Tamer Morris
When I was a child, 6:30am meant one thing, catching the next episode of Space Battleship Yamato. For the uninitiated, it’s a Japanese anime about an interstellar war between Earth and Gamilas, featuring a multinational crew on a space warship called… that's correct... the Yamato. Yamato was part of the UN' s space military wing, the UN Cosmo Force (UNCF), which was probably my earliest (and wildly inaccurate) introduction to armed conflict, the laws of conflict, and the United Nations.
Most of the show was childish, but somewhere between the laser cannons and diplomatic meltdowns, something must have lodged in my brain, because I’m fairly sure this is where my fascination with international law and international relations actually began. When I was working UN in New York, I saw this Yamato pillow in an anime store and naturally bought it, because the contrast between the anime and my actual job was too hilarious to resist. And yet… some of the political antics in the anime hit uncomfortably close to home. Let’s just say the characters in Yamato weren’t the only ones having dramatic meetings.