Talk:Academy City/@comment-3969505-20140726090043/@comment-108.4.217.57-20190802054113

I have thought the same. The story is lacking in many areas. The author can tell a pretty cool story about magic and all these crazy fights, but really fail at actual science and geopolitics.

It really doesn't matter how advanced AC actually is. Its a tiny landlocked country. There's no way for it to maintain a fucntioning economy if Japan (or any nation with a stronger navy than Japan) one day decides to embargo/blockade Academy City. AC have no access to the ocean for freight transport, they also have to go through Japanese air space for cargo aircraft, and all roads have to go through Japnaese highway system. Academy city can't trade with anyone without Japan allowing them to. Without trade, AC is not even a threat.

AC is about as big as metropolitan Tokyo, which have little to no natural resources, and given its small size, have little to no industiral capacity. Even if it was a industrial city, there's not enough working population to match the output of just the New York State. The city also lacks any argicultural capability and all water source(ie. rivers) comes from Japan. All of which can be cut off without even stepping on to AC. Without Japan, AC will crumble economically, starve, and just wither away in a month. The city cannot even sustain itself.

AC can't even wage a war at all. 80% of their populaiton is underaged kids with no military experience, and these students aren't even CITIZENS! They are mostly students studying abroad at Academy City and as such have no national identify for this city. Academy City, cannot even produce its own weaposn as its primarily a academic and research based city. It'll probably take weeks to make a single tank or mecha. The only way for it to maintain military equipment is providing the design for outside countries to produce it FOR THEM. Japan can easily cut off their ability to procure such hardware. Academy City cannot feasible maintain anything larger than a police force.

Lastly, whatever military they do have would get eliminated on the first day if Japan or US is opposing them. Any airfield AC have is in direct strikign distance by japan. I don't care if they have hypersonic bobmers capable of cutting cities in half. They won't be able to take off before a large missile strike destroy them on the ground. Japan easily have enough missiles nad artillery pieces to saturate whatever defense AC can put up due to sheer industrial superiority alone. Fuel storages could also be targeted to prevent mechs, tanks, and planes from even starting in the first place. US can do the same as US have plenty of bases in Japan and can mobilize around Academy City's border.

YET, Academy city has the audacity to launch a WMD satellite capable of destroying a city. That is clearly against the Outer Space treaty which bans WMDs in space. That's not going to protect them anyway as satellites are extremely vulnerable. And not liek they are the only one with WMDs. The Satellite would only destroy one or two cities at most, not a big deal for a major country in a MAD scenario. On the otherhand a few moderate yield nukes would wipe AC off the map. Not just that, Academy City have extremely aggressive foreign policies, conducting shady activities aorund the world, and just look at the "WW3 arc."

Most hilarious thign is that AC threatened Japan to remai nneutral in "WW3 Arc" despite all of the above. AC is in no position to threaten ANYONE. Vatican City in our world function properly because they maintain positive relations with almsot every body and remain neutral and have a peaceful stance, so no enemies. Academy city have all the same vulnerabilities but is going around making enemies. Serious facepalm.