#41 Orange Alert

Traditionally news of the release of a new Master of G leaks out pretty early. Casio announced this model already march 5th, 2008, with a release date of of June 28th. This time the release of the new Riseman was received with much different response in Japan and outside Japan. Actually I still don't know a Japanese collector who has this "most precise watch Casio has ever released" (quote according the Dutch science magazine "Kijk").
How much difference was the reaction of the members of the Watchuseek G-Shock forum. It seemed everyone was getting this watch and also the response was almost unanimously positive.
In may I contacted my friend Yamazaru-San in Japan. I learned to know Yamazaru-San 5 years ago under his legendary nickname "Risefreak". He was then already a highly respected Japanese collector. For collectors outside Japan he is probably best known for the photo of his complete DW-9100 Riseman collection.

Photo: Yamazaru-san a.k.a. Risefreak

Yamazaru-San is often the first one to report new G-Shock models. When a new retail catalog is released, he publishes photo's of them on his website. This time he was completely surprised. "A new Riseman, I haven't heard about that yet. I must go to my clock shop on Monday (I believe I sent him that e-mail on a Friday evening).
Monday I got a mail back. He showed me some snapshots of the new "Spring - Summer 2008 Collection".
Since we communicate via translation websites (Excite), you sometimes get strange results. I thought something went lost in translation in the last line. His message ended with "I like it, specially the orange one.
Orange? Something must have been wrong. There were red accents on the new Riseman, a big red button and a big red eye....
I posted a question on WUS. I was pretty busy that time and maybe I missed something. Funny enough I did a search on Google and found out pretty fast Casio was about to release an Orange series. And not just a new series. Casio did not only revive the "Master of G" series, they were about to revive one of their best returning theme series, the "Men in..." series.
Between 1998 and 2000 Casio released several "Men in...." series, starting with the "Men in Black" series (mostly referred as MIB). The new 2008 series were called "Men in Rescue Orange" (MIRO). Cool!
Somehow I always had a lot of contacts with the local lifeguard organizations, so I liked this name. Also is orange the national color of my country, The Netherlands.
Soon I found out this series were released at the end of September.
The whole summer I tried to put some money aside, which wasn't easy, but at the end of the summer holidays I filled in an order form at Higuchi inc. In the hope I was not too late. Luckily I could still order the set (beside the Riseman, the first series also contained a new GW-9010R Mudman Rally and a GW-9100R Gulfman.
Lately Michael of MSG-Distributors showed two additional models, a G-9000R Mudman and G-9100R Gulfman. I'm not sure when these two non-Atomic models will be released, but I like lo have this series complete. I hope the release of these will take a few months until the new non-Atomic models will be released. My computer system software crashed. If you read this, I probably have a new computer system, that cost me roughly three Atomic MIRO sets, so I have to save up some money again.
My experience is that if you order a complete set, the price is significant cheaper. The official price of this model is about 28000 yen. Mostly shops in Japan offer a discount of around 10%. If you buy this watch at Seiya-san or Higuchi-san, you might expect a price around retail price including international shipping. What would you do without these two great men from Japan.
The MIRO Riseman has the 3145 module. It is the Japanese module. This means it only displays ISO units. So if you read air pressure in in. Hg, temperature in °F and measure height in feet, this model is mot for you (if you are planning using it for outdoor activities), you would probably like the 3147 module more. This difference in Japanese and overseas models of sensor watches can also be found on it's predecessors, the DW-6700 and DW-9100.
Frankly I do not exactly understand why Casio makes two modules for basically the same model. It would be probably much cheaper to developed just one module for the home market and export. I won't Be surprised if the real difference between those models is a small piece of software.
You can recognize a Japanese market model on the back. The overseas model shows a dragon (see Vintage's article), while the home market model shows a flying squirrel.
I'm sure this model is not for everybody. The basic black model looks awesome too and black goes with everything.
I like this model very much. It was worth the long wait. I and am looking forward in having my GW-9010R and G-9100R too. With a little luck I'll be having those two at the end of the week.