Birthday of Ayanami: Daykeeper

Yes, I took the plunge and bought the watch anyway. I wasn't sure about getting this that I had to ask around for people's opinion. I've had mixed feelings and I had mixed reactions from others as well. But I had a good excuse to finally get it, ok? It's not some kind of random purchase, ok? ^^;

This is part 1 of my Birthday of Ayanami series of posts on March 30th. Rei's birthday is actually based on Megumi Hayashibara's birthday, her voice actress. Megumi is also my favourite voice actress. Unfortunately she hasn't had much work lately since she's raising her family, but she still have some recent work, like Paprika, Evangelion movies and Slayers (at least it was just released here). March 30th is also Ayako Kawasumi's birthday, my second favourite voice actress... but I'll talk more about that later.

This is Daykeeper Relax Plus Plugsuits Edition, Rei Version... What a mouthful. Since this is the Rei version, she gets the first picture... Plus it's her birthday!

The watch was available in 3 versions including Asuka (red) and Shinji (light blue). As of this post there are actually other versions that is grey black coloured based on Kaworu and bright pink based on the new female pilot, Mari, from the new movie.

The reason why I bought this was because the strap on the watch I was wearing was about to fall apart... So I started to look for a new watch. I thought about getting something cheap, but I didn't want it to break easily. So I looked around for a nice Casio. One of the thing that I hated about the old watch was the light. It was too low... So the light was important. I found a really nice one, it had a compass and I was impressed by the illumination.

So I thought I decided on Casio, but then I suddenly had the urge to look around for anime-related watches when I got home from looking at watches... I researched some more and I kept going back to Relax Plus. This badly translated Japanese into English description somewhat piqued my interest: "RELAX PLUS is a small metal parts, most of them wrapped in rubber and PVC. PVC material by using a rubber belt, negative ions generated by friction. As its name implies you want to watch just RELAX!!!! Tamenai [wut?] high moisture permeable and breathable PVC sweat Quick dry effect of the fiber. Can comfortably wear it during the hot summer."

Either way I was sold since I was looking for a watch anyway. Thankfully the Daykeeper was back in stock at Hobby Search! They were the only one that had it and it was 15% off! Done deal. A couple of weeks later, trying to keep my watch intact as possible, the Daykeeper arrived!

And this is the content in the box... I played around and took photos of it right away because I was already planning this March 30th post.

Nice packaging! The inner case is a lego brick type of packaging. Supposedly if you have more Relax Plus watches, you can stack the cases... The plastic that surrounds the watch is quite unique.

Very intricate casing, I gotta say. It's like a giant bubble wrap.

Umm... I pretty much winged it when I set up the watch since I can't read all of this. Anyone that knows Japanese well and willing to translate, let me know. I still don't know how to make the watch beep hourly ^^;

And here's the watch! I'm a little disappointed because it's not as white as in the pictures... The top number is the hour, middle is minutes and seconds at the bottom. I have to press the top left button to check the date, kinda hard to press sometimes, but at least it has a calendar. I wasn't sure if there was a calendar or not... It does have an alarm too, but hard to setup. I need to read the manua... Damn, I forgot I can't read it...

The strap is made of PVC and metallic pieces. I'm surprised how the strap worked actually. It straps on like one of those watches with metallic band. Stainless steel, baby!

EVANGELION

You can also remove the timepiece from the strap if you need to replace the battery. But here you can actually see the buttons on the watch.

A close up of the timepiece. I haven't removed the plastic sticky part on the face of the watch, just so it can be protected and last a bit longer.

I gotta have a picture of the watch and Rei, right?

So I've been pretty much wearing it ever since I got it. It gets dirty easily, especially in my line of work, but it's easily cleaned. Hopefully the strap lasts, but I know they sell replacement straps for this line... I don't really want to replace the strap though...