MY G IDOL

Kikuo Ibe may not have a watch brand named after himself but he has to be one of the most well known and respected influencers of the watch industry. We have covered an extremely wide range of Casio G-Shock watches here, and yet, in line with Japanese watchmaking culture, it is exceedingly rare that we are given proper insight or interesting droplets of information.

That however, is exactly what has happened with this recently released official video titled “The Story Behind G-Shock.” In it, Ibe-san explains why and how the G-Shock came to be and how he and his team could overcome the innumerable challenges that it meant to develop the world’s first “watch so durable it wouldn’t break even when dropped” in the early ’80s – that was Mr. Ibe’s mission statement after he dropped and broke a watch he received as a gift from his father.

After two years of painstaking trial and error, and at a time when he was nearly ready to give up, he came upon a child playing with a ball  and that, as he puts it, resulted in a dramatic shift towards the solution. Fast-forward to today, and innovation couldn’t be further from stopping at Casio, as Ariel found out during his in-depth Casio manufacture

As G-Shocks continue to merge durability and toughness with the latest technology, and as they become tougher and more focused on meeting the requirements of yet more specific use scenarios (firefighters, rescue workers, fighter pilots, different types of divers, and more), Ibe’s advice to people and, he adds, to himself is to “never give up and overcome any hardships to reach their goals.”

A rare and more concrete thing to learn was Ibe’s appreciation of how Japanese culture incorporates the notion of how there is strength hidden in being elegant. While that in itself makes total sense when said out loud, to project that onto a watch and especially a G-Shock is much more unusual. While G-Shocks push to continue to succeed with a young demographic has resulted in some decidedly bold and colorful pieces, you can still easily find some genuinely elegant G-Shocks out there.