AKB48 has four teams now! What?

Yep you heard that right. At the end of today's Himawari-gumi 1st stage [Boku no Taiyou] performance in AKB48's Minogashita Kimitachi e revival concert, AKB48 Theater Manager Togasaki Tomonobu announced that a 4th Team will be created. The new team will be unoriginally called "Team 4"

Team 4 will have a total of 14 members: the 10 promoted Kenkyuuseis who were left team-less as well as 4 more Kenkyuusei. The current members of Team 4 are:

From 9th gen Kenkyuusei
Shimada Haruka
Shimazaki Haruka
Oba Mina
Takeuchi Miyu
Nakamura Mariko
Yamauchi Suzuran
Nagao Mariya
Mori Anna
From 10th gen Kenkyuusei
Ichikawa Miori
Nakamata Shiori

TEAM 4

It has been announced that Team 4 will start performing their own stage (unspecified if original stage or reviving a past stage) sometime soon.

Well congratulations to the 10 members of Team 4. A very long overdue announcement, finally ending the issue of the 10 teamless girls. But this announcement brings more questions than answers. Now that there is a Team 4, will there be a "Team 8" too? Will AKB48 even retain its name or change it's numbering? Is this Team permanent, or just a temporary step in between Kenkyuusei and the main group? Will the other OOO48 groups get a 4th and 5th Team too? What will happen to the "3 main teams and 1 trainee team" format that they have been selling?

And what will happen to the ORIGINAL TEAM 4? You know, the one comprised of Sato Amina, Kuramochi Asuka, Naruse Risa and Deguchi Aki.