The G-Shock Perfect Bible

 I recently got a copy of the G-Shock 35th Anniversary Perfect Bible,

and I'm about as pleased with it as I can be. It's written in Japanese, which limits the amount of information I can extract from it. But this in turn gives me an incentive to learn, at last, to read Japanese.

The very thought of acquiring the ability to read Japanese makes me tired. But, to be honest, I'm 60 years old, and I'm tired a lot of the time, whether I'm thinking about language acquisition or not. So we'll see whether I pick up any of the lingo or not.

Speaking of lingo: naming a catalog of a company's watches "Perfect Bible" may be a bit shocking to some native English speakers. But I doubt that there was any intention to offend. This is a Japanese publication intended for Japanese readers, and "Perfect Bible" may well just be an example of tossing in some foreign-language phrases to sound cool. 

There are some lavishly-illustrated pages relating the history of G-Shock from 1983, when the first G-Shock was released, to late 2017, when this catalog was published. And there are some cool full-pages ads of models which were new, or upcoming, when this catalog was new. But the main attraction of this volume are thumbnail photos of every G-Shock ever released from 1983 to mid-2017, [PS, March 2022: No, I was wrong, this catalog does not show them all. It shows 2500, which is certainly a lot, but not all of them.]  with some information about each one which I can't read because it's in Japanese, and the module number and price in yen, which I can read. 

Something I haven't been able to decipher yet is whether the catalog indicates if a particular model has been discontinued. I know that many of them have and many haven't. I suspect that this catalog may be able to tell me which ones were still on sale in in 2017, but only if my reading proficiency in Japanese improves.

Still, the very first glance at these pages of thumbnails told me a lot, just by the colors of the individual models, of which, as the front page informs you, this catalog shows over 2500.

And at this point, at the very latest, I should explain what I mean by "model."

I could use different terms, but I'm choosing to say "model" to describe each of the thousands of watches in those little thumbnail photos. There is a different photo, and a different model designation, every time there is any sort of change in function, or material, or in the buttons you push to operate a G-Shock, or even the slightest variation in color. 

I could have used the term "model" to indicate all the watches which are greatly similar, and "variation" to indicate the more minor changes, but people generally say "model" to indicate any of these small changes, so I'll follow convention. For a group of models which are similar except for color, band type etc, I will say "series." 

To put it another way: I will say "series" to indicate a group of watches which Casio has given the same start of a designation, such as GA-110. And I will say "model" to distinguish, for example, the bright orange GA-110A-4JF, which, in 2010, was one of the first of the GA-110 series to be released, from the GA-110B-3JF, released around the same time, which is lime green.

This is not the only valid way of describing these differences, but it's the one which I have decided to use.

On the subject of color: for a long time I thought that G-Shocks were mainly black, and mainly worn by military personnel, police, and people who had seen Keanu Reeves Jason Statham wearing one in a movie. 

And, concerning the color of the watches at the very least, there was a time when I would have been right. This can been very easily seen by looking at page 52 of this catalog: every G-Shock offered from 1983 through 1990 was black. Then, from 1991 through 1994, and almost to the bottom of page, the great majority of models are still black, but there are a few available in other dark, inconspicuous colors, some in very bright yellow, and a couple more very colorful models. And after that, as you turn the pages, things get very, very colorful indeed. Black remains more prevalent than any other single color, but there are entire pages, with up to 35 thumbnails on a page, with no black models at all. And I've learned that a lot of G-Shocks, colorful ones, are sold to the "youth culture."

The GA-110, which I mentioned above, generally comes in bright, bright colors. In 2020, Casio announced that the GA-110 had sold more than any other G-Shock series. 

So, are there more black G-Shocks in the world now, of the far more than 100 million units which have been sold, or colorful G-Shocks? What's doing more business, black military style or bright, colorful youth culture style? I don't know, and I don't know whether this catalog could tell me, no matter how well I could read Japanese. The number of models does not necessarily indicate the number of units. For example, say that a company offered one black model of watch and ten colorful models, and they sold 100 of the black model, mostly to military buyers, and and average of 3 of each of the colorful ones. That would come to 100 black watches and 30 colorful ones. 

The GA-110 was the leading model in sales in 2020, but that doesn't mean that black, military style G-shock weren't close behind at #2 through 10.

And black G-Shocks are definitely not going away. One striking example is on the cover of the 35th Anniversary Perfect Bible. Take a look at the photo up at the beginning of this post: the watch which is higher in the photo is a DW-5000C-1A, the very first G-Shock released in 1983. The one on the bottom is the GW-M5610-1JF, which was probably not yet for sale when this photograph was taken. They look very much the same, although the newer watch can do all sorts of things which no watch could do in 1983, such as synchronize its time via radio waves with an atomic clock thousands of miles away.