Aigon’s domain reports the news. It seems that team K member Hayano Kaoru intends to graduate from AKB48 . Aigon feels that the recent rush of graduations is getting out of hand. By my count, 3 girls have announced graduations within the last month (Hayano + 2 team A members) and if you add that to the graduation of 5 team A members, and two recent graduations and one “voluntary” demotion of team B members (have I got them all?), we’re talking about 11 girls voluntarily leaving their teams within a handful of months. It raises a lot of questions. What does this mean for the future of AKB48 (fan loss? out with the old and in with the new, younger research students?).
What I really wonder is, what does this say about the working conditions of the AKB48 girls? I mean, don’t hate me AKB48 fans, but if so many of them are so eager to leave recently, doesn’t that seem to indicate that an awful lot of them are becoming unhappy with their work?
Comment by Julia — 2009/03/01 @ 1:46 am
Not really. With the number of girls in AKB48, the ratio of graduates to remaining members can’t be THAT off from…well, yes, the number of graduations recently has been particularly high. I mean, I don’t deny that. When I see a new post in the news thread on the Stage 48 forum, I almost expect it to be announcing another graduation. I stayed off the forum for a couple of days and said “Someone will have announced their graduation by the time I get back”…and someone had. But my point is that there are so many girls that so many of them leaving doesn’t necessarily mean AKB girls have it tough. It’s still just a fraction of the members of a huge group who have left/are leaving, and the majority of them have been around the group for a long time and have been consistently pushed to the background during that time, with only a few exceptions.
As for the ratio and the sheer size of AKB, that can’t be compared to H!P as a whole over the years because the Elder Club is just…weird. Dinner shows? I don’t get what they’ve been DOING all these years. I don’t know why none of them graduated sooner, so yeah, it’s a different story.
This may not be coherent, but it’s late at night, so that’ll be my excuse.
Comment by celestia_414 — 2009/03/01 @ 1:52 am
They’re big, but they’ve lost a full quarter of their membership in about half a year. (12/48)
If MM, Berryz, and C-ute (the most active part of H!P) had lost a quarter of their membership in the last half year, that would mean about 6 girls leaving. That would be HUGE. In reality, none of them have left within the last 2 years or so.