[houkoholic]

Originally Posted by blackwhite67

Was there really that much of an uproar over it? How exactly did the public react?.

Spoiler:

Not much at the moment as COCOON has their controlling hands on traditional media but information such as Hikami's initial broadcast and his conversation with Akatsuki is currently being archived and spread over the internet. Some no-name terrorist groups which were already against COCOON control uses this for propaganda.

On the other hand situation on the man-made island housing Japan BABEL and the city connected to BABEL and inside the barrier is a bit stickier due to the people having full grasp of the situation and has a much higher concentration of people with special abilities. In the beginning of the volume some BABEL students were trying to raid Akatsuki's house because they view that COCOON gives them special privileges, protection and purpose which they would otherwise not get.

Who is this Japanese PM and how exactly did he take over the country? Why would COCOON dissolve the country?

Spoiler:

He's the democratically elected PM and actually Onizuka's father. COCOON doesn't usually go with brute force/military invasion and risk causing chaos especially over the G7 nations (not entirely sure which 7 but so far we know it is at least Japan, US, UK and China are members) but more like the master puppeteer influencing the national governments so that's why democratically elected presidents and PMs are still in place in those countries. However with the Japanese government having essentially declared treason/open war against COCOON when they secretly developed Phoenix Cell (other world technology are supposed to be all under COCOON management) and them trying to silence Hikami by nuking the island BABEL was built upon COCOON had to take over to stablise the situation to show themselves as the "good guys" by preventing anarchy and public uproar against the government's usage of nukes on civilians, but then they also play some hardball and show the other nations of the world that they do not tolerate traitors/enemies thus they dissolve the Japanese nation to clean the plates. This is not the first time COCOON had dissolve countries, apparently some of the middle-eastern countries had been dissolved by COCOON already in the name of peace and stability.