After yesterday's article in the tabloid "Shukan Bunshun," about an upcoming wave of dismissal for the idol group AKB48, the managers of the group have now made an official statement on the group's official blog.

Apparently, a lot of people immediately tried to get in contact with the managers to find out whether the rumors about the potential firing of 8 members was true, but the official statement has now completely denied that anything like that is going to happen. They wrote, "We do not plan to 'discharge' anyone from the group."

The whole incident seems like a common case of tabloids interpreting too much into the words of others. In the statement they continued to make clear that all they've ever talked about was "going back to the roots", but that didn't necessarily mean going back to a member count of 48 girls. Instead it means going back to "being idols you can meet".

Recently, many fans have voiced that AKB has strayed off this concept and became more like "idols you can't meet", due to the various side-activities of many of the original group members. It's still easy to meet research students and the members of SDN at their regular performances, but for AKB it seemed as if the priorities have shifted away from being close to their fans.

The organizers now simply want to try to restructure some elements of the group in order to become much closer to their fans again, but downsizing the group would obviously result in the exact opposite. Therefore fans can rest assured that none of the popular or underrated members are going to have to leave the group anytime in the near future.

Source: AKB48's Official Blog

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in.]