Talk:New World/@comment-86.122.114.74-20180810225756/@comment-45.56.46.26-20180811044232

No, you're not the first to notice.

Yes, it was intentional, in that Maruyama admitted he based the map on the general outline of a map of the Middle East. It may not have any deeper significance than that, though. There doesn't seem to be any idea of the various countries being proxies for their contemporary local counterparts, like Roble being Egypt and Re-Estize being Israel or anything like that.