Saturday 29 September 2012

Leiji Matsumoto 55th Anniversary Leiji Meter watch by SeaHope

Well, I've reached day 4 out of my 4 day LED watch marathon. It's the final day of the electronic music festival, and to mark that, I'm wearing one of my most noticeable (read huge and weird) light up watches.

This watch is by SeaHope (as are the majority of my flashy LED watches), and actually is cheating a little - its not LED - but is lights up and flashes, so I'm counting it ;-). It was also done in collaboration with Zero Goods Universe who make/sell character toys, dolls, and clothing. You can find out more about SeaHope in my overview page.

It is called the Leiji Meter watch, and was released to commemorate the 55 anniversary of the debut of Leiji Matsumoto. It was a limited edition release, with only 999 copies released in each of the two colours.

Leiji Matsumoto is a manga and anime creator, who is best known for Space Battleship Yamoto and Galaxy Express 999. He is also known for designing the tourist water bus which operates in Tokyo (called Himiko), and he supervised creation of a series of videos for Daft Punk's Discovery album. He was born in 1938, and his debut came out in 1953 under his real name Akira Matsumoto.

The watch has two ways of displaying the time - an LED/LCD display (which looks like a electro-luminescent backlight, but I think is more complicated than that), and two small dials at the bottom.

The dials are two separate 1-hand dials, each with their own quartz movement. The left dial covers hours, and the right dial covers the minutes.

The LED /LCD display is more complicated. When you set it going, the lights flash like a set of meters filling and emptying. When you know how it works it's relatively simple. The small circle at the top has a fan shape of 12 lines which shows the hour. Around the outside are green blocks which designate 5 minutes and are where you would expect for a normal dial. Across the middle is a set of 10 red dots which corresponds to minutes (so you have to watch out you don't double count).

The case is made of an Aluminium based "super alloy", which was designed for use in aircraft and rockets to resist oxidisation and corrosion (and also is much more scratch resistant than normal aluminium cases). All of the buttons show a skull and crossbones, and so does the clasp. The back also has a large cracked skull and crossbones, along with Matsumoto signature, and the anniversary. The SeaHope logo is also on the back, and the copyright is held by Leiji Matsumoto and Zero Goods Universe.

It was released in 2009 and originally cost 39,900 yen. Because of the 3 movements, there are 3 batteries, a CR2032 for the LED/LCD display, and an SR626 for each of the dials.






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