Seiko Alba Spoon Teardrop W850 x Yoshitaka Amano

Today's watch is one that unfortunately I can't wear - it suffers from brittleness of the strap which is common problem for watches around that time.

This watch is by the Seiko Alba brand as part of the Spoon range. In the late 90s, they came out with a teardrop shaped variation using a similar module to the earlier Timetron-H. The teardrop shaped watches have an unusual strap with the expanding section to open it being at the top, directly connected to the watch head.

There were a few special versions of the watch released, including this one from the year 2000. This version was produced with Art Vivant Co Ltd, and to quote the box "embodies the original illustration by Yoshitaka Amano" . It was a limited edition release with only 300 of the watches being made.

Yoshitaka Amano is an artist, character designer, and film scenery and costume designer. He was first notice in the late 60s after working on the anime version of Speed Racer. He is well known to anime and game fans, designing characters for Gatchaman (aka G-Force or Battle of the Planets), Vampire Hunter D, and Casshan, along with providing illustrations for Final Fantasy. One of his illustrations is printed on the watch head just above the display, and shows what looks like a face and a curved wing.

The watch uses a W850 module, which has a large dot matrix LCD display. It has alarm, world time, chronograph, and timer, with all modes accessible directly from a mode menu. The main display has the equivalent of 4 lines with a choice of display styles. The top row shows the mode (time) and the bottom shows day, and the middle two lines can either show date and time, or a double height time.

The full model number is W850-4090, and the watch doesn't have any serial number (just the limited edition number).