On December 8th, AKB48 held a special stage at the AKB48 Theater to celebrate their 5th year anniversary! A total of 82 girls showed up for the event, which if we broke down, included all of the AKB48 members, 16 research members, 5 SDN48 members, and 13 graduated members. Did we forget to mention the partridge in the pear tree?
For the opening act, 16 former members of ‘team A’ appeared on stage dressed in the very same costumes they wore 5 years ago, and subsequently performed their very first song, “PARTY ga Hajimaruyo“. Back when they started, there were only 7 people in audience; but 5 years later, they sang to a full house! These girls performed a total of 11 songs including “Chance no Junban“, which was released on the same day as the concert.
8 research students were promoted as members during the concert. Although it hasn’t been revealed as to which team they’ve been designated to, the lucky qualifying students are: Ohba Mina, Shimazaki Haruka, Shimada Haruka, Takeuchi Miyu, Nagao Mariya, Nakamura Mariko, Mori Anna, and Yamauchi Suzuran. With this promotion, AKB48 now consists of 56 members!
Will they be called “AKB56″…? Hm, not quite sure how it fits but we’re going to bet that these girls are going to still going to reign the J-pop scene no matter how many members they add on.
source: tokyohive
