was quoted as saying, “The least popular members are holding us back and we need to get rid of them.” due to the less than stellar turn out for Oku Manami’s graduation announcement event.

Of course you know Atsuko Maeda, Tomomi Itano and Yuko Ohshima. He’s not talking about them. He’s talking about the huge chorus of unknowns behind them who do little more than create a cheerleader effect that gets so many otaku hearts fluttering.

Upon hearing this news, quite a few of the “unpopular members” as they are referred to, said they would rather quit than be cut, and many have moved themselves straight up the list and next to “graduate”.

Akimoto, the man and not the hot captain of Team K Sayaka Akimoto, used the concept of “meeting real idols daily” when he started AKB48. With that in mind, the AKB theater was opened in Akihabara and AKB shows can been seen daily there. As one could imagine, with a daily show the heavy hitters of AKB’s supple line up won’t be in attendance, so it takes these less popular members to keep the day to day business afloat.

The other problem being if the “unpopulars” all decide to leave at once, that leaves no room for the headliners to move on and graduate as they move on to other projects. In order to try and counter this kind of problem, at the most recent AKB48 new member auditions more trainees were accepted than usual and seem to be rushing through their “initiation” of sorts. Once they are full fledged members, the next in line to graduate can start to leave.

Aside from a few very dedicated fans, does a large changing of the guard have that much affect on the rest of us? Sorry, but no. We can still watch the “Heavy Rotation” video with the girls in their lingerie and the sound turned down as we try to guess who the next Riko Yamaguchi is. Sorry girls, I hardly knew you…because you were basically backdrop.